| Business executives – rock stars under scrutiny? | ||
| Today, it is common-place that media treat business executives behind fast-growing businesses as rock stars. Now, they find themselves under close scrutiny from stockholders and the outside world at large. It is a new role in which they will have to manoeuvre in murky and unpredictable waters of both profit expectations and public ethics. Personal branding The rapid expansion of online social networks has meant that details about individual business executives are widely available to the public at large. Several international business tycoons, such as Donald Trump and Richard Branson, have even had TV-sitcoms of their own. As a result, a senior business executive is today not only known by his business card – he is in many instances a widely publicized personal brand. Hence, the personal brand of the business executive may match the brand of the company itself. Moreover, by becoming A-list media personalities, business executives have attracted high-value attention to the company brands worth millions. In addition, by bringing a personal perspective, which everybody can identify with, they have extended knowledge of their company’s brands across every target group. You need not be interested in development of real estate in order to be interested in the life of Donald Trump. However, as the credit crisis spread and deepened, a widespread public outcry against executive pay and benefits arose. This time around, the criticism took a different turn. Regardless of judicial obligation within the respective employment contracts, companies were faced with a public demand to include considerations of a perceived ‘fairness’ in their compensation packages. It got personal. Take the plans by General Motors to acquire a new corporate jet as an example. No matter what rationale may or may not lie behind this acquisition, in the public eye it was out of the question and became a symbol for a perceived over-excessive lifestyle. Criticism was primarily directed towards the individual executive rather than the company as a whole. Crossing the line The days of personal branding are by no means over. What has happened over the last couple of months is to highlight that personal branding can naturally work both ways. As a business executive, you can one day be the hero only to become the villain the next day. Hence, managing the media but also making conscious choices about what your personal brand is (and is not), and which things you want to keep away from the public eye is important. The moment you exploit a part of your personal brand publicly, you have crossed the line to become a public figure alongside rock stars and politicians. You do not have to study many tabloids to see that public judgement often differ from the rule of law. The bottom line is that business executives will have to get to terms with perceptions of themselves, and be aware of the fact that everything, they do, will be evaluated alongside those perceptions, regardless of how ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ any such may be. | ||
| Date | 30-03-2009 | |||