Scott Robertson On How to Build Your Brand as an Executive and Why it Matters
Humor — You simply cannot take life very seriously. We are here for a blink and then gone and in that short amount of time, we work, we get things done and if we’re lucky, we laugh — a lot. I think humor is the ultimate stress reliever and sometimes in the business world, it’s more important than oxygen. To build your brand, you have to put a lot of different types of people at ease and the best way to do that is to find the humor in our lives and work and enjoy every bit of it.
In today’s competitive landscape, building a strong personal brand is essential for executives looking to establish their credibility, attract opportunities, and make a lasting impact in their industries. A well-defined brand can open doors, create trust, and help leaders connect more effectively with their audiences. But how do you build a brand as an executive, and why is it so crucial in today’s market? As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Robertson.
Scott Robertson has 30+ years of public relations and marketing communications experience with a wide range of consumer and business-to-business organizations including: the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), the NAMM Foundation, Hewlett Packard, Global Village Communications, Nextel Communications, Warner Music Group and the WG4 DVD-Audio Working Group, The DVD+RW Alliance (including HP, Dell, Philips, Sony, Ricoh, Mitsubishi Chemical and Yamaha) SyQuest Technologies, WorldGate Communications, Cox Communications, Cotelligent, Inc., Webradio.com, Dazzle Multimedia, QSound Labs and Smartship.com.
Some of his music/tech clients include: VocoPro, Taylor Guitars, BandLab Technologies, Fusion Guitars, VocoPro, the MIDI Manufacturers Assoc, ChordBuddy and Oaktone.
Robertson is the author of the book “Just Stop It: Your Survival Guide to Marketing Myths, Mistakes and Misgivings,” a Certified StoryBrand Guide and an accredited, active member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and holds a master of science in corporate communications degree from Lindenwood University as well as a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. (GO TIGERS!). Robertson also hosts the award-winning podcast “May the Best Brand Win” on Entertalk Media.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
Sure — I grew up in Missouri and from my teen years on, I really just wanted to be a rockstar like my heroes in Van Halen, Motley Crue and Poison. But my parents said they wouldn’t fund the rock star career path and talked me into going to Mizzou J-School to learn about advertising and PR. And the rest (as they say) is rock n roll history!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Sure, in my agency days, I used to staff press interviews for executives and one time, we were talking with a reporter from the Wall St. Journal and my client let it slip out that he actually believed in space aliens. This was a large public company and the reporter’s eyes got very wide as he continued to ask my client about it. In a moment that can only be described as pure panic, I faked a medical emergency to stop the interview and just get my client out of that room. The client didn’t see anything wrong with the admission, but I advised him that if he wanted to keep his CEO job, he needed to stay on message and forget about the damn aliens. And shockingly, I was able to persuade the reporter not to print what was said so the whole thing just kind of blew over. But know this, I am not above ending an interview — by any means necessary!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Yes, that would be my wife of nearly 32 years, Carey Lynn Robertson. She is my rock and every time things would get hard with clients or at work, she would be there encouraging me, telling me how amazing I am, how lucky my clients are to have me, etc. Carey has been (and will continue to be) such a great friend, spouse and life partner. The truth is everything good that’s ever happened in my life is the result of her — and I am grateful to God for bringing us together and keeping us together for the crazy journey.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There’s a lyric in a popular Christian song that goes “Follow Does Mean Be Perfect” and as a man of faith, that really rings true for me. The idea that “good” people don’t stumble and fall down is completely false and I think it’s extremely dangerous. We want to compare ourselves to others, but we rarely get a chance to see other aspects of those people’s lives so it can leave us disappointed in our lives, our failures, our mistakes. A lot of times, people won’t follow Christ because they believe they have to be “good” or “perfect” to do so. This isn’t true. Churches are more like hospitals for the broken rather than country clubs for the good. I try to remember that and stay focused on doing my best, even with the many mistakes along the way.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- Adaptability — When I graduated from Mizzou with this amazing Journalism degree, the country was in a recession and there were no entry-level jobs which disappointed a good many of my classmates. But I was determined and got a job doing printing sales because I just wanted to work and knew that my education and training would be used in good time.
- Creativity — I have always been able to tap a deep reservoir of creativity that comes from my music. This allows me to see business problems differently, try fun and weird things and take risks that most people wouldn’t take. Anyone who has ever worked with me knows my brain just works differently and that can be a VERY good thing.
- Sense of Humor — “Don’t take life too seriously, no one gets out alive” said Yogi Berra and I agree. I love to laugh and joke around and use that humor to minimize stress. It has saved me many times and creates a nice rapport with others in the workplace too.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Why does building a brand as an executive matter? What are some specific outcomes you’ve seen from taking time to build a strong brand?
Building a brand as an executive is a little bit different than building one for a company or product line because brands are essentially about transferring emotions, human emotions, from people to inanimate things. And when brands reach the top levels of affiliation, customers want to break off a piece of the brand and attach it to themselves telling the world “Yeah, I’m with ______ brand” So as an executive, you want this emotional transference but you’re already a person so you have an advantage. To me, it’s about adding value to others. The more you do this and the better job you do, the more that person will say “Yeah, I want the world to know I’m with Scott” (Although making t-shirts and hats that say that might not work out). Some specific outcomes I’ve seen from taking the time to build a strong brand are being memorable and creating some differentiation — standing apart from the thousands of people out there who do what you do.
