This excerpt from Your Godly Brand relates how the original idea for the book was inspired:
In Fall 2011, my daughter’s school, Valley Christian Middle School in Bellflower, California, instituted iPads to replace textbooks ̵̵and promote new methods of interactive learning. The iPads did enhance the middle schoolers’ education. But they also broadened the students’ awareness and use of social media.
The following spring semester, the school was forced to take disciplinary action against a couple dozen students over a social media post on Instagram that made their 7th-grade teacher look bad. One 7th grader made the post. Another 25 or so kids liked or commented on the post. The specific details of the post and disciplinary action are less relevant than the fact that the incident reminded the entire middle school community—from teachers to students to their parents—about the potentially harmful effects of social media and the Internet when either medium is mis-used.
Social media’s potential impact on people’s feelings was nothing new. The concept of cyberbullying and sexting, along with their long-term effects, had been well publicized. As a marketing professional, I had represented a mobile app developer that released an app specifically meant to prevent these things.
After the school disciplined the students, the IT staff conducted an informational session for parents to better understand what it was doing about the students’ use of social media on those iPads. During the session, several different app and network-filtering technologies were discussed to limit students’ accessibility to social media and other offensive content on the Internet.
As I listened to the presentation, I realized that trying to employ technology as a means to limit and manage a teenager’s social media use was fraught with pitfalls and—as King Solomon may have described it—a chasing of the wind. See, one can never underestimate a teenager’s ability to circumvent technology meant to prevent him or her from doing something.
It dawned on me that the only way to make an impact on teenagers was to appeal to their reputation. What our middle schoolers seemed to need was training in reputation management and—more broadly—personal branding.
If middle schoolers defined their brand, then understood that their actions or inactions affected it, including improper social media posts and online activities, perhaps they would self-monitor and self-correct their behavior, even if just by a tiny bit. Just as major brands such as Coca-Cola or Google or Apple nurture and defend their brand, teens would care at some level about staying true to their core brand attributes. Now, trying to get teenagers to think about the effects of branding may seem like folly. But some may take it seriously enough to consider their actions and their long-term consequences.
To be clear, good branding is not just for middle schoolers. The fundamental principles of branding and reinforcing one’s brand are applicable to people of all ages.
