Luxury Real Estate Agent Personal Branding: Create Your Own Brand Category

Wednesday

Feb182009

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 5:00AM

The most important principle involved in creating a luxury real estate agent personal brand is to find a brand category that you can own like Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. People think in terms of brand categories. The key is to be the first person to come to mind, rather than your competition, in a brand category and become the category “killer”.

Here are some examples of brand categories and the most dominant brand in the category or the category killer:

Category	Category Killer
Facial Tissue	Kleenex
Copiers	Xerox
Cola	Coke
Internet Search	Google
Window Cleaner	Windex
Adhesive Tape	Scotch Tape
Spreadsheet	Microsoft Excel

The easiest way to claim ownership of a brand category is to create a new brand category. That is exactly what Cesar Millan did by proclaiming that he is the “Dog Whisperer”. He took a general category, dog trainer, created a new category of one and became the most famous dog trainer in the world. Anyone else that calls themselves a dog whisperer automatically becomes a “me too” and is dismissed as unoriginal.

The original horse whisper was Daniel Sullivan, a horse trainer who made a name for himself in the 19th century by rehabilitating horses that had become vicious and intractable due to abuse or accidental trauma. He kept his methods secret, but people who managed to observe him noticed that he would stand face to face with the troubled horse. They seemed to think that he must be saying something to the horse in a way the horse could understand and accept.

Cesar Millan borrowed this concept from the horse training world, a concept that was already familiar to the general public because of the Horse Whisperer book and movie. Now, he owns the category of dog whisperer. Cesar is obviously the category killer. No one can come close to competing with him.

How can you stand out in the general category of luxury real estate agents?

1. Do some soul searching and identify something you can do better than anyone else in your marketplace

2. Create a whole new category where you can provide extraordinary value

3. Promote the new category that fills a unique need in the mind of your target market and your market will promote you!