So, what’s the best way to celebrate the 4th of July?

(Which it is here in the US == > our national reverie commemorating our overthrow of our British colonial oppressors.)
How about lauding one of the greatest British Invasions rock + roll bands of all-time!
The British Invasion, for those un-school in the concept, is when the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks, among many others, brought American blues and early rock + roll back to this country’s fair shores in the mid-1960s.
America had invented rokd + roll. But somehow, we’d forgotten all about this beautifully raucous musical art form.
In the meantime, however, legions of British teens couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Packs of Muddy Waters and Buddy Holly obsessed adolescent lads started bands of their own. And with several rising to international superstar status, those wiley Brits eventually resold us our own culture.
Anyway, this is a VERY long-winded intro on the path to asking…
Did you see that Mick Jagger (revered lead singer of the Rolling Stones) warm-up video that went viral a few weeks back?
It was Mick in a dance studio, ballet bar and all, gettin’ down. The guy, at 70+, expertly throwin’ moves bold enough to make 40-year-olds GREEN with envy!
Meanwhile, ole’ (yet spry) Mick shakin’ his money-maker cause a thought to bloom in my head about branding…
With nearly 60 years in the rock + roll game — the Stones are a capital B-BRAND.
All the multi-platinum records. All the hit singles. All the shows played and road miles logged touring the world. And all the antics, much of which, purposefully or not, captured in the press.
If you buy a Stones record or ticket to one of their shows, you KNOW what you’re gonna get: Rock + Roll Nirvana.
In other words, the brand they’ve built over the last 60 years does the “heavy lifting” — of value recognition and expectation-setting — FOR THEM.
And that’s what great branding does. When prospects reach out to you — thanks to whatever means through which they happened to find you — they already KNOW you.
These would-be clients may still have questions and seek clarification and engage in (potentially fierce) negotiations and the like. But you don’t have to sell them on “who you are” or “what you do” or why it “matters.”
Because the brand you’ve built has already done that FOR YOU.
So, I recommend you spend some of your downtime on this national holiday thinking about your brand.
Ask yourself:
== > What is my brand?
== > Am I working toward building that brand?
== > And if so, how well am I doing?
Answer these questions well enough, and you’ll find yourself on the path to building a Rolling Stones sized BRAND!
In the meantime, drop by my LinkedIn page and share the results you glean from the quiz listed above — I’d love to hear your conclusions!