Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of a business entity. Although this course
provided essential insights, only three takeaways resonated with me relative to real-world
application. First, the brand concept appealed to me because it offered valued insights on
promoting brand credulity, customer loyalty, and competitive advantage (Kuşçu, 2020).
Additionally, integrating digital and traditional marketing approaches captured my attention.
The concept highlighted that this integration helps a company enhance its visibility in the
market. Overall, developing and implementing a marketing plan resonated with me
powerfully. It equipped me with practical tips for crafting a robust marketing plan to boost
sales and performance. Critically, influential leaders possess powerful personal brand traits
such as visionary, purposeful, confident, ambitious, and lifelong learners. They use this trait
to drive strategic plans and improve organizational performance. Effective leadership
influences positive followership and helps the organization achieve its objectives. Finally, my
desired personal brand focuses on developing a solid vision to achieve my goals and
transform my life, family members, and society socially and economically. The strength of
my brand lies within my personality and strong character (Jacobson, 2020). Thus, being a
lifelong learner will enrich me with valuable information, knowledge, and skills required to
shape my actions and drive my ambitions. It improves my decision-making skills by
providing a framework for acting rationally and ethically to achieve a desired personal brand
image. Therefore, the success of my personal brand depends on the lifelong learning
initiatives undertaken at an individual level. In other words, knowledge influences personal
and professional growth and development.
The three key course takeaways that resonate with me is that you need to be prepared for the
unexpected, organize a strategy that flows within each department of an organization, and that
you need to tailor certain advertising to not only fit your audience but also their generation.
These resonated with me because brands and marketing are not something I am too familiar
with, but I have been able to see from my current company how they apply these factors to
win more contracts. Especially with utilizing all stakeholders working as a team to improve
their image.
Thinking on attributes of an effective leader, communication, honesty, trust, and
dependability are all personal brand traits that they appear to possess. For me my desired
personal brand would be to have confidence within my decision making and be able to
communicate and build strong relationships. Being a lifelong learner can help reach this
desired goal by giving me the knowledge and tools I need to grow into it. No matter what I
will never be 100% of the way there since we always need to continuously improve on our
image whether as a leader or a brand, along with adapting to new changes along the way.
The three key course takeaways that resonate with me is that you need to be prepared for the
unexpected, organize a strategy that flows within each department of an organization, and that
you need to tailor certain advertising to not only fit your audience but also their generation.
These resonated with me because brands and marketing are not something I am too familiar
with, but I have been able to see from my current company how they apply these factors to
win more contracts. Especially with utilizing all stakeholders working as a team to improve
their image.
Thinking on attributes of an effective leader, communication, honesty, trust, and
dependability are all personal brand traits that they appear to possess. For me my desired
personal brand would be to have confidence within my decision making and be able to
communicate and build strong relationships. Being a lifelong learner can help reach this
desired goal by giving me the knowledge and tools I need to grow into it. No matter what I
will never be 100% of the way there since we always need to continuously improve on our
image whether as a leader or a brand, along with adapting to new changes along the way.
Three key course takeaways that resonate with me that I believe I will find helpful are the
type of marketing used for different generations, crisis management, and continuous
improvement. When we had the readings focusing on Gen Z or the other reading materials for
targeting the audience of different generations it made me became more aware of how much
each generation differs. The reason for the difference besides the emergence of technology,
but also the environment that we grew up in. I noticed some small differences when I try to
connect with younger family members, but to see it in writing and the analysis was an eye-
opener for me. It made me think about the company I work with and what would be the best
way to use what I learn to create content that will catch their attention. Crisis management
was another interesting article that we read. I also looked up a few articles on google on
Toyota's crisis a few years back and Samsung with one of the exploding cell phones how they
were able to overcome their damaged reputation. I might not have noticed at least the bigger
brands having these issues and how long and the steps they took to overcome the accident. It's
something I feel most companies do not prepare themselves to happen, so having knowledge
on how to rectify the problem should it occur was good to know. Since most of the time,
depending on the industry the company or restaurant would shut down. Lastly, continuous
improvement it wasn't something I didn't even consider which is a little funny since I always
think innovation is the key drive to it. However, from learning from this class and reading
these articles I was able to apply them to my job. I think sometimes we forget there are little
steps we need to consider to reach the higher goals we are working for.
