I was recently asked to speak to a group of young women as a part of a women’s professional development network series and selected the topic on “Developing Your Personal Brand.”
I am passionate about this topic and often think about the value of a brand as it relates to personal, professional, not for profit, or corporate. In a corporate or business context, valuations are oftentimes predicated upon bricks and mortar, products, services, and human capital, and yet, there is inherent value and economics as representation of a brand done right.
Over the past year, I have been extended the opportunity to help shape, create a brand, deploy, and promote BrokerTech Ventures, a company co-founded by Holmes Murphy and eight other super-regional brokerage firms.
The genesis of BrokerTech Ventures began with a white board and dry erase markers, and ultimately evolved into a logo mark, mission statement, operational tower models, messaging templates, and more. We have been working tirelessly to stand the BrokerTech Ventures brand upright and to support the brand with key activities and milestones.
What Makes a Company Brand?
Organizations, such as Interbrand, offer three key criteria as it relates to brand valuation strategies:
- financial performance
- the role a brand plays in purchasing decisions
- brand’s competitive strength
Other more subjective measures use a “which would you choose” model. As in, if I offered you two options of a leading cola soft drink, which would you select and why? This may seem trivial, but if you think about it, you make intentional choices every day around the brands you elect to surround yourself with and by.
In the world of insurance, you don’t often hear or see brands with street appeal, sexiness, or sizzle. Perhaps that is due to the fact that by and large our industry has been lagging in terms of an openness to innovation and exploration.
On the spectrum of both brand equity and innovation, on one end you have Amazon, Google, and Apple…and on the far opposite end, you’ll find insurance companies and our brands.
Keeping Brand and Purpose Top of Mind within BrokerTech Ventures
As we map out BrokerTech Ventures and our business model, you can believe we are keeping our brand, its value, and the integrity of the brand at the forefront of our efforts.
We believe that by embracing innovation and the unknowns, we can continue to add to our brand value in terms of the brokers we align with, insurance firms we bring in to the fold, the startups and technologies we engage with, and by channeling the voice of the customer.
As BrokerTech Ventures is positioned as the convener of innovation, ideation, and communication for the broker ecosystem on a global scale, we believe our brand can become the voice for broker-centric innovation and change the mentality of our industry…one “like” at a time.
