My first YouTube video in Hungarian (ten seconds)
This is me in front of the Chain Bridge in Budapest, promoting Media Hungary in Hungarian. I hope I’m saying what they told me I was saying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnKAF-0dHrA
On the Web, all cows are black
Here is the press release (in English and Hungarian) for my forthcoming talk at Media Hungary:
John Purkiss, Co-Author of Énmárka
The title of John Purkiss’ talk is Everyone’s Equal on the Web. It will be accompanied by a roundtable discussion: On the Web, All Cows are Black.
Personal branding has become a hot topic. Most of us change job or start a business more often than our parents did. Many of us move from one country to another. A strong personal brand will carry you through these changes. People will want to work with you at each new stage of your career. Online social networking has accelerated this trend. Now anyone can build a global, personal brand.
However, content is king. If you want to build a valuable following, you must add value for your followers. Why should they spend time following you? Before you start using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, it is best to be clear about what you will say and how you will say it.
John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee are the co-authors of Brand You – Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula. It has just been published in Hungarian by HVG Könyvek. John is an executive search consultant or headhunter. David is a business psychologist with a marketing background. They wrote Énmárka to help people market themselves more effectively.
You have to know yourself before you can sell yourself. For this reason John and David have developed a model using a building as a metaphor. First of all you dig a big hole and discover your talents, which are the bedrock of your brand. You can discover them but you cannot change them. Then it is time to identify your values, which are the foundation on which your brand is built. They are below the surface – almost invisible. However, they determine the size and shape of the building.
Then there is the question of your purpose. People want to know what a building is for. Likewise, they want to know what you could do for them. Once you have answered these three questions you are in a position to build a strong brand identity. John and David show you how to do so using Jungian archetypes. Are you going to evoke the Hero or the Magician, the Ruler or the Jester, for example? Your choice of archetype will shape everything you do to build your brand.
John Purkiss has worked in executive search since 1997. He became a partner with Heidrick & Struggles prior to co-founding Purkiss & Company. He and his colleagues recruit chief executives, finance directors and chairmen, mainly in leisure, the media, technology and financial services. John studied economics at Cambridge University and has an MBA from INSEAD. He is the co-author of How to be Headhunted, Ken Purkiss – 50 Photos and Brand You.
John will be pleased to meet journalists during Media Hungary. You can reach him on +447852998537, +442075891940 or at john@purkiss-company.com.
www.johnpurkiss.com www.linkedin.com/in/johnpurkiss www.facebook.com/johnpurkiss www.johnpurkissblog.wordpress.com
John Purkiss előadásának címe: A neten mindenki egyenlő. Az előadást egy kerekasztal-beszélgetés követi: A neten minden tehén fekete.
A személyes márkaépítés népszerű téma lett. Legtöbbünk gyakrabban vált munkahelyet vagy indít vállalkozást, mint apáink tették. Sokan átköltözünk más országokba. Az erős személyes márka átsegítheti az embert az ilyen váltásokon. Az emberek szívesen dolgoznak együtt a karrier különböző új fázisaiban. Az online közösségi hálózatépítés csak felgyorsította ezt a trendet. Ma már bárki építhet globális személyes márkát.
A tartalom azonban “a király”. Ha értékes követőket szeretne gyűjteni magának, értéket kell biztosítania követői számára. Miért szánnának időt az Ön követésére? A Facebook, LinkedIn vagy Twitter használata előtt tisztázza magában, mit szeretne mondani, és hogyan.
John Purkiss és David Royston-Lee a Brand You – Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula társszerzői. Magyar nyelven most jelent meg a HVG Könyvek sorozatban. John a Headhunter vezető kutatási tanácsadója. David üzleti pszichológus marketing szaktudással. Az Énmárka című könyvük segíthet bárkinek saját maga sikeresebb eladásában.
Mielőtt eladná magát, meg kell ismernie önmagát. Ezért John és David kidolgozott egy modellt, amelyben egy épületet használnak metaforaként. Először az ember ás egy nagy gödröt, és felfedezi saját tehetségét, amelyek a márka kőalapját jelentik. Ezek megismerhetők, de nem változtathatók meg. Ezután azonosítja az értékeit, amelyek az épület alapját jelentik, amelyre az épület kerül. Ezek a felszín alatt vannak – majdnem láthatatlanul. Azonban meghatározzák az épület méretét és alakját.
Ezután jön a cél kérdése. Az emberek szeretnék tudni, hogy milyen célból készült az épület. Azt is szeretnék tudni, mi tehetne Ön értük. Miután válaszolt erre a három kérdésre, felkészült arra, hogy erős márkaazonosságot építsen magának. John és David megmutatják, hogyan lehetséges ez Jung archaeotípusainak segítségével. Hős lesz, Varázsló, Irányító vagy esetleg Tréfacsináló? Az archaeotípus kiválasztása teljes egészében befolyásolja a márkaépítés további lépéseit.