Personal brand traits that appear in an effective leader I think would be communication, trust,
reliability, and being ethical are important. For me I want to have a brand to be able to relate
to the consumers I'm trying to attract and communicate why the product or service is the best.
The reasoning is it focuses on them while not compromising the integrity or the treatment of
the employees. I want to ensure that the results are still ethical because the last thing I want is
a company I support is price gouging or making it difficult to get the product/service due to
the high prices. Money isn't everything, however to get there I know the courses I'm learning
the articles I read will help me make the correct decisions to get there. Learning is a vast
wasteland, you will never learn enough but the knowledge that you learn will always guide
you in some way.
b b b b b b Some of my key course takeaways are:
Strategic changes -challenges can occur in many situations, and it is essential to create a
strategic change plan to guide the company through this challenging period.
First, it is necessary to highlight the vision and mission of the company in communication
with the employees and the public. Leadership should explain why the vision and mission are
relevant and the role of each of us in the duty of achieving a shared goal. Also, it can be
beneficial to include vision and mission in relationship with the public by sharing them on
social media and in the company's advertisements.
Secondly, the leadership should remain confident and optimistic; this will help employees
adopt confidence and take ownership to solve the issues. It is essential to address every single
negative comment, and people should acknowledge that their opinion matters. The marketing
team should contact the customers who wrote negative comments about the company, listen
to their concerns, answer questions, and follow up with our changes regarding the issue.
Cross-functional collaboration (cross-alignment) -is an organizational structure that
combines employees from different functional teams to work on a shared goal or project.
Cross-functional teams can be very effective in terms of communication and problem-solving.
It is essential to involve the organization's sales and operations departments to align efforts to
solve problems.
The sales team should research customer core concerns, analyze them, and pass them to the
operation team. The operation should check the validity of these allegations, resolve the
issues, and give the information to the marketing team. Marketing and sales should align
actions to reach customers and inform them that the problems are solved.
Crisis communication plan -every organization risks encountering a substantial crisis, and
these crises can ruin company's reputation and brand. A company that has a crisis
management strategy overcomes crises more effectively.
Effective crisis management strategy includes forming a competent team to handle the
circumstances. The team should have direct communication authority and an action plan.
Also, the team should be able to collect facts and analyses them without involving emotions.
A crisis management plan is a roadmap for effectively handling challenges before, during,
and after a crisis. The crisis management plan should address risk assessment, crisis
communication, and public relations.
Social media response methods -the marketing team should create review management
strategies to control negative comments about the brand. The company should not ignore any
negative comments about our company, and we should reply to every comment (positive,
negative, or neutral). It is necessary to be polite and apologize sincerely to resolve the
conflict. It can be beneficial for resolving the dispute to ask a customer to contact the
company directly (write an email, send a. message, or call customer support). Message to a
customer should be personalized and show empathy. (Baker, 2021).
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications -in the past, the primary concern of
any organization was to earn more money; meanwhile, nowadays, organizations are supposed
to care about making the world better. Companies are anticipated to care about environmental
issues, communities, customers, and employees.
CSR means that a company should self-regulate its actions and be socially accountable to its
customers, stakeholders, and the world.
A commitment to socially responsible practices positively impacts employee satisfaction and
retention. It's also excellent for brand identity because CSR initiatives help strengthen
customer trust and public respect. (Mandell, 2022)
Personal brand traits of influential leaders
Leaders should build honest relationships and a healthy environment within the
organization. Success does not come from one person. The leader should create an
atmosphere where employees trust each other and are not afraid to express their ideas out
loud. They are encouraged to come up with new strategies and ideas. All members of the team
should feel empowered and capable of solving problems. Thrust in their leader and each other
helps people take more risks, challenge the status quo, and keep moving ahead.
Furthermore, most employees value trust, compassion, stability, and emotional intelligence in
the leader.
Trust-most employees value trust, compassion, and stability in the leader. Trust is
fundamental in leadership.
Compassion-influential leaders should treat their followers the same way as a friend or
family member, and they should show genuine compassion toward their peers.
Research confirms that when employees feel that the managers care about them, they are
significantly more likely to stay in their organization longer, are more engaged at work, are
more productive, and produce more value.
Stability-followers want a leader to be someone they can always count on in times of need.
Employees want to be in an environment where they know what to expect.
Emotional intelligence refers to recognizing, interpreting, and processing emotions in
yourself and others. It has four main components.
