Let Your Company’s Personality Come Out. – With Rohit Bhargava
on Apr 24, 2009 - 2:19 PM PST
(Can’t see the video? Try this.)
Do you ever catch yourself trying to sound too corporate because you think it’s more professional? Maybe your web site says, “we” everywhere, even though it’s just you?
In this program, Rohit Bhargava suggests taking off the mask and talks about how you can communicate your personality in a way that makes people want to buy from you and work with you.
About Rohit Bhargava:
Rohit is the author of the marketing book, Personality Not Included. And he’s a founding member of the pioneering 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy. He also writes the Influential Marketing blog. Plus he’s a great guy that I chatted with over a beer at SxSW, where we agreed to record this program.
An edited excerpt:
A lot of what they tell you in school is, “Take the emotion out of it. Nobody cares about the emotion. They want to know the business facts. They want to know the statistics. They want to know what you think you’re going to make in order to invest in your company.”
The thing about that is that people can’t take the emotion out of a decision, but you’re taking it out of your pitch. So there’s emotion in the decision, but none in the pitch. You end up missing out.
So a lot of what I talk about is the idea of putting that personal voice back into it. Because that’s what people associate with.
I’m not saying that your pitch to an investor to get $10 million for your idea should have “dude,” as every other word. I’m not saying that you should totally be casual. What I am saying is that there’s a way of writing in normal human language that people get and people respond to, and it doesn’t have to be the stayed corporate voice.
Let me give you an example. You raised an important point in your question earlier. The idea that you want to appear bigger than you are.
Scott Jordan, who founded SCOTTEVEST, had a similar situation. He was growing his company, and there was basically him and his wife and one other person in a warehouse shipping these clothes out. If you knew that, you might not believe that they could actually execute on a large order. So they had to appear to be a certain size.
If you look at their corporate team bios, their Director of Marketing is Kelly Adoggi. And basically, the description didn’t have a picture when they were smaller [note: it does now], but there are a couple of paragraphs talking about Kelly’s experience. And as you read to the end, you slowly realize that Kelly is actually their dog. And Adoggi stands for “a doggy.”
They made their dog into an employee and wrote the bio so as though the dog was the Director of Marketing to appear slightly larger and have more team members than they actually did.
So here’s an example of a company having a little bit of fun with it. So much fun that, now that they have a lot of more employees the Adoggi’s bio is still online.
The full program includes:
- How to communicate your business’s uniqueness.
- How to create your company’s backstory.
- Why you should admit you’re marketing.
Give your feedback:
What do you think of the ideas in this program. Tell me in the comments.
The FULL program:
View Comments to “Let Your Company’s Personality Come Out. – With Rohit Bhargava”
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April 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I can’t get too enthusiastic about Andrew’s Mixergy interviews cos that’s impossible! They’re amazing! I get so much from each one and I’m learning tons of very practical stuff.
This interview with Rohit was done live and we were able to take part in real time on Twitter, a first for me and a really exciting and helpful way to do things.
As we tweeted questions and ideas, Andrew and Rohit answered and discussed our points, giving useful info and tips. At the same time, our own Twitter followers we able to join the interview, contribute tweets and interact with members of the mixergy crowd.
Rohit’s stuff is so useful. You’ll get lots of help to make your own projects real and outstanding through your own unique personality.
Times are tough but with these interviews we’ll get a world-class business education free of charge, and from professors who really know their stuff.
Thanks very much to Andrew and Rohit.
All the best, Ian.
http://www.twitter.com/ianaspin
April 25th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for joining the live interviews Ian.
Wasn't it great Rohit had examples when I put him on spot by asking him how
he used his own ideas? I love authors who don't just talk about ideas, but
use them. Adds legitimacy.
April 25th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
This interview was very entertaining and the points Rohit made are right on, in this new age of business personality is key. The Oil Can Henry example is great how the company found a saturated niche, but by being different and putting trust into the oil change process they were able to compete with more established companies. That's a good case study because it helps one realize that there are endless opportunities if you can be creative by identifying customer needs.
Also what stood out to me in this interview is the importance of the “About” page. Its the page that the least amount of thought goes into but Rohit is right, visitors do spend a lot of time “getting to know your company” I'm going to be redrafting our About page this week. thanks for the tips!
April 25th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
When he talked about a site's “about” page, I felt like he was talking to me
directly. I need to fix mine.
What I love about doing these interviews is that they force me to look at
myself and apply what I learn.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Andrew,
Thank you for this clip. I am facing this issue right now. I work with several free lancers and part-time associates, so in a sense I do have a team of several people, and it is tempting to look a bit bigger than I actually am. I think it is also an issue of culture. Some cultures value the individual entrepreneur more than others, some value the size of the corporation.
In a similar vein, do I call myself “Founder and President” or something like “Manager” or “Director”? This too seems to be a difference amongst business cultures. Thank you,
Joseph
May 3rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
For what it's worth, when I interviewed Josh of GOSUB60, he said he was able
to sell to bigger companies by giving himself a title like Dir, Business
Development. That way he could be himself, without having people think, is
this all there is?
http://mixergy.com/sell2giants/
May 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I also have this problem, by being a one-man-show at a small social network for IT people in Romania.
What I found out was that by knowing that I am the one running all the show, the online and offline papaers tend to write more about me. Also the comunity is closer to me and they write me if they have a problem or suggestion.
Also, by you being so friendly, I like better the show, and I reccomand it to my friends :)
So.. keep it up! ;)
May 10th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Great example Ovidiu.
The instinct of most entrepreneurs is to pretend there's a big corporation
behind everything. And it's helpful sometimes. But mostly, people relate and
connect better with other people, not with big corporations.
May 25th, 2009 at 1:27 am
how did you get so good at interviewing?
everything is fleshed out and explained in different ways… i really look forward to watching every interview on this site.
thanks for everything you're doing!
May 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Thanks!
I really want to make these interviews into mini-seminars. I'm trying to
pack as much education into them as possible.
I appreciate the note VK.
January 25th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Wow – I couldn't agree more. It's the whole basis behind my Personality Marketing brand, and I came up with that *before* I know anything about Rohit. Totally agree with what he says – be YOU, because people buy you!
http://www.twitter.com/GordonMullan
January 25th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
You should meet him sometime.
January 25th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Wow – I couldn't agree more. It's the whole basis behind my Personality Marketing brand, and I came up with that *before* I know anything about Rohit. Totally agree with what he says – be YOU, because people buy you!
http://www.twitter.com/GordonMullan
January 25th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
You should meet him sometime.