John Purkiss 1997 óta végez vezetői kutatásokat. A Heidrick & Struggles partnereként dolgozott a Purkiss & Company megalapítása előtt. Kollégáival együtt felsővezetőkkel, pénzügyi igazgatókkal és elnökökkel foglalkoznak, főleg a szórakoztatóiparban, a médiában, a műszaki és pénzügyi szolgáltatások terén. John gazdaságtant tanult a Cambridge-i Egyetemen. Társszerzője a How to be Headhunted, Ken Purkiss – 50 Photos és a Brand You műveknek.
John örömmel találkozik az újságírókkal a Media Hungary-n. john@purkiss-company.com.
Interjú kérés: media@mediahungaria.hu
Hero Wanted – PS
PS You can download a free explanation of archetypes at http://brandyou.info. It is taken from chapter 8 of Brand You – Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula.
Hero Wanted – how to win elections
Although the UK general election is only weeks away, there is no clear favourite among the candidates for Prime Minister. No one has appealed strongly enough to voters.
Archetypes help to explain what is going on. The Greek root of the word archetype means first-moulded. If you have watched Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, you will have seen archetypes at work. Likewise in Shakespeare and classical literature. We respond to them, whether or not we are aware of them.
In Brand You* we used the example of Barack Obama to illustrate how politicians can win an election by evoking one or two archetypes strongly and consistently. In his case it was the Ordinary Guy and the Hero. He comes from a broken home and spent many years campaigning on the south side of Chicago. Hence many people see the Ordinary Guy in him and relate to him strongly. In the run-up to the presidential election in 2008, Obama emerged as the candidate who would save the USA from financial chaos and provide health insurance for all. Very Heroic. The worse the mess, the more popular he became. The result was a stunning victory.
Now fast forward to the UK general election, due in May 2010. These are the archetypes I see in the candidates for Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. I would be very interested to hear other people’s views:
Gordon Brown: the Ruler
Vince Cable: the Sage
David Cameron: the Ruler
Nick Clegg: the Innocent
Alistair Darling: the Ruler
George Osborne: the Innocent
Essentially, the candidates for the top jobs either want to run the country or have lofty ideas about how it should be run. Not a Hero in sight, at a time when the electorate is deeply concerned about a wide range of economic, social and environmental issues. They want a Hero who will ride to the rescue, not just someone who is keen to Rule. If one of the three main parties could provide Heroic leadership, I’m sure it would attract lots more votes.
* Published by Artesian. http://brandyou.info
Brand You (Énmárka) in Budapest, Hungary
I took this photo outside the Sofitel, where we held the seminar.
Last week I spent a couple of days in Budapest helping to launch Énmárka – the Hungarian edition of Brand You. I enjoy going to Hungary, having first visited the country in the 1980s when it was a soft option among Russian soldiers who were stationed all over Eastern Europe. The Danube between Buda and Pest always strikes me as having a holiday atmosphere, rather like the seaside. There are flags and pleasure boats, and loud cheers emanating from the floating restaurants.
The Hungarians seem very open to new ideas. Maybe it’s because there are only 10 million of them in the country itself, with another four million or so living as minorities nearby. When I was in Budapest four years ago I visited Corvinus University, where I gave a talk on How to be Headhunted – the subject of our first book – to the MBA students. I was reading about Jungian archetypes at the time, and their application to personal marketing, so I threw that topic into the seminar too. They picked up on it right away.
In the meantime David Royston-Lee and I have written Brand You, whose subtitle is Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula. It was published in the UK a year ago. My Hungarian friend Andrea von Finckenstein liked it enough to show it to HVG, one of Hungary’s leading business publishers, who swiftly said yes and produced our first translation. Their cover design has attracted a lot of interest by evoking Michael Jackson, surely one of the strongest personal brands of recent times.
On my first night in Budapest I gave a short talk at IvyPlus, hosted by Peter Zaboji and Imre Hild. It was a gentle introduction to speaking to a Hungarian audience, since there were only 35 people who all spoke English, having lived and studied abroad. The event the following day was more demanding – a four-hour seminar organised by HVG at the Sofitel, which overlooks the Danube. Around 65 people attended. We worked our way through the 12 main exercises in Brand You, with some Powerpoint slides in Hungarian and simultaneous translation for those who prefer to listen in their native language. My Hungarian vocabulary stretches to around 20 words, so I can’t always tell which slide I am looking at and whether it matches the English-language version on paper in front of me. It was good fun though and we had some lively discussions.
The latest experiment was to ask members of the audience to work in groups to draft each person’s three-second statement. It’s what you say to someone you have never met before when they ask “So what do you do?” I asked everyone to read theirs out to the whole room. Then everyone voted for the statement they found most memorable. The winner was a man who had founded a church and was working on a project in hydrothermal power.
It looks as though there will be further opportunities in Eastern Europe. I have been invited to speak on personal branding and the internet at Media Hungary in May. One of the many Hungarians who grew up in Romania is helping us explore the possibility of publishing Brand You in that country too. I wanted to reach a large international audience, but I never imagined it would start along the Danube.
Welcome to my blog
I’m an executive search consultant – or ‘headhunter’ – and I write books. The best-known are ‘How to be Headhunted’ and ‘Brand You – Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula’. Brand You is one of the best-selling books in its category and has just been translated into Hungarian.
John Purkiss 