One of the most important factors in building a brand is authenticity. Can you share a story of how using an authentic voice has been effective in connecting with others?
Yes, authenticity is very important and that’s a big word for being true to who you are — even when it’s tough to do that. I was working in a PR agency once and we were approached by a big client whose executives were facing public scrutiny because they cut corners in product manufacturing and it cost some consumers’ lives. I did not want to represent this brand because I felt the clients’ were not good people and their poor reputation (and honestly lack of remorse for what they allowed to happen) could run off on us. I refused to take on this business and have never lost a wink of sleep because of it. There will always be desperate fools who will take on business like this and exchange tiny checks for pieces of their souls. Not me. Not ever. And I really don’t care who is asking. I will always stay true to my own principles and work only for people who deserve the help. I don’t work with just anyone and again, I feel great about it.
Can you give an example of a strategic step an executive has used to differentiate themselves in a crowded market? What advice would you give to others looking to do the same?
Sure, I recently worked with a medical doctor and CEO of his own company, which is all about stress relief with a speciality in election-related stress. Our work included sharing his expertise with media outlets who needed it and the results were pretty amazing. Our efforts got him into more than 30 national media placements just by being useful to reporters and providing insights in a timely fashion. That is the kind of Thought Leadership PR I really enjoy doing — and for the doctor, it elevated his national profile, improved his company’s SEO rankings and sales and just delivered the kind of trust and credibility boost that only good PR can achieve.
Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Build Your Brand As An Executive”?
1 . Empathy — It’s easy to walk through this world and only be about ourselves. We are genetically programmed to do this thanks to our powerful survival instincts. But to build your brand as an executive, you have to be more about others than about yourself and that requires thinking about them and their situations often before speaking or taking action. As a manager, I would tell my teams “It’s your career, I just work here” to make sure that they knew they were not working to please me, but to accelerate themselves and get what they ultimately wanted out of the job. If you do that and mix it with a lot of trust and respect, you get teams who will walk through fire together to accomplish the goal. But it begins with empathy.
2 . Authority — You have to know your stuff and when your stuff changes, you have to know that, too. Trust happens when you prove your authority in a given area and you can do this many ways including writing a book, speaking at industry conferences and events and being quoted by the press in your subject area. But having authority and being seen as someone with authority is very important to building your brand as an executive.
3 . Integrity — Doing what you say and saying what you mean both come from having integrity. And this one is tough in the real business world because oftentimes having integrity puts you at odds with so many who are so quick to follow dumb ideas or do what we’ve always done because it’s safe. For example, I don’t and won’t work to promote products that are harmful to people like tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals. When those opportunities come my way, I refer them to someone else and choose to work with companies in other spaces. It’s a financial loss for the business, but I sleep GREAT at night — like a rock, actually. Often, your choices during the day in business determine how you sleep at night.
4 . Humility — Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way…. Is the famous country song lyric and it’s funny because most of us sorta think like that. But to build that brand as an executive you have to realize that no one does it alone and you are simply part of something larger doing what you can for as long as you can. That’s a statement that grounds me — I simply say to myself, “I will help as much as I can for as long as I can,” and it reminds me of what I’m here to do and that I might not have as much time as I think to get it done.
5 . Humor — You simply cannot take life very seriously. We are here for a blink and then gone and in that short amount of time, we work, we get things done and if we’re lucky, we laugh — a lot. I think humor is the ultimate stress reliever and sometimes in the business world, it’s more important than oxygen. To build your brand, you have to put a lot of different types of people at ease and the best way to do that is to find the humor in our lives and work and enjoy every bit of it.
What’s one of the most surprising things you’ve learned about building an executive brand through your experience? Can you share a story that illustrates this lesson?
For me, it’s probably been learning about humility. I’m a Type A, ENTJ, “give me a rifle and I will charge that hill” sort of person by nature and that strength is really good, but I’ve had to learn how to let go, trust others and build diverse teams in terms of life experience in order to get things done. Humility does not come easy for me because I want to be that rock star, out in front leading and getting the cheers. But I’m actually better when I’m building my team up from behind the scenes. And I never would’ve guessed that would happen.
How do you measure the success of brand-building efforts, both internally within your company and externally in your industry?
Measurement always begins with goals so if the goal is to be perceived by the majority of your industry as a good person, thought leader, amazing manager of people, etc, then you just look at how you’re being perceived internally and externally and of course examining what changes you would need to make to alter that result. We’re always in the lab in marketing and it’s the same thing with personal brand-building. Where are we now? Where we would like to be? What do we think we need to do to close that gap?
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Definitely Seth Godin — I love how his mind works and I like to think I’m on his mission to make marketing better and help more business owners, entrepreneurs and founders really understand it instead of just splattering some tactics up against the wall.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
My company site is: www.robertsoncomm.com
I’m on X @RobertsonComm
I’m on LinkedIn as me (W. Scott Robertson) and as my company, Robertson Communications (RobertsonComm)
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
