well, would you?

Laura Tessinari is a senior partner at O&M and runs the organizational training department. she's been in SF for the past week and will continue to be here for at least one more training session. so far i've been able to participate in 2 of her sessions: "The Power of Full Engagement" (time and energy management) and today's "The Brand Called You!". As it happens, she also came here a year and a half ago and i was able to take her Presentation Skills Seminar, which i found very useful.

In any case, I feel that today's seminar was very applicable to what I'm trying to do this semester with Lotus: create an online presence that effectively communicates my "brand" while also showcasing my work. This all sounds great, of course, but when i really sit back and think about it, what defines my brand? It's harder than you might think to answer this question.

Of course, over the course of the day's events, we worked on answering this question for ourselves by attacking it from many different angles. One of the exercises we did was The Elevator Speech: answering the simple question of "what do you do for a living" in 90 seconds or less while still delivering a clear, thorough description (i.e. you don't just say "i'm an art director"). Laura provided a skeleton for how the Speech should be set up, starting each of our sentences for us. i thought it was an interesting, valuable exercise that everyone could benefit from, and so here i am sharing mine.

You know how some companies have products and services that they want to sell but aren't sure how?

Well what i can do is work with a team to figure out the best way to reach the client's target audience and create an effective piece of communication.

Which means that I help these clients sell their products by reaching the right audience and talking to them in away that they'll want to listen.

Meaning I know how to solve the problem of reaching the right people and then go on to create an inspired piece of communication.

The benefit of which is that people don't hate advertising quite as much, clients feel they've effectively reached the right people and created a lasting relationship with them, and we've all had a little fun.

Would you like to know more?


*edit*
upon reflection i'd definitely like to refine this, but for a first shot in fifteen minutes i don't think it's too terrible.