This past Saturday I participated in Boston University’s PRSSA regional activity, PR Advanced: Brand Yourself. Since I’m winding down my academic career and applying for full-time positions, the conference came at the perfect time for me to give more thought to my own personal brand. It also provided windows into the world of corporate branding, which was beneficial to me as I begin to think about my future working on client teams that will certainly be involved with enhancing a company’s brand and reputation.
The day opened up with a keynote speech from Penelope Trunk, the founder of Brazen Careerist. Penelope provided great advice for developing a personal brand. First off, she acknowledged that it only takes 15 minutes a day! If you spend 15 minutes each day updating a blog, shooting out a few tweets or linking to an interesting article, you are working on your brand and that’s progress. An underlying theme in her presentation was the importance of sharing ideas. When asked about copyright, she laughed, because of course we all have more than one idea and sharing ideas means getting feedback, which is extremely valuable as a young professional.
During the next part of the day, I attended two breakout sessions on corporate branding, one with Karen Raskopf, Senior
That's me asking a question during the HR panel
Vice President of Corporate Communication for Dunkin’ Brands, and the other with Linda Shear, leader of Human Resources for Whole Foods Market North Atlantic Region. A lesson that I took away from both presentations is that in branding you have to know your audience and target your product to fit that audience’s needs. The Dunkin’ Brands presentation highlighted the importance of catering to the everyday American, while the Whole Foods presentation focused on the importance of staying true to it’s mission of providing fresh, organic foods with a positive customer experience–even in non-traditional ways such as using feng shui in store layouts.
After the breakout sessions, participants had to opportunity to pose questions to a panel of HR professionals. Questions ranged from how to stand out in a cover letter to job searching etiquette. I asked a whether HR professionals prefer an immediate e-mail follow up and a written thank you note or just one or the other. In the end it came down to preference, but three out of the four agreed that a handwritten note is extremely valuable.
The keynote speaker was Fiona Morrisson from JetBlue. I was incredibly interested to listen to this talk because of the fact that I had studied JetBlue’s media meltdown, resulting from problems with flights during Valentine’s Day weekend in 2007. Morrisson addressed the situation and showed how the company has recovered from it, which involved sticking to the brand’s values and moving forward. She discussed the company’s introduction of a passenger’s bill of rights, which is a unique way to show customers how valuable they are to the company.
The day ended with a career fair that included representatives from a variety of firms. I had a fantastic time networking and talking about my interest in healthcare with industry professionals. I’m looking forward to continue the conversation with many of the professionals that I met at the career fair.
Overall the conference was a huge success, and I am glad I had the opportunity to participate. I’ll certainly be working on my brand as an aspiring healthcare public relations professional.
