I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT BRANDING, AGAIN

The very first article I wrote to the Coaches egroup on branding was January 6, 2011. At that time, I titled the article—Selling and Being the Meta-Coach Brand. In recent Coaching Mastery trainings, groups have worked on the business project of “Branding yourself a Meta-Coach.” Some teams do really well, others seem to think that their job is to invent the brand, and others don’t seem to have a clue about how a Meta-Coach brands him or herself as a Meta-Coach. So I’ve been thinking about brands and about the Meta-Coach Brands.

Now when it comes to brands, brands are everywhere. Every car manufacture has a brand and sub-brands for the variety of cars, so with every soda pop, and restaurant, and hotel, and airline, and major corporation— if you start looking, you’ll see brands everywhere. So what is a brand? Take Apple’s brand— it is the picture of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Hmmm. Does that suggest anything? Coca Cola’s brand is the name itself, written in an old English script and in bright red. McDonald’s has the golden arches, and Nike has the phrase, “Just do it!”