I could’ve observed a lot by watching him

He’s smart and gifted. Yet he’s best known for his oddball aphorisms.

He was one of the best baseball players in history. Yet people who know nothing about baseball, think they know all about him.

His is one of the most remarkable personal brands I know of.

Yogi Berra from a 1956 Baseball Digest cover

Today is Yogi Berra’s 90th birthday. I’m using a photo of him from about age 30 because, as he once said: “I looked like this when I was young, and I still do.”

I like Yogi for a lot of reasons.

First, we share a given name. Lawrence Berra got the “Yogi” nickname early in life when a baseball teammate, watching him sit cross-legged waiting for his turn to play, thought he resembled a Hindu yogi. I bet you thought he was named after the Yogi Bear cartoon character. It’s actually the other way around — a testament to how popular Yogi was during his playing career.

Second, I see something of myself in him. In school I was known as a brainy kid. To fit in with the more popular kids I “dumbed it down,” intentionally using poor diction or choosing the wrong word. After awhile I discovered that not only wasn’t I popular, I was proving myself untrustworthy by trying to be something I wasn’t.

To quote one of his aphorisms, I could’ve observed a lot by watching Yogi Berra.

An object lesson in damaging your personal brand

Tai Tran, Social Media Marketing Manager at Cal-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, posted a perceptive article about why Starbucks’ #RaceTogether campaign failed.

Image source: LinkedIn (uncredited)

You probably heard about #RaceTogether. Designed to stimulate conversation about race relations, instead it touched off a firestorm of social-media derision directed at Starbucks.

Tran says, and I agree, that three factors led to the campaign’s going awry:

1. Poor brand alignment: Does it make sense for Starbucks, a brand many people associate with high prices and gentrification, to lead a discussion about race relations?
2. Lack of authenticity: Starbucks asked their employees (“partners”) to do the heavy lifting for #RaceTogether. While they’re expert at making coffee drinks, these “partners” have no special training for facilitating a knowledegeable, nuanced conversation about race. The result? #RaceTogether looked like a simple publicity stunt.
3. No plan for handling blowback: Soon after word got out about #RaceTogether, customers and others began complaining on social media. Starbucks had no answers. Soon, the Twitter account for Starbucks Senior VP of Global Communications was taken down. It’s hard to believe Starbucks didn’t at least consider the possibility of negative feedback, and that they didn’t have a contingency plan for handling it.

The bottom line: despite good intentions, #RaceTogether damaged Starbucks’ brand — damage that easily could’ve been prevented.

As individuals, we can learn a lesson from #RaceTogether. Everything we publish on the web — an article, a blog post, a comment, a Facebook update — has an effect on our personal brands. Most times the effect is innocuous, but sometimes the effect — for good or ill — is huge. It’s hard to predict when those times will be.

The best policy is to start with a clear vision of your personal brand and what you want it to be. Then publish only those things that fit that vision. Had Starbucks done this, they either would’ve found a better way to achieve their hoped-for outcome or they would’ve realized it was nothing they had any business doing.

What lessons do you see in the #RaceTogether experience?

Your personal brand: To be rather than to seem

I believe in building and cultivating a personal brand. By brand I mean the professional image or personality that you want to project. You build your personal brand, first and foremost, by building trust.

Leadership consultant Greg Hartle takes a slightly different tack, and I really like what he has to say.

When your personal brand takes a blind-side hit

Jonathan Martin noticed a sudden influx of personal messages directed to his Twitter account. New York Times reporter that he is, he figured out pretty quickly what was happening. The message senders had him confused with another Jonathan Martin, offensive tackle for the Miami Dolphins, who was the subject of an exploding story about hazing in football locker rooms.

Jonathan Martin (not the journalist): NY Times photo

Martin (the journalist) reported that the messages ran the gamut from encouraging to insulting to profane. As a sports fan, he found the whole experience amusing. But it also provided a window into the free-wheeling nature of social media, especially into what one of his correspondents called keyboard courage: the tendency for people to say online what they’d never dream of saying to someone’s face. Especially to a 6-foot-5, 312-pound pro football player.

I’ve written and presented about personal branding: the importance of creating and cultivating a professional image or personality. So what happens when you carefully build a personal brand, only to have something come along that casts your name in a completely unexpected light?