ALWAYS GET THE WARRANTY – Seagate
INVIGORATING THE TIRED BUSINESS PORTRAIT TROPES
“Your image is your identity.”
Impressed with my ultra-modern take on business yet? I am sure some version of this nonsense has been said at numerous business pitches and shareholder meetings to various ends. The statement is very true though at its basest meaning.
Think of all the work that goes into something as simple as a logo. It’s like analyzing the potential response of the subconscious human mind in order to create a new hieroglyphic symbol. “Careful not to make the name too shiny or people will think we’re over-priced! People trust brown, but not if it’s TOO brown. That letter is too sharp!”
It all sounds like something out of sketch comedy or that scene in American Psycho where the Wall Street yuppies covet each others’ business cards, but it’s true. It’s the same way that American and
British companies use red, white, and blue colors in their branding. There are so many ways to engage the subconscious mind to gain consumer trust. But what happens when you are dealing with actual people and how their image comes across?
In the 80’s, Lee Iacocca boldly changed the course for business leaders when he made himself the commercial face of the Chrysler brand. Leaning on the early successes of his tenure and his reputation for turning Ford Motor Company around in the late 70’s, it was a smart move that capitalized and then amplified Iacocca’s unique celebrity. It cannot be ignored that the 80’s giving us the CEO/pioneer-of- business turned broadcast celebrity is the most 80’s thing ever. Donald Trump exploited that model to get all the way to the White House, after all.
Prophetically, another brand management innovation that staked its claim in 1984 was that dark little dystopian gem from a new company that would eventually come to be known as Apple. It is ironic that a company that pulled a great deal of the consumer market into to the modern internet era in the early 2000’s based on a cult of personality started with a bold brand statement about non-conformity twenty years earlier. But I digress.
Steve Jobs became the face of Apple for many reasons, but the most clever stroke was how his image – minimalistic, sleek, dressed in black - mimicked the sleek minimalist aesthetic of Jony Ive’s iPhone design. The symbiosis is complete even down to the sleek minimal lower case “i” being the product name for all subsequent Apple products. Even after Steve Jobs’ passing, new CEO Tim Cook continues this visual identity. I am sure it is no mere coincidence that the Apple CEO “costume” is a dark shirt and frameless glasses...in front of a large screen no less, a call-back to the now iconic Orwellian commercial that put the company on the map.
My point is simple: None of this is accidental. The idea of linking brand image to the image of those behind the brand is nothing new. So why aren’t you taking advantage of that in your own business image? If you saw my article on collaboration, you know that I treat all of my work the same with regard to finding the story or what we want to “say”. Too often though when I am meeting with the marketing team or the managers who make decision about corporate headshots (usually coinciding with a website revamp or a major anniversary), the first thing they show me when asked what they are looking for is the websites of their competition. Why on Earth would you do that? YOUR brand is YOUR people.
Why would you brand yourself the same as your competition? If you are an engineering firm, does your client work with graphs and schematics? No, they work with your engineers. If you’re a boutique salon, does your client collaborate with scissors? That sounds simplistic, but it’s true. YOU are as much of your brand as your product. You want your service to be unique, yet when it comes to your personal image, so many people want to recreate the same boring looks. “I want to generate power, so I’m gonna slightly smile... in my suit in front of this solid backdrop”. “I want to generate approachability, so I’m gonna smile ... in my suit in front of this solid backdrop”. And so on and so on.
One of the most effective things I learned early on is that there shouldn’t be rules in respect to genre. Many business portraits are closer to passport photos than anything that tells us about that person. The way you represent the diversity of your employees should reflect the diversity of what your business has to offer. Your business isn’t cookie-cutter, why should you be? Is taking every opportunity to give your potential customers insight into who you are as a company inconvenient? I’m so sorry. The fact that one would even have that response speaks volumes about how you view the possibilities of your business.
Many of the most successful emerging brands have used this trick alone with great results. Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Joanna Gaines are the masters of this. Define who you are to yourself. Define what you have to offer. Define how you represent that your potential customers by how you present your own image. Why not mix up the tired tropes? When it comes to something as simple as your business portrait, what you have is an oft-missed branding opportunity. So many times, people agonize over logos and color choices way more than what they show a prospective customer about who they are, while YOU are the most easily accessible asset you have!