Building Your Teen’s Brand
Your teen is trying to discover who they are. They’re trying to discover who they want to be and what they want to do with their lives. Along the way they will make errors and learn from these errors and hopefully improve themselves. As they perfect who they are they will develop their brand. Like a Coke or Gap, your teen’s brand will determine who they are and who others can expect them to be.
Your teen will never realize they’re doing this, but when they tell you, “I’m not that type of person.” This is in fact what they’re telling you about, their brand. People can expect they’re someone who would not cheat, not be late or not get into a fight. This is part of who they are. This is a consistent part of their brand.
They key thing about developing a brand is that everything your teen does needs to be consistent with that brand. Everything they support, they do, they associate their name with is something that supports that brand. Like Oprah with her TV show, the production company that supports projects like “Precious” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” The Angel Network that supports community projects, The Magazine, “O” or the satellite radio station Oprah Radio. There is a continuous theme to all of the projects, Live Your Best Life. They all support each other’s cause and even if you have never listened to her radio show or read her magazine, you should have an idea of what to expect before you read it. This is the same with your teen. When your teen is consistent about the message they put out about their morals, work ethic, the friends they have or activity they engage in, people can guess what that might be before they say it or even explain it.
If your teen realizes the importance of their brand, the fragility of their brand. They understand they should take care of it and this means thinking twice about posting a drunken picture of them holding a beer or appearing scantily dressed on a social network site. If this is not your brand, then common sense dictates that it is not posted. It simply isn’t consistent with the message your teen is putting out there about them.
A great exercise is to ask your teen about their favorite celebrity or another peer in school about their brand. Ask what steps they think the person goes through to support the negative or positive aspects of their brand. Discuss how that might influence choices the person makes e.g. one charity vs another. Ask your teen what they do and don’t like about the person’s brand e.g. not polite to fans. Ask how their brand differs from this e.g. I don’t haze incoming freshman. These are clever ways to get your teen talking and more importantly thinking about their brand.
Brands like Coke, Gap, or Johnson & Johnson work very hard for years to build a brand and they understand it can take moments to shatter it. However, if you have built the brand well and on good principles a brand can survive even a hard blow. What’s your teen’s brand about?
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