Get People to Resonate with Your CEO

A faceless brand is less definitive than one which has a recognizable face attached to it. When you choose to make your CEO the face of your corporate brand, you have multiple benefits and some drawbacks. In today’s highly competitive markets - national and international - you need to ensure that your brand has the kind of pull to get ahead. In a constantly fluctuating market, you need to ensure that you are forever ahead of the upward curve. Add to Your CEO’s Star Value Customer loyalty will depend on their personal identification with your brand. One way to create that personal identification is CEO personal branding. It becomes the differentiating factor when you integrate the CEO’s brand with the company’s public image, as both stand to benefit - the company and the CEO. If yours is a public limited company (PLC); then you would be able to literally capitalize on it. This means that you must curate what information becomes public, and how. Brands are built with savvy information management. It is not necessary for either the CEO or the organization to come across as pure as driven snow. It is more important for there to be a synergy between your company image, and how you manage your CEO’s personal branding. Each should complement and reinforce the other. Don’t Ignore The Underlying Risk: When your company’s brand is too closely interwoven with your CEO’s persona, your stock could take a hit when you part ways- which is certain to occur sooner or later - as happened to Apple when Steve Jobs went off. Further, if there is any perceived negativity about a CEO, it tends to rub off on the company’s image. Harness the Inherent Power of the CEO’s Brand It is important for you to understand that the CEO impacts not just the financial aspects of the company such as its financial performance, profits, and stock returns; but also the non-financial aspects such as job application, and retention. You can create a direct bond with your investors and customers through your CEO. This makes CEO reputation management a more delicate operation than is easily perceived. While such reputation management, especially online reputation management is best left to the experts; you should also periodically review the impact on the ground. Begin from within the organization to check what kind of goodwill the company enjoys amongst its employees. If you find that more than five percent are simply biding their time till when they can move on; then it means you have your work cut out for yourself.