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What Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes Teach us About Personal Branding

This week’s reading “How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea” immediately brought my mind to the tech industry. I have only worked in financial services, but as an outsider looking in, eccentricity, or the appearance of eccentricity, seems to be an increasingly popular “trait” used to signal visionary status. I see striking similarities between the Hollywood tendency to ascribe creativity to certain personality traits to the Silicon Valley tendency to view quality engineers, VCs and entrepreneurs as having certain intrinsic, easily observable characteristics that will predict future success. 

The role, image and personality that we expect of a founder or startup CEO differ from those of traditional industries. A Google Image search for “Tech CEO” and “Startup CEO” yield a few of the below results:

Compare those with just “CEO” or “corporate CEO”. 

Notice - less facial hair, fewer ties, and more years spent on Earth.

This brings me to Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of Theranos who was once hailed as “The Next Steve Jobs”. Perpetually dressed in all-black and exuding tremendous confidence, she took the world by storm and quickly  become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Unfortunately, her product was bullshit. While there are several parties culpable in this debacle, I cannot help but imagine if Elizabeth intentionally cultivated an air of mystique around herself, to pitch herself as a creative genius.

Virtually any investor I have spoken to, or watched on Shark Tank has mentioned that they really invest in “people” and not necessarily always in the business initially presented to them. But these investors don’t know these people. Like the rest of us, relying on heuristics to put people into neat categories that help us make quick decisions. In investing, however, as in Hollywood, this can be useful shortcut, or cataclysmic shortcoming.

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Defining Beauty, Locally and Globally

Do a Google Image search for “beautiful woman” and the results are fairly (sorry for the pun) homogeneous. The results for “handsome man” are equally homogeneous. In fact, for my “handsome man” search, it took until the 75th post to find a Black man, and it was posted on nairaland.com (considering that the Naira is the Nigerian currency, it is probably a reasonable assumption that this forum is frequented by Nigerians).

While I don’t think these events are the machinations of an evil genius, the narrow perceptions of beauty are troubling in an increasingly globalized and diverse world. Several studies have shown that being attractive makes life “easier”, whether seeking a romantic partner, applying for a job, or receiving the benefit of the doubt in nebulous situations. Thus, for societies to narrowly define attraction largely based on the color or fairness of one’s skin, we risk not only reducing individuals’ self-esteem, but potentially further disenfranchising large swaths of the population. 

Similarly intriguing to me is the fetishization of mixed-race individuals, across many races. It is difficult to pinpoint where exactly this phenomenon occurred, or to even prove that it exists, but the Millennial in me is convinced it started on Instagram. I’ve seen countless posts about “light-skinned” men, and the dialogue surrounding them consistently portrays them as individuals so attractive that they are consistently toying with their multitude of options for romantic interests. I can only wonder if a future Google search, in say, 3 years, for “handsome men” will yield more J. Coles and fewer Ryan Goslings. Time will tell.

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Cristal vs Jay-Z Burberry vs ?

Burberry’s retaking of brand control by renegotiating, terminating or purchasing distribution relationships was undoubtedly instrumental to its success. It helped it reestablish quality controls and re-position the brand in a way consistent with its heritage. More interesting to me, however, is how Burberry plans to balance its consistency with its iconic heritage with its rapidly increasing consumer base. This is a common problem with brands that go from niche-upscale to widely aspirational.

Consider the case of Louis Roederer, the makers of Cristal champagne. Louis Roederer is a 242-year old Champagne house, and one of the few that is and family-run. Jean-Claude Rouzaud, is a former manager of the winery and once said: “We make our champagne for that 3-5% of consumers who really know wine, and who take the time to taste it correctly.” (1)

In the United States, however, Cristal is heavily associated with hip-hop.  Jean-Claude’s son, Frédéric Rouzaud, was managing director of the winery when interviewed by The Economist in 2006. When asked if an association between Cristal and the hip-hop lifestyle could actually hurt the brand, he replied: “That's a good question, but what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.” (1)

Jay-Z took offense to this, and called for a boycott of the brand. While I am sure Cristal’s sales were and have been fine, it did prompt Jay-Z to purchase  Armand de Brignac (Ace of Spades) some years later. 

