Jeff Lebowski is ... the Dude. Vestibulum id ligula porta felis euismod semper. Maecenas sed diam eget risus varius blandit sit amet non magna. Curabitur blandit tempus porttitor.
![The Big Lebowski (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray Book + Digital Copy]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512F90yEqdL._SL75_.jpg){kind=small}
A
lot of people are writing about personal branding, particularly as the economy
shrivels and concerns about jobs mount. There's no doubt that a
powerful personal brand, especially if it is backed up with a track
record, can help you weather the storm. More importantly, it can also
serve as a door opener for new business either for you personally or
your company.
You can find lots of great advice online on how to use
social media to build your personal brand. One of the better ways, though, is to
study how big companies leverage their brands. No one is better at it than the Walt
Disney Company.
I have long been fascinated with Disney and how
year after year they are able to captivate audiences around the globe through content franchises.
(In fact, my fascination with Disney lead me to work for them when I
was in my early 20s.)
What Disney does really well is build
content franchises and then leverage them across all of its different
platforms. Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, started with a ride
but has become three successful movies, plus video games and more. High
School Musical started with a single Disney Channel film. Now there are two
sequels, albums, merchandise and more. It's contributing millions in revenues.
The
Disney approach to content franchises is formulaic: 1) innovate/lead, 2) find your hits, 3) leverage
them across all your channels and 4) be choosy. The last one is key.
Forbes explains how CEO Bob Iger lands on which franchises they build (Cars, for example) and those they forgo (Ratatouille).
In my case, over the last two years my big content franchise was The
Attention Crash. I have written many blog posts on the subject,
Twittered about it extensively and curated links on
Delicious. Of course, I have also featured it front and center in speaking engagements and in many media interviews. If you Google it, I own "the shelf" around this concept.
Success here is simple. I followed the Disney model. I built a content franchise and leveraged it across every community and channel I participate in, including traditional ones like PR and speaking. Anyone can emulate this approach - including brands that want to maximize their use of social media.
I am now in the process of planning my content franchises for 2009. I
am becoming more strategic in how I align these with my role at
Edelman, my expertise and what I think readers and Google searchers want. I am
thinking about having a few of these next year instead of just one.
Other influencers do the same. Dave Armano is Mr Infographic. Peter Kim is the de facto curator of social media marketing examples. Chris Brogan? He knows personal branding and even wrote an ebook on it. If you think this is happenstance, think again. It's strategic branding.
Finally, if you're a Disney fan and you're curious about the image on top, check out this clever video. It connects my personal brand with Disney's and it's easy to create your own and share them too!
Recently I outlined my conviction that five years from now all media will either be completely digital or well on its way to becoming intangible. Two weeks later, the trend has accelerated.
Many are questioning the future of major newspapers which, faced with declining print ad revenues, are putting themselves up for sale. Meanwhile, the Amazon Kindle is sold out until February and book publishers like Random House are racing to embrace the iPhone as the next big growth market.
However, Google is quietly throwing the media a major lifeline by digitizing old physical media. This is going to unlock the hidden value of archived content and make the media's transition from tangible to digital much easier to monetize.
For example, consider three recent moves. Google Book Search this week started to incorporate a vast print magazine archive, including back issues of New York Magazine. Google News likewise recently digitized old newspapers and Google Image Search has done the same in bringing the complete Life Magazine photo database online
So media companies are increasingly partnering with Google to bring their entire back catalog of content online. Right now only Google Book Search's magazine pages are monetized with sponsored links. But you can bet that Google will slowly and surely layer contextual search ads on top of all of these databases, create others and split the revenues with the content owners
Such a move will unlock the huge hidden value in all of this content. It will offer advertisers all kinds of new opportunities to reach consumers through pay-per-click venues. However, most importantly, it will throw publishers a huge lifeline as they make the transition from atoms to bits. Keep an eye on this space.
Young Urban Professional