Corporate Imaging Can Enhance Personal Branding

Wilson, a Coca Cola senior vice president, and Blumenthal, a corporate consultant, have brought a new twist into the decades-old personal development field in their book, "Managing Brand You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Most Successful Self" (AMACOM 2008).

Though some of their advice is not entirely new, they deliver it with new terminology, new, detailed step-by-step planning and the confidence that since it works for large corporations it can work for individuals. It goes beyond personal image-making. Instead it focuses, like corporate branding, on making oneself someone that others "insist" upon in areas of crucial interest.

The authors build around a few basic themes:

• It’s never too late to succeed.
• Be honest to your "inner essence," which is described as what a person stands for--"those principles that cannot be compromised."
• Focus externally and outwardly.
• Target your prime audience, just as successful corporations do.