TCC Podcast #56: Personal branding with Sarah Ancalmo Ashman

Personal branding expert and talented designer, Sarah Ancalmo Ashman is the guest for the 56th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She shared with Kira and Rob (and you) how she became a brand expert—she started out as an ad agency designer working with personalities like Madonna, Jimmy Fallon and the rock group, RadioHead. In the podcast she talks about: •  how she developed her unique design style and why she chose branding as her discipline •  the first steps she took when she started her own agency •  what branding is and why it is so important to have a strong brand •  some of the more important elements that make up your brand •  how to identify what make you (and your brand) unique •  what you need to know or work on before you engage a designer •  why copywriters shouldn’t shape their brand around their clients •  her contrarian advice on which formulas you should use for your brand •  how to create a brand for yourself when you don’t have the budget to work with a designer (hint: don’t use fiverr) Rob and Kira also ask Sarah about the things that smart copywriters are starting to do with their brands, where copywriters who want to work in branding can get started and the the text books she recommends you should read if you want to learn branding. To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Sarah Ashman, Public Persona Sarah’s Pinterest MirrorBrand B School Bluffworks Lacy Boggs Ash Ambirge Building a Story Brand The Brand Gap Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 56, as we chat with branding expert and designer Sarah Ancalmo Ashman about working with entrepreneurs and creatives to create jaw-dropping brands, developing a brand strategy, how copywriters should approach their own brand development, and whether having a nice logo is enough. Kira: Hi Sarah! Rob: Hey Sarah. Sarah: Hello, thanks for having me! Kira: Thanks for being here. I think - I have such a big crush on you because you’ve worked with me on my website and my brand and that’s been one of the best investments I’ve made in my business so I’m glad we can finally have you on the show you can share your knowledge and expertise with everyone at large. I think a great place to start though, is with your story! How did you end up running your creative studio? Sarah: As always, a meandering path, right? My background is actually in, you know, big brand advertising and you know, design studios in New York. And I worked doing that for about ten years and realized that the projects that resonated with me actually the most, were the ones that involved an individual. Clients that were sort of an individual that we were centering a brand around. I found that there were a lot of opportunities to bring out stories and you know, just really focus on their personality and what differentiates them as an individual. And so what I ended up doing was starting to kind of put my feelers out... and started to work with individuals, primarily entrepreneurs, who were either starting their business or wanting to uplevel, and applying some of the same techniques that I used to develop brands for the Fortune 500 for these private clients. And that ended up being viable enough for me to be able to kind of jump ship from the corporate space, if you will, and you know, start to do that on my own. In 2012, I officially birthed, if you will, a public persona! Rob: Sarah, your background includes some fashion work as well, and it seems to me like that might be reflected in a lot of the things that you do. How has that impacted how you look at brands as opposed to, you know, what a lot of other branding experts are out there doing? From my perspective, it seems like you have a very distinctive visual approach to what you do. Sarah: Yeah! It’s funny; I think a lot of that comes from directing, concepting and directing, these large scale photo shoots for commercial productions. And like you said, for a lot of fashion brands. And so, you know, I really love to see that transformation of this “ordinary” person, which in some cases was a celebrity or a model, and see them really transform into this sort of larger than life character on the screen. And I think that’s exactly what I sort of brought with me to the table, so to speak, with my clients. Just really being able to you know, create that level ten of an individual that’s still authentic to someone but you know, sort of heightened visually. Kira: Yeah, and Sarah, who are some of the early celebrities that you worked with? I believe Madonna was one of them, right? Sarah: Yes! I did. I worked on a campaign for Madonna pretty early on, which was exciting to say the least. You know, a lot of musicians a radio had, so for Jimmy Fallon, so those are some of the early folks that I started working with and that’s where I really started to fall in love with working with people, with individuals. Rob: So Sarah discovered Madonna. That’s awesome. (laughs) Kira: Kind of a big deal. It seems like what we could take even just from paying attention to the celebrities and having brand and they’re constantly reinventing themselves, that as business owners, especially for the face of our brand, that we should constantly evolve and continue to rebrand, like I don’t know if there’s every 3 years, every 10 years, but I’d love to hear more about that as far as what should we do as business owners to continue to evolve so that we’re not stagnant and our business doesn’t plateau. Sarah: Right, well I think, you know, just like you’re evolving as a human being, your business is evolving as well and because your brand is an extension of you, that’s something that you constantly have to think about. Does this reflect the best version of me? Does this feel aligned with me and where I’m going right now? And I think that’s why what you see in using Madonna as an example, how she reinvented herself a million times. That’s what really creates that relevancy, for lack of a better term. As the market continues to grow, so you know, it really is important to reinvent. And that could be - you could be a fast iterator - and that could be every year. That could be every three years. That could be every five years, but always just sort of keeping in check: is my brand and business aligned with me? Because again, you are the face of your brand. Rob: So Sarah, can we take a step back? You talked about your early experience in working with these big brands, but even before that, how did you decide that branding was the thing that you wanted to do and that you wanted to approach from the design side? Sarah: Well, it’s funny, my sort of entree was really just graphic design. You know, visual communication. And brand building was something that just kind of happened along the way. You know, that was never something that they taught in school. That was never something that they necessarily you know, called out as being sort of a specialty of the time in the advertising industry, believe it or not, that was just something that everyone sort of did on the side. And what I realized was that I loved being able to take the essence of a client and to help to sort of shape that experience around them. I had a fellow coworker and mentor at the time who said, that is really the heart of branding. And really sort of showed me that that was a specialty of mine without realizing it at the time. Kira: I want to hear about your early days when you really made that transition from corporate to launching your own business and what that looked like for you, especially as far as really gaining traction, getting those first few clients, getting set up and running, so you felt like you could make that jump. I feel like that’s where a lot of us get stuck and overwhelmed. Sarah: Yeah. I will say that was awhile ago so the market wasn’t as crowded, however, what I did was I found my way into B School, which is you know, a lot of people’s story. Kira: Oh, I didn’t know that! Sarah: Yeah, I took B School just because I wanted to have an understanding of what I was jumping into. I wasn’t someone who was trained as a business owner so I thought, well, I can’t afford to go to full on business school, so let me see what I can pick up in that course. And so you know, within the context of B School, started becoming active within the private facebook group, started talking to people, started interacting a lot personally and what I realized and in doing that, you know, on my own as well as just watching other pepople who were sort of rising to success very quickly.. it was really all about making connections. It was really all about creating that trust and that human connection. And that’s exactly how I found my first few clients that enabled me to jump ship and you know, to this day, I remain very active in a lot of Facebook groups because that ultimately is the best business tool, I feel, today. It’s just you know, the human touch. Rob: I love that advice. The power of connection. That’s something that we’ve talked about with several guests but it’s something that Kira and I have both experienced and done. It really is the best way to connect with customers. Sarah: It absolutely is.