Simple Example of Branding: Ethics & Enron

I’m doing a little research on business ethics, and I type “understanding business ethics” into Google.  Look at the unfortunate results:

enron_ethics

Isn’t that sad?  We all know that Enron is not the example of good or positive ethics.  It’s THE example of ethics-gone-wrong.

Enron will forever be the posterchild of bad ethics.  How to ruin tens of thousands of lives, careers, retirements, families, etc.

This is called branding, and it’s very powerful.

I guarantee that YOU have a brand.  The people you’ve worked with have brands.  You might have even contributed to their branding!

Is your brand positive?  Is it neutral?  Is it negative?

Instead of just having a brand applied to you, you can strategically work on your branding!  Personal branding is not a fad.  It was even around before the phrase was (think: reputation, or reputation management).  It’s not going anywhere.  How others perceive us can play a huge role in our career success.

What are you doing to have the brand you want, so you don’t end up being associated with something horrible (or even something not as positive as you want), like the example above?

If you are interested in this, check out the Developing a Killer Personal Brand course on Pluralsight, which you can access for free (here’s how).