YOU Are the Brand!

The other day I was having an email exchange with a fellow ISoP-ian about communicating QSP models. He had some good ideas and I asked him if he would write this month’s column. He very politely declined and asked “Why? Why would I want to do this? Journal articles last. These columns don’t; they’re ephemeral.” He couldn’t even remember what the last topic was about. Fair enough. But did he remember who wrote it? “You did”, he said. “Exactly.” Do I write these columns because I have all this free time on my hands and a huge altruistic streak? Well, I do somewhat, but I started these columns to maintain the Bonate Brand™!

A brand is an identifying symbol, logo, name, word and/or sentence that companies use to distinguish their product or themselves from others. How does Nike distinguish itself from Adidas? Or Coke differentiate itself from Pepsi? Nike has the Swoosh, Pepsi has a distinctive red, white, and blue wave within a circle. When you see these logos you immediately know who it is because of extensive advertising and years of building the brand.

You might be surprised to know that YOU are also a brand, just like I am. Jeff Bezos has said that your personal brand is how people describe you when you are not in the room.

So how do I differentiate myself from other pharmacometricians? Early in my career there were a number of other pharmacokineticists (Pharmacometrician was not a word yet!) in my peer group: Marc Gastonguay, Bernd Meibohm, Holly Kimko, Paolo Vicini, and others. How was I going to stand out from them? They were all awesome in my view. I had to build the Bonate Brand™.

At the time, AAPS was the dominant professional society and the focus groups drove programming at the Annual Meeting. Programming chairs had huge networks since they operated with so many other groups and individuals within AAPS. I watched when the Population Pharmacokinetics focus group started the competition to be its Chair. It was heated and intense and provided immediate exposure to the winner. I also saw that to start a focus group you only needed 50 signatures- so I thought, why not start my own focus group? I differentiated myself by leading the Simulation Focus Group for 3 years, making a name for myself at AAPS, and then parlaying the recognition that I received into being elected as a section chair. And as my career developed, I started to differentiate myself further by writing. I started to write and edit books and book chapters. I never turned down an opportunity. Any time I was given an offer to write a chapter for a book I accepted. I was getting my name out there - I was building the Bonate Brand™.

If I were to ask “Am I a good pharmacometrician?”, I think (hope!) that most people would say yes. But why do you think that? You might say, “Because you’re Pete Bonate. You’ve written all those books. You’re famous! You’ve got groupies!” But unless you’ve worked with me, you have no idea whether I am actually any good or not. But because of my activities, and the things I’ve written, I have a level of authority that makes the things I say have credibility. I’ve turned the Bonate Brand™ into authority.

Today I am working to establish another component of the Bonate Brand ™ – that of the great communicator. I got interested in public speaking because of my own failures as a modeler and not getting my models accepted by the teams that I worked with. To start my brand in this area I started preaching about communication and getting a proposal accepted into ACoP1 on Effective Communication. From there, I continued with such proposals and really advocating clear communication as a rate-limiting step to Pharmacometrician success. I think today my message has finally resonated through ISoP and I am seen as one of the pioneering champions in this area.

How do you go about building your brand? Is it necessary to volunteer at professional organizations like I did? Or write books? Or become a communications guru? Not necessarily. Start with identifying where you shine at work. For example, are you the resident expert in a particular methodology? If so, set a path to be seen as that person. This may require some self-promotion, which some people are uncomfortable with, but it is necessary to kick-start the process. Make sure people know you are using that methodology. Give an internal presentation or a tutorial on how to use the method. Submit posters and programming ideas to conferences on the method to give you that external visibility. Write an article on the method. Even try your hand at social media; maybe write a blog, or post something about the method on LinkedIn. Think about what your special set of skills are, and build your brand around it!

You might be asking yourself, why would I want to do this? This seems like total crap to me! The answer is that it sells you. Do you want that promotion? Do you want a raise? Do you want to get a better job? Who is a company going to hire? Who will the company promote? The nameless individual or the one they are aware of? All things being equal, it’s the one they are aware of. I can tell you that as a hiring manager, the first thing I do when I receive a CV is ask around: has anyone ever heard of this candidate? If so, what did they think of them? That’s their brand.

Your brand matters!