Personal Branding, Logo and Web-Design
Business Challenge:
Eleni Gage is an author, writing instructor, and journalist who has written for many well-known publications – including Travel & Leisure, People, Elle, and Real Simple. But she did not have a strong, cohesive brand presence; she couldn’t see how her creative writing, teaching, and magazine work intersected, nor could she define what made her different from other writers.
Her website was outdated, a major liability in the fields of journalism and publishing, both of which are increasingly moving online. And because her work was entirely for print publications, Eleni had never considered blogging as a way of consolidating her brand message, gaining visibility, and building her brand as a writer. Now it was crunch time: Eleni’s first novel, Other Waters, was due to hit the stands in early 2012, and she wanted to publicize its launch as much as possible.
Our challenge was to create a cohesive message in terms of her brand, then spread that message, building awareness of Eleni’s work in advance of the publication of her novel.
Our Solution:
We delved into a thorough 12-week personal branding program to uncover Eleni’s strengths and differentiators as a writer and identified the qualities that made her work unique–among them humor, accessibility, and a fascination with how we live today. Then we created a blog – TheLiminalStage.com – that allowed her to start building an online community.
Next came a new branded website and logo that reflected Eleni’s Greek heritage, and her interest in what she calls “urban anthropology” (her B.A. is in Folklore and Mythology). On her site, the blue tones represent the Mediterranean and Aegean seas that surround Greece, and the red reflects Eleni’s passion and warmth. The mosaic, a common medium in Greek art, iconography, and architecture, speaks to Eleni’s strong interest in spirituality, and the pomegranate, a strong symbol in many faiths represents fertility, everlasting life and resurrection. In fact, the pomegranate is a recurring image in both of Eleni’s books, North of Ithaka and Other Waters.
Once all of these elements were in place, Eleni was ready to use the power of social media marketing to grow and engage a community of readers that can also translate to sales for her upcoming book release.
Results:
Eleni now has a strong online brand, communicating a consistent and clear image, as well as a central headquarters: her website is a branded location to showcase all of her writing, from academic to journalistic to creative.
It is now very easy for editors, and publishers to see the scope of her work and contact her. In addition, readers—both existing fans and potential new ones–can get information about her books and see where to buy or pre-order them, see a list of her upcoming events and readings, and even invite her to “attend” their book club meetings via Skype. Her strong brand, attractive online presence, and use of social media have given her a new perspective and a cohesive brand, as well as the ability to reach more editors, colleagues and readers than she ever could have before.
Our students were hesitant to work on discovering and defining their personal brands given the cultural bias of self-promotion from their home countries. William Arruda and Rachel Gogos quickly put the group at ease by defining that personal branding is not about self promotion, but is about being authentic, about better understanding yourself and making sure you're consistent in how you project yourself to others in person, on paper and via the web. The personal branding workshop was exactly what our students needed to give them that extra edge after graduating. William and Rachel worked closely with us to help adapt the program to our busy students' schedules and were top notch in their delivery. Since then, I've recommended this program to other departments within Harvard and I would absolutely hire them again.
