Kenneth Cole Personal Brand of Style and Grace!

Add Cause to Your Brand

Do you run a restaurant or an eatery and have the ambition to feed the poor and hungry someday. Then make that known to people. Add that to your brand and strengthen it. Like minded people will join your cause by eating in your restaurant regularly. Every time a person dines in your restaurant she will feel happy that a part of the bill she pays is going to a benevolent cause.

Business owners like Kenneth Cole shoes should let people know about the worthy causes they aim to support such as: the ambition to provide medical treatment to patients in the underdeveloped countries free of cost, provide free education, help natural disaster victims or do something for the homeless in the USA etc.

A few words of advice here: though adding great causes always enhances your brand value; do not just add those to your brand simply for that reason without actually meaning it. Sooner or later the truth will be known. Your cause should be genuine, not as a ploy to increase your customer base and enhance brand value. At the same time do not keep your deep and benevolent desires to yourself. Allow your customers to feel good about themselves for having joined you in your benevolent cause.

Tell Your History

The moment you taste some success, tell your history. Historical account here means that part of your life that will project you in a better manner including wherer you came from, what you have done, and how you created your brand. Narrate made up stories related to your brand building.

Kenneth Cole shares the history of his company in the book - "Footnotes: What You Stand For Is More Important Than What You Stand In". Cole wanted to become a lawyer and before enrolling in a law school he took a summer off to join his father in the shoe business that he owned in Brooklyn. Kenneth Cole was so taken by the business that he chucked his plans for studying law and started his own shoe manufacturing company in 1982.

Cole wanted to showcase his shoes in a trade fair scheduled at the Hilton Hotel in New York City. He had 2 choices then - either rent a romm at the Hilton hotel like most of the participating companies for te fair or set up a show room at the otel. He did not want to go with the crowd and rent a room at Hilton Hotel, since he did not have the funds to do so. So he hit upon an idea: to sell his shoes from a tractor trailer parked beside the road right in front of the hotel. However there was a problem.

The New York City rules didn't permit such things except to utility companies doing social service or movie production companies shooting for movies. Kenneth Cole changed his company's name to Kenneth Cole Productions Inc and applied for a permit to shoot a full length motion picture - The Birth of a Shoe Company. The city Mayor gave his blessings to the shoot, gamely posted 2 policemen as a compliment from the city of New York and Kenneth Cole sold over 40,000 pairs of shoes in just 3 days from a tractor trailer in front of the Hilton otel. This is an honest admission of a creative solution to a leering problem.

Honest admission of the days of struggle and suffering only adds to brand value. This goes a very long way in building an emotional bond with your clients. While customers that stuck with you from the beginning will be proud that they have been with you and have seen you rise; people unaware of your story may be impressed by it and get attracted to the brand. All of this however does not mean that the product is less relevant. Products come first and story telling later.

John writes a fashion blog about shoes, watches, bags and jewelry. You can read information on Kenneth Cole and other designers at his blog: Kenneth Cole Shoes dot org.