Some might think I’m a little “dark.”
I like reading books that make me cry, I’m often attracted to weird stuff, and my favorite show is a tie between Lockup, Hard Time, and Gangland.
But I can top even that; I often wonder how people will refer to me after I die. I wonder what my tagline will be, what people will put in between my commas.
To you I might be Molli Megasko, account executive and guest blogger, but is that how I want to be defined given five words or less?
I’m living, and therefore in the process of defining something great for myself. Do you ever wonder what your personal tagline is? Is it something that you think about every day? Do you even know how you want to be defined? Maybe you don’t like to be “categorized.” Like any corporate brand, you will be perceived, and subsequently “tagged,” whether you like it or not. Why not take some control over it?
As PR and marketing professionals, we build elevator pitches that describe who our clients are, and tie them into their mission statement to ensure they are being properly branded. So it stands to reason, that we should do this for ourselves.
- Develop a personal mission statement: I had a co-worker at Arment Dietrich who worked with us using the Franklin Covey books and website. It is a great place to start and offers some ideas for fresh brainstorming.
- Build an elevator pitch: According to BusinessWeek, the elevator pitch is “named because it should last no longer than the average elevator ride.” In New York City, that could be a good 10 minutes, but for the sake of this conversation, let’s try and describe our pitch in less than 60 seconds.
- Fill in your commas: Now that we have our goals in the form of a mission statement and an elevator pitch for describing who we are trying to be, it’s time to narrow that down and fill in the commas. Here are some of my favorites according to Wikipedia.
- Steve Jobs, business magnate and inventor.
- Maya Angelou, America’s most visible black female autobiographer.
- Martin Scorsese, film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian.
These all describe the person, yet at the same time give them something to live up to. (I’d be pretty proud to have any of those taglines next to my names.)
What’s your tagline?