MxMIndia

Tag: Harvard Business Review

  • Do your best… the brand will follow, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    Personal Branding – Much Ado about Nothing?

    Source: Keegan Everitt/Pexels.com

     

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    Prabhakar MundkurIt’s not only fashion that is about trends. Trends is an affliction that affects management thinking as well.  And the latest trend is to talk about personal branding. The well-known management magazines are writing long articles about it. Other general gurus on branding are writing books on it. Why even the Harvard Business Review made it their cover story for the May-June issue of 2023. And here is the surprise. The article is written by a Jill Avery, a branding thought leader, and Racheal Greenwald a dating coach and a professional matchmaker author of the book ‘Find a husband after 35’.  So if that doesn’t prove it is trending what does?  After all, the HBR is considered the mother of all management journals.  And their definition of purpose is what we were taught in the marketing kindergarten class for branding.

     

    For a particular target person or group of people, I will make a difference by offering the unique, memorable, and meaningful value you want to provide…

     

    • HBR May-June 2023 issue

     

    But isn’t this just a another extension of the branding?  Have the personal coaches and marketing gurus  just discovered a new revenue stream?  I certainly think so.  After all it is quite easy to do. Transfer all you know about branding to people, especially people in positions of importance.  And everyone is jumping into it, not just marketing gurus but personal coaches as well.

     

    The question I would like to ask is whether great CEOs don’t become great brands automatically.  After all I would hate to think that Steve Jobs was focussing his entire life on creating a personal brand. I think he was focussing on following his passion, making great products and leading Apple into becoming a great company.

    The brand Steve Jobs just happened as a result of what he was doing.

     

    Or take Jack Welch for example. Welch was Chair and CEO of General Motors from 1981 to 2001.  He closed factories, laid off workers and pursued the vision of a fast growing company in a slow growth economy. Of course he wrote books and did a lot of public speaking.  And became one of the greatest management thinkers and leaders of the last century. Jack Welch, the brand, became what it is because of what he did.  Not because he was focussing on becoming a brand.

     

    Jeff Bezos said: “Your brand is what people are saying when you are not in the room”.  Well said. But I really wonder if Jeff Bezos was planning his entire personal branding strategy to achieve that. He was focussing on creating a great brand called Amazon that the world would acknowledge as a great brand. The rest just happened automatically.

     

    In conclusion, I would like to submit that becoming a great leader and creating a great company or product will make you a great personal brand without much thinking or effort or trying to create your own personal brand proposition. It is hard to believe that the great leaders of our time were writing out by writing personal value propositions, auditing their personal brand equity or constructing their personal brand narrative.

     

    Do your best. The brand will follow.

     

  • The three media giants have come together to leverage their specific content strengths and collectively provide rich and relevant world class content to the readers

    Dainik Bhaskar group ties up with Time & HBR

    By A Correspondent

     

    Dainik Bhaskar Group has become the first newspaper to provide exclusive content from Time, the current affairs magazine and Harvard Business Review to its readers on a regular basis. The exclusive content will feature in the Sunday edition of the newspaper.

     

    The three media giants have come together to leverage their specific content strengths and collectively provide rich and relevant world class content to the readers. Dainik Bhaskar Group isIndia’s largest newspaper group with 1.9 million readers in 13 states. Time is the world’s largest circulation weekly news magazine with a readership of 25 million, of which 20 million are in theUS. It is widely regarded as one of the most popular magazines. Harvard Business Review delivers the latest techniques, best practices and the most thoughtful advice from the world’s leading management experts.

     

    Elaborating on the collaboration, Kalpesh Yagnik, National editor, Dainik Bhaskar Group said: “We at Dainik Bhaskar focus at generating the best and most relevant content for our readers. Time and HBR are relied upon by the policymakers, the world over. We will thus, bring to our readers, the latest trends in international politics, strategy, diplomacy, environment, entertainment, science or economy.”

     

    The content for the Sunday edition has been completely revamped. The edition will focus on management lessons to be applied in day to day life along with wide spectrum of topics like Health, Fitness, Career, Self Help, Money management, Politics, education, Music, Lifestyle, Environment, Good reads through columns by eminent experts of the respective fields.

     

    Dainik Bhaskar, in reflection to the changing times and women empowerment, will also provide a separate segment devoted to women. Fashion, Food, Travel, Health, Life, Career and money management besides this, there will be a Sunday Jacket, above the regular front page of the newspaper. This will carry exclusive news analysis, ground reports and so on.

     

    Speaking of the change, Sanjeev Kotnala, VP Dainik Bhaskar group said: “Content is always the king for any media brand. And we are loved by our readers as we focus on them. Our strategy revolves around being ahead of the curve.”