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Personal Branding Seminar

Bob “Pritch” Pritchard, APR, Fellow PRSA, and the national advisor for PRSSA taught a group of area PR pros and students how to define, enhance, and maintain their personal brands at an all-day seminar on March 19 at the Bright Shawl.

“The powerful, clear, positive idea that comes to mind whenever people think of you” sums up the term ‘personal brand’,” said Pritch.  “It’s what you stand for, including your values, passions, and strengths.  It is what is authentic to you.”

The morning session set the stage for personal branding – e.g., what it is, and what it is not --, and the afternoon session was a hands-on work session. There was a separate lunch presentation that covered the professional branding theme for both the seminar attendees and members and friends who attended the lunch portion of the seminar.  The lunch theme focused on ways to relate personal brand to corporate culture. Pritch drew from all kinds of sources in discussing ways to be passionate in our work, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fellowship Assets” for the architecture apprentices he worked with:

1. An honest ego in a healthy body. 
2. An eye to see nature
3. A heart to feel nature
4. Courage to follow nature
5. The sense of proportion (humor)
6. Appreciation of work as idea and idea as work
7. Fertility of imagination
8. Capacity for faith and rebellion
9. Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance
10. Instinctive cooperation

The afternoon found the group working hard to define their own brands, getting feedback from others in the group, and inspired lots of “aha!” moments. 

Pritch, a frequent presenter at PRSA international conferences, is an instructor at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Before that, he taught at Ball State University in Muncie Indiana. Prior to his time in academia, Pritch was Director of Public Affairs, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany, and served as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Navy. 

The next professional development seminar will be held on Thursday, October 2 and will feature Blake Lewis, APR and Fellow PRSA, 2014 PRSA national secretary, and owner of Lewis Public Relations in Dallas, who will talk about effective ways to measure PR campaigns.

For more information, contact Gretchen Roufs, PRSA vice president for programs at [email protected] or at 210-601-4572.