This stands in stark contrast to Louis Vuitton’s recent appointment of Virgil Abloh as its new Men’s Artistic Director. Although Virgil has deep roots in high fashion, I was personally surprised by the announcement given his strong links to streetwear and ties to hip hop artists.

Within the hip hop community and associated fashion circles, Burberry is certainly considered aspirational. To date, Burberry has yet to make a clear decision as it to how it will respond to potential changes in consumer tastes that make its products even more widely desirable. I am interested in seeing how it unfolds.

https://www.economist.com/node/6905921

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Preexisting Notions: How to Leverage Them to Build a Brand & Evolve a Brand

To me, Singapore Airlines initial greatest strength was its ability to position itself in a way that was consistent with what consumers were ready and likely to believe and understand. Aside from bursting into the scene with its iconic Singapore Girl campaign, it managed to leverage this same brand identity to exploit the British conception of the Far East as exotic and charming, to much success.

As the Singapore Airlines growth story developed, it is intriguing to see the other ways it extended its brand and highlighted some mental associations while limiting the ability of other potentially conflicting preconceptions to hamstring its operations. For example, to become the epitome of world-class service while operating from a Third World country is a remarkable achievement; I cannot readily produce similar successes.  

Too many firms get lost either:

a.) having no clear strategy, at all

b.) mistaking a grandiose vision for an actionable strategy

c.) declaring a strategy that sounds sexy, but is at odds with the true goals of the company

I suspect the investment in training and human capital development over the decades were most critical to connecting Singapore Airlines stated customer-centric strategy to its sustained lead in industry rankings as a top service provider. Importantly, SA’s emphasis on service tended to follow a behavioral science approach (e.g. rigorous timing requirements for baggage collection delivery times, going the extra mile even when force majeure events occur). Whether intentionally rooted in behavioral science approaches or not, these seemingly “little things” had a meaningful impact on SA’s value proposition and customer satisfaction ratings.

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$2 Wine? $200 Wine? What’s the difference?

I know nothing about wine. Well, that’s not true, I do know that I like wine, but beyond that, I’m clueless. The Concha y Toro article, coupled with the North Dakota wine experiment revealed to me that I am far from alone in this view. I consider my relative ignorance as an advantage; it makes me easy to please and enables my continuous experimentation. Besides “red” I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what wines I prefer, nor could I explain how pairings work. I take pride in the fact that I know how to open a bottle without getting any cork bits in the wine. Pathetic.

[Image from: https://www.bellanaija.com/2014/09/over-100-brands-1-venue-whet-your-taste-buds-at-the-wine-spirits-exhibition-in-lagos-this-october/]

Of particular interest to me is the role that country of origin had on the perceived quality of a wine. The question of how to “market a country” is one that is constantly on my mind. My brother and my brother-in-law have recently been researching a region in Nigeria that they believe is conducive to growing grapes, and they are interested in potentially setting up a vineyard and launching a Nigerian wine industry (excluding palm wine, which is well-developed). While France’s national identity is practically synonymous with fine wine, I would argue that Nigeria is in a significantly worse position than Chile was, even before the “Berlin Tasting”. 

How can a country overcome Western perceptions of danger, terrorism and fraudulent internet schemes, even if it were able to produce fantastic wines? To me, the endeavor seems almost fruitless (pun intended). Rather than try and replicate the Chilean strategy of educating consumers and raising the profile of Chilean winemaking globally, I would think the only way for my brother to be successful would be to focus on Africa and producing a “uniquely African” wine that sub-Saharan Africans can be proud of. Nigeria’s continental regional hegemony has positioned it as the leading source of music, film, fashion and culture in Western Africa and abroad, and this is an opportunity worth considering.