An emotionally intelligent leader should know how she is likely to respond to the situations,
especially how she feels under pressure. (Posner)
Desired Personal Brand
I believe that my desired personal brand is a willingness to challenge the status quo. I am in
everyday exploration for innovations, new skills, and experience. Furthermore, I try not to be
disappointed by mistakes since I
acknowledge that failures and errors are inevitable when taking risks and going through
changes. Also, I like to motivate people to leave their comfort zones. I want to show people
around me, with my personal experience, that it is never too late to learn and start a new
career or hobby.
First, let me start with my 3 key course takeaways and how they resonate with me.
Crisis Management: Crisis is an inevitable aspect of our lives. For one reason or another,
organizations will go through crisis. During this phase, if crisis is not managed properly, it
may have a huge negative impact on the brand. The takeaway here for me is that
organizations must learn to adequately communicate with both internal and external
stakeholders during a crisis period. It’s not enough to identify the problem, and look for
solutions. It is also very important to acknowledge mistakes and apologize to all concerned
stakeholders. We must also identify best communication channels to reach them, and update
them on how far we have gone in resolving the issue and give assurance that everything is
okay going forward.
Generational Marketing: This is the segmentation of customers into age groups and time
events for marketing purposes. Gone are the days when one marketing approach is used for
all customers. In today’s world, unless a brand appeals to just one demographic target
audience, the organization must tailor its marketing strategies to appeal to four distinct
generations. Baby boomers, and Generation X, Y, Z.
For me, each generation has its characteristics, its own communication needs, and what
generally appeals to them. If we are to adequately get the attention of our target audience, we
must identify them based on age demographics and the era they were born. Our products and
services, marketing strategies, means of communication, etc. should be tailored towards their
characteristics and attributes.
Functional Departments are made up of teams of employees that have similar skills and
expertise. Depending on the structure of the organization, there are usually between 5-7
functional departments in an organization. These areas include Finance, HR, Marketing,
Sales, Operations, Technology etc.
While these departments have particular functions and expertise to move the organization
forward, there’s a need for them to work together to ensure quality service delivery.
For me, communication, knowledge sharing, giving and receiving feedbacks from colleagues
across departments are key factors that must be considered for an effective cross- functional
collaboration towards achieving a common goal or the optimization of the brand.
Attributes and Personal brand traits of effective leaders
Leadership is the ability of an individual(s)to influence and guide followers or members of an
organization (Mary, K 2021)
Being a leader is something that must be earned and not demanded. There are some certain
qualities you must possess that will make people follow you. Leadership traits are not innate,
they can be learned and adopted into our everyday lives. Below are some attributes of
effective leadership.
Humility – A leader must not be arrogant. They welcome ideas from everyone.
Approachable – Leaders practice open door policy. People are comfortable going to see them
for advice and guidance.
Integrity – They are trustworthy.
Transparency – They are open and fair in their dealings. They don’t take sides.
Decision making- They have the ability to take decisions most especially in difficult
moments.
Optimism- A leader must have a can-do spirit. They must be able to motivate and inspire
others.
Empathetic- Leaders must be able to connect with their team emotionally. Understand their
pains and put others in their own shoes.
My Desired Personal Brand
I believe that looking good is good business. Your appearance goes a long way in telling
people who you are. So, for me, I like looking good. Not necessarily flashy or expensive, but
looking sharp, clean, and well dressed. Looking presentable, presents what you have to say.
I would also like to be a problem solver or a solution provider. That person you can talk to
when you have issues. Approachable person, team player and a motivator.
Lifelong learning would broaden my horizon on different facets of life, and enhance my
leadership skills. This will eventually help me reach my desired personal brand.
References
Mary, K (2021) Leadership Techtarget.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/leadership
Kristen, K (2016) Multi-Generational Marketing: A Must For Any Brand. Brand Quarterly.
May2016, Issue 21, p54-58. 5p
Rachel Mandell, 2022, 7 best practices for creating an impactful CSR strategy
https://blog.submittable.com/csr-strategy/
Baker, 2021, How brands handle negative comments on social media
https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/negative- comments-social-media
b b b b b Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, 2010, The Leadership Challenge,
Jacobson, J. (2020). You are a brand: social media managers’ personal branding and “the
future audience”. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
Kuşçu, A. (2020). Employer Branding in the Digital Era. In Impacts of Online Advertising on
Business Performance (pp. 28-51). IGI Global.
