#toenophile

Personal Branding Example – Tasha Taylor

I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Figuring out my personal brand has been essential to showcasing what I am about, what I represent, and what I have to offer to my audience and prospective employers.

I followed the ‘5 Steps to Brand IT to Land IT’ (link to post) and learned to get creative with thinking of the things that have the ability to set me apart from my peers. I realized from looking my list, that wine has always been somewhat of a passion of mine. There is nothing more inviting than a glass of wine at the end of a long day. The aromas entice the senses to forget any other smells around. The wine coats your whole mouth and rolls down your throat and once it is gone, it leaves its mark on the tip of your tongue, reminding you of the impression it has made.

  Predominantly, my love of wine can be traced back to working at the Wine Rack. You could say I have become somewhat of oenophile. It has encouraged me to learn about the Canadian wine industry and become involved in the landscape of our Wine Country in Niagara.  I soon discovered that the Canadian wine industry is in its infancy stage, and thus, I decided that my journey into the Canadian wine industry was inevitable.

Building my personal brand centered on me being an oenophile, a person who is a lover of all things related to wine. My full name is Natasha Taylor, but growing up, I have always gone by Tasha and I always liked the way ‘Tasha Taylor’ rolled off the tongue, just like a good Merlot- it is memorable in and of itself.

Since I knew that I wanted my name to be part of and represent my personal brand, I started there and played around with my ideas:

Tasha Taylor – Oenophile.

Oenophile – Tasha Taylor

For the Toronto based Oenophile – Tasha Taylor

Finally an idea and a possible combination came to me:

TashaTOenophile - For the Toronto based Oenophile #TOenophile

  The Explanation & Breakdown:

The wine community is known to be pretentious and older hence the term ‘wine snobs’ why not try to break down the barrier. Everyone has the ability to be an oenophile and enjoy wine in Toronto. My thought process is that this makes them a TOenophile – which works perfectly because the ‘o’ in ‘oenophile’ is silent and we are in TO. Also my name is Tasha T so the whole concept just merged creatively as a title.

Then, I reached out to my immediate network to see who could help me with the visuals. I knew that I could pay someone (preferably in wine) to help me with the task of bringing my brand to life. Luckily, my friend Dustin Cordeiro is in Digital Communications at GH and he agreed to help me with my project.  If you don’t immediately know someone who has the skills to help, getting a clear idea of what you want created before hand helps when choosing someone to help you bringing your brand to life. My recommendation is reaching out to your network and asking friends if they know someone who you could pay to help you with this task.

And thus over a glass of inspiration, my personal brand was brought to life (and in my favourite colour of course – pink)

Then I integrated it everywhere: Across all social media platforms and I devised a social media plan to actively engage my target audience with original content from my brand of being ‘TashaTOenophile.’ So far success has seen me steadily building my network.  I have learned that you never know where your next opportunity will come from. Ever since building my personal brand and leveraging social media to do so, I have been able to directly target my efforts from networking with promotional organizations, wineries, professional wine writers, authors and aficionados alike. I have successfully secured a space in the social media landscape by making connections and I now leverage those opportunities by taking these connections with me offline.  I have had responses to my brand from notable professionals and organizations in my industry including but not limited to: Natalie Maclean, Konrad Ejbich, Debbie Trenholm of Savvy Company, Angela Aiello of iYellow Wine Club, Inniskillin Wine, Trius Winery, Pondview Winery, Shawn McCormick of Uncork Ontario, Leanne Laine- Wine Art, and Ken Burford of the Ontario Wine Society. Now, an active volunteer for the Ontario Wine Society where I will complete my internship, a member of the iYellow Wine Club, a contributor for Natalie Maclean Wine Reviews, and a participant in The Great Canadian Wine Challenge, I have been given numerous opportunities to network and build relationships in the industry that I want to be a part of.