Personal Branding Flop #1 – Just Valtrex twice with your food – only at Applebee’s

Anyone who knows me tends to see that I am passionate about what I do, and within that passion for marketing, advertising and public relations, I have recently taken up the issue of personal branding. In a recent panel sponsored by Berkeley College for their admissions kickoff (one of my alma madder) I talked about how critical it is for graduates to ‘brand themselves;’ that personal branding professionally, personally, in their community, in their workplace and everywhere else in between is critical to a candidate’s success – as today, the job market is even more competitive then before.

The notion of personal branding reaches far and impacts the daily things we do today. While not all personal branding is perfect and on occasion, you could encounter some flaws within your own brand, there are fundamental rules that people should follow – such as say… talking in a more low-tone voice when filling certain prescriptions.

Of course, one aspect of the personal brand and acceptance of society happens to be some of the more interesting campaigns out there. The on-going campaigns promoting the herpes drug, Valtrex is one example – where we see people enjoying life, riding horses and just having a good time. To me, these commercials aside from the long list of side effects are truly the feel-good commercials throughout television right now. It showcases the type of people that say “hey.. I have genital herpes, but I’m not different from you. I do the same things you do and I keep my condition under control with Valtrex.”

So I find it interesting, that just taking Valtrex twice a day and the supposed free-reign on society with filling a prescription out loud in public can contribute to the first impressions that people have on you potentially. Of course, I’m not one to judge, but the story I am about to write out, is interesting enough to be my selection for Personal Branding Flop #1.


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My wife and I typically like to get food at some of the more well-known chain restaurants such as Applebee’s. Despite setbacks and raised prices, to me, I still believe the food from Applebee’s delivers good value to the consumer – and the service is always great.

So on a Saturday night, after finishing some errands, we sat down to dinner, just ordered our food and started drinking our drinks – my wife relaxing with a glass of Merlot and myself, a pint of beer. The next table over, a family sits down with three kids. Ordinarily, the usual noise and activities of the kids do not bother me, but the ‘control’ factor in which parents should have control over their kids do. While the control was not there however, truthfully, that was not what caught my undivided attention.

My wife happens has super-bionic ears and well actually, I can hear my share of things as well. As the adage goes however, if one person can hear you, others can as well. So it was very interesting when we heard the following phone call without eavesdropping – and I will put a disclaimer now, that we heard this through yelling kids:

Caller: Yes hello.. Pharmacy? Hi.. I would like to submit a refill request – yes.. For Valtrex… That is correct… Ok.. Do you know when it will be ready? Great. Thank you very much. Bye bye.

So in the scheme of things, we have two very interesting perceptions about this person:

She has 3 kids who happened to make a lot of loud noise
She called in a refill for Valtrex from a restaurant – and again, it was loud enough to hear through the kids.

What does that tell you about her personal branding?