Simon Middleton
What's Your Brand?
(working title)
Simon Middleton
UK & Commonwealth rights: Hay House
UK publication: Spring 2012
All other rights available
We are surrounded today by brands. Brands of every shape, size and kind, from clothing brands to car brands to coffee shops, TV channels, supermarkets, food brands, banks, magazines, celebrities, and much more.
Brand is the vehicle by which 21st century business all over the world goes to market. We’re comfortable with brands and we intuitively understand how to respond to them, yet very few individuals have realised the power and potential of treating themselves as a brand.
This book, from Simon Middleton, known by leading UK businesses as The Brand Strategy Guru, is designed to reveal the secrets of successful branding known and used everyday by the world’s favourite companies and show how it can be applied to you as an individual. This is a radically different approach to career, business and personal development by a highly-experienced and authoritative writer. It has strong appeal to a wide range of readers, including young, ambitious, career-minded people starting out in work, business and life, successful professionals and early-years career planners wanting to advance rapidly, mature professionals wanting to make a career-change or substantial leap upwards and readers of any age looking for a rational, real-world approach to changing and improving life circumstances
What's Your Brand? is an antidote to all the mystical, magic-universe, make-a-wish books on the market. And it is a refreshing alternative to books that demand habit-changing and brain ‘reprogramming’.
Instead, What's Your Brand? uses the down-to-earth real-world approach of successful business. With a truly international perspective this book is packed with examples from world famous brands as well as lesser known success stories from emerging economies.
All these brands know and use the secret rules of branding to get us to become interested in them, to learn to love them, to buy their goods and services, and even to become advocates for them – singing their praises to our friends and families. Those secret rules of branding are not only powerful, they are also transferable to you as an individual. Treating yourself as a brand can help you build your career opportunities, help you to make more effective life decisions, guide you through challenging circumstances, improve your confidence and communication, and enhance your relationships.
Learning the rules of branding success isn’t difficult, and it’s not about pretending to be something that you’re not. It’s about finding the authentic and compelling elements which make you different and appealing as a ‘personal brand’ and then using them effectively. This isn’t a book about changing superficial elements of appearance. It's a book about developing a deep and powerful brand presence which could, literally, change every aspect of your life.
Simon Middleton is the author of Build A Brand In 30 Days (Capstone 2010), What You Need to Know About Marketing (Capstone 2012) and founder of specialist consultancy Brand Strategy Guru. Simon has advised some of the best known marketing-led organisations including Aviva, Barclays, British Airways, Merial and Pret A Manger. He is Brand and Marketing Director of lifestyle nutrition company All About Weight and Chief Executive of visionary tourism business Norfolk Leisure.
Simon is a regular commentator in international media, and appears in Virgin 1’s series Seaside’s Last Resort as expert brand advisor to Duncan Bannatyne.
He is Brand Leadership Fellow at the University of Anglia's prestigious Norwich
Business School.
www.brandstrategyguru.com
