If you work in the entertainment industry, so maybe you're a media guru, maybe you're an athlete,
maybe you're a musician or an actor, what you want to do is take a look at this book.
It's called Blockbusters by Anita Elba's professor at Harvard Business School.
So she teaches some courses on media and entertainment with strategy or strategy and marketing.
And in this book, she demonstrates the theme we were talking about earlier, which was having a strong
point of view.
So the entire premise of the book is basically making this argument that when it comes to the entertainment
business, you should focus on blockbusters, blockbusters being big hits.
So.
The portfolio approach, the strategy you should be taking in the entertainment industry, is making
big, bold bets on things that can go huge instead of having a more diversified approach.
So you can have a whole bunch of cheap television shows or you could say, you know what, we're going
to try to have one major hit.
We don't necessarily know which one it's going to be, but we're going to make a few bets and aim for
that at one colossal hit.
So our argument is basically economics, one, that the payoff is better when you focus on going big
rather than being diversified.
So that strong point of view she's taken has kind of enabled her personal brand to become the credible
authority on entertainment, marketing and strategy, which is interesting because it's kind of an oversimplified
position that you need to take in order to kind of break through the clutter and become an authority
in your space.
So it's an excellent example of personal branding.
Her as a professor at Harvard Business School.
But embedded in the content of the book is also very useful information because she's analyzing lots
of personal brands, which is typically what you see in the entertainment industry.
So, for example, she talks about David Beckham and other athletes and entertainers.
And there's one really interesting thing she points out, which is that a lot of these superstars will
have complete flops, so there will be super famous actors who are in really bad movies.
But it doesn't really matter because all that people need to remember is that last big hit you were
you were in The Avengers, for example, doesn't matter.
You were in some cheap rom com.
It didn't ruin your brand.
Which goes back to the point that I was talking about earlier based on the research and this is the
consensus we're coming to when we think about brands, is that brand awareness matters more than brand
perception.
So you can be a superstar brand personality, a super actor.
Being a crappy movie and it doesn't destroy your brand because all people are going to remember is that
big hit you're in?
Because that's the one that millions of people watched.
So that's one of the most important things you need to consider.
So you as a personal brand, maybe you're not as big as David Beckham, right.
And you're thinking about maybe I don't want to be on that podcast.
They don't really have a good reputation or really shouldn't be on that one.
Well, does it really matter?
I think what you're doing is you're overvaluing how much people know you.
I mean, has anyone ever mentioned a very famous celebrity in front of you and you didn't know who that
person is?
That happens to be all the time.
And we're talking about mega stars like global sensations.
I don't know who that person is or maybe another name, but I have no idea if they're a musician or
what they look like.
So even even in that, even for somebody that's that successful, they're having a hard time creating
adequate brand awareness for me to recall them.
And just think about you as a mid mid-level or beginning level brand personality, how much harder it's
going to be for you to raise brand awareness.
So brand perception is the least of your concerns unless unless you're in something super conservative,
like you work in the security field and you don't want to get caught in some sort of scandal or something
went wrong.
All right.
There are going to be exceptions to everything.
But in general, you may be more worried of how people even heard of you.
And we are less worried about embarrassing yourself by being on the wrong podcast or something like
that.
Now, the other key lesson we learn here is the central thesis of our book, which is the idea of blockbusters.
So what you're going to find is kind of the 80 20 rule, which is this idea that 20 percent of the projects
that you work on are going to generate 80 percent of the impact.
Just as an example, you can apply the 80 20 rule to numerous types of scenarios.
Now, the Blockbuster's argument in your case may be that when you produce one hundred YouTube videos,
there's probably going to be maybe three that really skyrocket your viewership and your subscribership.
So that's what you want to double down on, right?
It's that content that you're going to advertise, that you're going to build your brand around and
it may inform your overall marketing strategy and then specifically your branding strategy as well.
It's also going to play into where you're doing your guests speaking.
So are you going to speak at the event that has twenty thousand people are going to speak at one hundred
events that have 20 people is probably going to be better to focus your effort on the speaking engagements
that are going to have the bigger audiences or if not the bigger audience, is the bigger impact.
So smaller audiences are going to matter more for your personal brand when those people in the audience
are highly influential.
So, for example, if you're going to a medical association conference of heads of hospitals, they're
going to have a lot of clout.
And so it's more important to speak in front of them than to speak in front of everybody that or people
that have a disease that you you treat or something like that.
So you need to balance those two things, the audience size and the impact.
But basically, just keep in mind that idea of blockbusters that you need to have a portfolio strategy
where some of the things that you're put effort into are going to have an exponential return on effort.
And some of the things are and sometimes it's it's not obvious beforehand, but you can mitigate your
risk by looking at sizing.
Now, we see that in the investing world as well, where people like Peter Lynch will invest in 10 companies
with the expectation that there may be two blockbusters or what he calls 10 baggers.
So companies will get a 10x return on what he invested and he doesn't know beforehand which one, but
he's used some sort of limiting criteria to figure out, OK, which 10 am I going to go with?
And then one of them is going to have a huge payoff.
And some of that boils down to just luck and randomness or just variables that you weren't able to measure
beforehand.