Marketing Manly Products: A Case Study In Personal Branding

While in Minneapolis I had the opportunity to meet Shane Smith. Shane specializes in selling stuff to men… from putty knives to buckets of paint to industrial HVAC systems… if a man makes the purchasing decision, Shane is your expert.

Want to know how I know this? Because his personal, professional tagline is “Marketing Manly Products.” Check out his e-mail signature:

Of course, this wasn’t my first impression of Shane… he was introduced to me as the Marketing Manly Products guy. Everyone who networks with Shane knows this is his specialty.

It piqued my curiosity and I wanted to know what that meant… and I asked him over lunch.

Isn’t that the purpose of your personal brand, or in this example, your tagline?

Shane took it one step further, and customized his LinkedIn vanity URL to include the tagline… like this:

Pretty cool, eh? Check out Shane’s LinkedIn summary, which is one of the best I’ve seen… can you see how compelling, strong, and reinforcing this summary is for Shane, the guy who specilializes in Marketing Manly Products?

My personal brand is “marketing manly products’ and key promise is forward thinking, straight talk. The marketing of industrial, agricultural, business-to business or consumer durable products from big boy toys to heavy equipment.

I’m Passionate about establishing and exceeding goals and solving problems in a cross functional team environment.

But what gets me excited are companies who think strategically, allow marketing to develop value propositions, and expect every employee to exceed customer expectations in order to create a competitive edge.

I believe that positioning + positive attitude + the customer experience = Brand.

I am forward thinking in solving problems or creating opportunities. Some may call this out of the box thinking, visionary, or systemic thinking. But if we want different outcomes, we have to change.

My communication preference is straight talk. The willingness to communicate with respect, listen, and offer honest opinions. And while some people prefer to spend their time saying yes to everything and like to work on their hidden agendas, I believe more is to be gained with a more open communication style and a true team approach.

My ideal job would have strategy and marketing elements with branding as a real plus. A company that either has or wants a strategic plan. A management team that see problems or change as really an opportunity for new ideas, understand the difference between good and great and importance of strong relationships across departments.

If you feel I may have the right stuff to help your company, let’s start with being LinkedIn or even an email. Please understand I do not expect you to have any current openings. However, I would appreciate a discussion to seek your ideas, understand your key business issues, comments and reactions on how I might achieve my objective of marketing manly products.

That is an awesome LinkedIn summary!  Out of curiosity I Googled “Manly Products” … his LinkedIn profile was the fifth result!

Excellent job Shane, there are things here that we can all learn from your example!

My question for anyone reading this is: what is YOUR professional tagline?