The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

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The brand lifecycle

The May 28 2007 issue of Fortune features an interview with Robert Polet, CEO of Gucci. Polet is an interesting case in personal branding. As former head of Unilever Foods, his appointment at Gucci raised a few eyebrows.

Are you a POWER brand?

A great personal brand has five key qualities:

1. it is built on your own personal attributes, which gives you permission to be yourself at all times
2. it clearly communicates your offering, so other people can pass the message on simply
3. it reflects your own world view, so that you know that every day you are working the way you want to, and transforming the world into the kind of place you want it to be
4. it is clearly and consistently expressed in whatever medium, through your own actions, and in the fabric of your professional life
5. it is supported by a network of professional relationships with people who can get you in front of the right people at the right time

In future posts I'll be exploring each of these five factors in more depth, but for now I've developed a quiz to assess the POWER of your personal brand. Click here to take the quiz.

Nine Qualities of a Leader

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been sorting out my home office. In an old pile of magazines I found an early issue of Fast Company, with an article on leadeship which examined FedEx's nine-point system for appraising it's leaders.

What does the web say about you?

I recently spent a few days in Toronto, Canada. While I was there, one news story in particular caught my eye.