Lampe Omoyele (2024), Brand or Be Bland!: The winning framework for effective personal branding. Lagos: The Lucent Consulting Company ISBN: 978-978-976-063-3. 96 pages.
Doctors write prescriptions. Specialists and experts in various fields do so as well. To be prescriptive, you must have knowledge, expertise and experience.
Marketing expert Lampe Omoyele leverages his vast experience in brand management to author a prescriptive manual on personal branding. By making the focus personal rather than product or institutional, he enables the reader to own it while learning some rudiments of branding.
Omoyele declares: “Our world is full of look-alike celebrities and pass-off brands, and artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to further level the playing field of uniqueness. Standing out has never been more urgent and important. If you desire to become a leader in your sphere of influence, differentiation by branding will help you to stand out; otherwise, you risk being bland and nondescript. Avoiding personal branding isn’t necessarily a sign of humility. Whether you like it or not, people have perceptions about you, and it is wise to take control of the narrative.”
Following this thesis statement, Omoyele takes the reader through definitions and quizzes in his slim 96-page book.
Lampe Omoyele’s little book of personal branding follows a tradition. Many definitive works in marketing and related fields have been pint-size but packed a punch. Examples include Al Ries and Jack Trout’s Positioning or William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style.
The slim size would appeal to today’s audience, given the distractions that make reading a chore for many. It condenses the core learnings.
Brand or Be Bland!: The winning framework for effective personal branding covers the essentials in ten chapters and appendixes, preceded by acknowledgements, a foreword, reviews, and a preface.
Renowned communication guru Dr Christopher Kolade penned the lead review. Kolade was managing director when Omoyele began his career at Cadbury Nigeria plc. Kolade averred, “This book, Brand or Be Bland! gives timely assistance to all who move the economy along through productive market activities. Readers will understand more clearly how the exchange of goods and services takes place and how important branding should be practised wherever value is given or received.”
Chapter headings are Branding Basics, The Power of Personal Branding-Introducing the 2(ABC) Personal Branding Framework, Assessment-Identifying your brand purpose, Authenticity-Crafting your unique brand proposition, Beliefs-leveraging values that build your brand, Boldness, Walking your differentiated path with courage, Consistency-cultivating and showcasing excellence, Credibility – Building a trusted reputation that lasts, Reinventing for personal growth, and Workbooks 1 & 2.
Brand or Be Bland! is a marketing primer. The author skilfully highlights vital concepts and terms in bold letters. Such terms include positioning, brand equity, unique brand proposition, differentiation, and segmentation. Diligent readers would take their lead and follow up for more.
The heart of Brand Or Be Bland! is Lampe Omoyele’s trademarked “The 2(ABC) Personal Branding Framework”. He deploys the framework to distil the core message and applications of personal branding.
“Personal branding is articulating and communicating your skills, attributes, personality, values, and vision to differentiate you, leading to increased leadership influence and impact.”
The framework’s elements are 2As: Assessment and Authenticity, 2Bs: Beliefs and Boldness, and 2Cs: Credibility and Consistency.
The personal brand builder applies them by
• Assessment: Identifying personal brand purpose
• Authenticity: crafting a unique brand proposition
• Beliefs: instilling and leveraging personal values that build the brand
• Boldness: walking your differentiated path courageously
• Credibility: Cultivating and showcasing excellence
• Consistency: building a trusted reputation that lasts.
Omoyele shares parts of his journey in personal branding and encourages the reader to do the same. He has many exciting vignettes to share.
Lampe Omoyele was the senior brand manager under whose supervision Cadbury Nigeria wrote a new product life cycle for Bournvita, its star brand. He earned the Cadbury Nigeria Award for Excellence for this and much more.
He earned a director position in CadburyKenya. One of the challenges was the perception of Nigerians as “loud, aggressive, and not to be trusted.” He worked to change that perception and positioned himself as “a Nigerian with integrity and one of the best marketing professionals in East Africa.”
“First, as marketing director, I ensured I delivered on my primary assignment of rejuvenating the marketing function and revitalising the brands for growth. The market and industry noticed the new things and transformation of the brands and business, and I got speaking engagements. I also got involved in community-building efforts. Combining these raised my visibility, credibility, and profile across the region. Four years later, the Marketing Society of Kenya gave me the Human Warrior Award for significant contribution to developing marketing in Kenya. “
You can read this book straight up. You can also start from the workbooks to tackle the quizzes quickly to grasp the book’s essence.
I heartily recommend Brand Or Be Bland! to professionals across disciplines, young people starting, and people in integrated marketing communication. It covers the bases and enables personalisation. The author made it compliant with today’s reading habits: fast, easy to digest, and easy to apply.
The blurb says of Mr Omoyele: “Writer, speaker, and singer with an arsenal of academic science degrees, his innate abilities lie in the creative arts. At the start of his career, he aspired to be a copywriter and broadcaster. He might graduate to these”.
Omoyele has an anthology of poems, Love Chords and Discords, and a comparative text, Marketing in Africa: East and West-Parallels, Paradigms, and Perspectives.”
Mr Lampe Omoyele
