The Secret is Out: Brand Yourself and Get Rich

A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had an article called “Selling Lauren Conrad” on how one of the The Hills reality show stars was trying to brand herself. For those of you who don’t watch MTV and aren’t in the all important 18 to 24 demographic, and that includes me, and are asking “Lauren who?” here is more info:

Lauren Conrad is famous for being on a reality show. But what she really wants is to run a merchandising empire.

Ms. Conrad, 22, is the star of “The Hills,” the reality show that was MTV’s highest-rated program last fall. For the past two years, cameras have captured her days as a fashion-magazine intern and nights as a club-hopper who flirts with guys and spars with friends. To translate her fame into a fashion career, she and her father have hired a team of Hollywood-industry advisers and signed several licensing and endorsement deals. The process isn’t always smooth. The network that made her famous won’t promote her enterprises on air. And Ms. Conrad, determined to assert her fashion vision, sometimes ignores the suggestions of her more seasoned advisers.

The money involved in branding a reality tv star is no laughing matter.

Mr. Stubblefield began fielding licensing and endorsement offers after the show’s debut. Since 2006, Ms. Conrad has signed up for deals with a toy company, a leather-goods maker and a cosmetics line. Ms. Conrad’s team says it has refused a number of other offers, including a jewelry-licensing deal with a home shopping network. A department store offered to pay a six-figure fee to put her name on a clothing line but wouldn’t give her any design input. “I wanted to have full creative power,” she says.

The key, for many of these people, is to become a celebrity simply by being a celebrity. No talent required.

But what about the rest of us who aren’t on reality television?

The key is still in your brand.

Two of the most successful branding campaigns in recent memory were in the news in the last few days.

The first: Jim Cramer.

He is the biggest brand in finance- outside of Suze Orman. He was a successful hedge fund manager who has turned himself into a writer and stock picking guru by throwing chairs and other items on a television show and writing straight-forward easy to understand books.

He was also one of the original founders of the financial website TheStreet.com back during the dot-com boom in the 1990s.

Mr. Cramer recently signed a new contract with TheStreet.com. From Businessweek:

TheStreet.com Inc. said Wednesday it agreed to a new three-year contract with co-founder, director and columnist Jim Cramer.

Cramer will receive between $1.3 million and $1.9 million each of the three years. Cramer will get a signing bonus of $100,000 and is eligible for annual bonuses worth up to 75 percent of his salary based on the company’s financial results.

Cramer will also receive restricted stock units that can convert to up to 300,000 shares of common stock over the next five years. Based on Tuesday’s closing price of $9.32, the shares are worth about $2.8 million.

You read that right. Mr. Cramer is getting paid over a million bucks to write a column for a website.

He’s just a COLUMNIST!

What makes him so valuable? His brand.

Having Jim Cramer on the site clearly brings in readers. Readers bring in revenue through advertising and the selling of other products on the site.

Jim Cramer has parlayed his brand into big bucks. On top of the TheStreet.com, it’s said he makes just over a million dollars a year on CNBC.

Where, of course, he expands his brand.

The Biggest of the Bloggers: Perez Hilton

Three years ago Mario Lavandeira, aka Perez Hilton, was sitting in a coffee shop in Hollywood nearly broke and blogging about celebrities on a two-bit website. Originally, his site was called SixSixSix but Page Six, the gossip column in the New York Post, took offense to the name similarity and sued him.

It was the best thing that ever happened to him (how many people who are sued can say that?)

Literally, overnight, the blog went from nothing to something.

Lavandeira agreed to change the blog name and adopted PerezHilton.com, after his favorite Hollywood party girl, Paris Hilton, and the name took off.

Within a year, Perez was getting over a million hits a day to his site filled with celebrity gossip and pictures. He was also making mucho money- off just the ad revenue alone.

But the lawsuits mounted (including one over copyright infringement for the use of celebrity pictures.)

Perez slowly became a celebrity in his own right- attending movie premieres and award shows. He parlayed that into guest appearances on Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. Then he became more “legit” by appearing on The View, with none other than Barbara Walters, to talk celebrity gossip.

No longer just a blogger, Perez Hilton had become a brand.

And now he’s moving onto other venues. Just yesterday, it was announced that he was getting his own radio pieces that will air nationwide. From the Associated Press:

Gossip maven Perez Hilton will soon be dishing it up on the airwaves as well as in the blogosphere.

The celebrity blogger, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, will be the star of twice-daily radio minishows that begins broadcasting on May 5, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday on its Web site.

“It will hopefully introduce me, potentially, to a whole new audience,” Hilton said.

The three-minute-long radio shows will air during morning and evening drive times in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other big cities, with more markets planned for the next few months, the paper reported.

The show, “Radio Perez,” represents another step toward media ubiquity for the blogger, whose Web site routinely posts salacious details about gossip targets such as Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

The whole point of a “brand” is to expand it. But just what IS the Perez Hilton brand anyway? He’s known as a gossip columnist. Would you buy clothes designed by him? Perfume promoted by him?

He’s known as having a talent for picking and promoting talented musicians on his website. Maybe he will tie his brand more to music than celebrity gossip?

Others are asking the same questions. From Reuters:

Henry Copeland, CEO of BlogAds, the advertising network that handles PerezHilton.com, isn’t about to spill the beans on Hilton’s next move. But he believes his client has just begun tapping his potential in the media marketplace. “When you’ve got this incredibly loyal core audience, of course you’re asking yourself, ‘How do you extend the brand?’”

Out of nearly all the popular bloggers, he’s the first to try and extend his reach beyond his own website.

All of these people have one thing in common. They’re commoditizing themselves. They’re putting value on their names.

Learn to brand yourself.