In line with the recently rebranded SUFFESA club mantra ‘I Am a SUFFESA Brand Ambassador’, the club held its Awareness and Recruitment drive from 29^th October – 1^st November 2013. The drive was aimed at creating an awareness of the club within the University whilst recruiting of new members to join the club.

 

The climax of the Awareness Week was a talk on Personal Branding on the evening of Thursday, 31^st October 2013 with the key guest being Mr Enos Waswa, a design and branding consultant who owns Mass Inspire, a company that specializes in creative arts. The session provided great insights for the attendees on how to become a personal brand with emphasis on letting your work always speak for you.

 

The guest speaker was precise to underpin the fact that having brand-depth is more important than having brand-width.  While brand-width usually focuses on one becoming a household name, with a focus on being diverse; brand-depth focuses on creating an authentic brand and being the best at what you do. While brand-width could be easily lost in the absence of strong grounding usually by the deceit of fame, brand-depth grows and breeds trust and popularity along the way. The latter is thus a better approach in building a formidable personal brand.

 

Another major lesson picked from the talk was the need to reconcile one’s identity with their image. Identity is what you want people to perceive of you; while an image is what people actually see of you depending on how you carry or portray yourself. The key learning was to let your image resonate with the identity you strive to achieve.

 

This was indeed a great evening and quite insightful for the students who attended. It was even more interesting to see the discussion spill over into an informal roundtable session at the cafeteria that provided students with the opportunity to interact with the guest and learn more about personal branding. SUFFESA will hold its’ next recruitment and awareness week in January 2014 and thereafter host a roundtable session for Industry players in the Finance field in March 2014.

 

Sir Richard Branson, the CEO of Virgin says:

“Personal branding demands commitment; commitment to continual reinvention, striking chords with people to stir their emotions and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.”

Written by Naliaka Napwora Laura and Mboha Michelle Sheila