You may have noticed the tagline, “Innovative Ideas. Stylish Solutions.” on my website, social media, and resumé. This personal branding tagline was created after reading Sally Hogshead’s books “How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination” and “Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation“, and taking her Fascination Personality Test online. I like tests. This is no ordinary personality test, it is backed by 10 years of research and tells you how the world sees you, not how you see the world. Why would you want to discover your fascination personality advantage and tagline? “Your Fascination Advantage is the way in which your personal brand is most likely to add distinct value,” states Howtofascinate.com. The more value you can add, the more you could leverage that value for things such as finding a better job and negotiating a raise or promotion.
“Every time you communicate, you are either adding value, or taking up space.”– Sally Hogshead
About Sally
Named 2016’s #1 branding guru, Sally Hogshead is a speaker and author who founded her own ad agency by age 27 and had an award-winning advertising career before diving into the science of fascination. Sally lives in Orlando, Florida. She first appeared on my radar when I was starting Fetchlight and I received a promo code for free in-depth fascination personality test results with one of the many “starting a business” online courses I completed.
About the Fascination Personality Test
“10 years of research. 28 questions. 5 minutes of your time. 1 you.”
After studying 700,000 people, this short test was created based on seven personality “Advantages”. These Advantages are based on the 2007 study commissioned by Hogshead which found there are seven ways that a person’s brain can be captivated. At first, the study was used to show how major brands caught the attention of audiences, but in 2010 the same research was applied to individual people. Each test result gives you a primary and secondary advantage, which together create 1 of 49 possible personality Archetypes.
“The idea of the assessment is based on Hogshead’s concept of “fascination” which she uses to describe intense focus. The assessment serves as a guide to show individuals how to communicate better using their best-suited triggers. The test treats the individual as though he or she were a brand.” – Wikipedia
My Results
I have taken this test several times and my results differed slightly every time – there is a lot going on in my head! The top Advantage in the most recent test was Prestige, and secondary Advantages were tied between Passion and Innovation.
Prestige personalities are ambitious, results-oriented, and respected. They are “conscientious of the smallest details” and “expect [the] highest quality deliverables from self and others”. Prestige personalities add value by being recognized as an achiever or expert, influencing people with high expectations, and envisioning ways to improve and upgrade. “Your primary PRESTIGE Advantage means that you naturally seek the next level of accomplishment.” Yes. This is true.
A Passion personality is described as expressive, intuitive and engaging. They are described as a people person, which I didn’t really identify with but it is interesting if people see me that way (according to the test). An Innovation personality is described as creative, visionary, and entrepreneurial, which I identified with more.
A Prestige primary advantage combined with a Passion secondary advantage form an archetype known as The Connoisseur, who is described as insightful, distinguished, in the know, admired, and well-groomed.
A Prestige primary advantage combined with an Innovation secondary advantage form the archetype of The Avant-Garde, described as original, enterprising, and forward-thinking.
Make Your Tagline or Anthem
“Just like an advertising tagline, your Anthem pinpoints what makes you most valuable…When you’re confident and authentic, you’re more likely to impress and influence your listener.”
An Anthem is two or three words made up of an adjective from the list provided in your test results for your archetype (or synonyms of them), and a noun describing what you do, such as “in-the-know opinions”. Sally’s books and website provide more in-depth explanations and a list of helpful nouns to help describe your most unique strengths.
“You need a simple, persuasive phrase to confidently describe how you are most likely to add value. And you need to do it in roughly 9 seconds, to fit within the average attention span. Otherwise you’ll lose your listener’s attention.” – Sally Hogshead
My Tagline or Anthem: Innovative Ideas. Stylish Solutions.
Unfortunately, I think I used the analog method of scribbling lots of words on paper when creating my tagline last year, all the different words I used in different combinations. Believe me, I searched my computers, hard drives, and paper notebooks still in existence to try to find it while writing this post, but I think it was decluttered long ago.
I used a combination of the words given on the website and book to create the tagline, and because my test results were tied or changing, I hoped it was OK to use four words instead of two or three. The word “innovative” is a fairly obvious adjective from the innovative personality type, and the noun “ideas” describes what I am able to provide a lot of – I am never short of ideas! I have too many ideas to act on myself so am happy to share ideas for helping others solve their problems as well. I think I am a creative problem solver who can provide solutions to many kinds of problems, not just in design or photography work, but in all kinds of situations. The word “stylish” is in the adjectives list when passion and prestige are switched, secondary to primary, which is a word I identified with since design and style are very important to me in all aspects of life and business. Providing myself and other people with solutions (the final noun) makes me feel fulfilled, and is also one less word than “problem-solving”.
This test and tagline/anthem creation was completed as I was refining my “Why” map, an exercise that a business coach assigned at one point, which I revisit every year. “Why” describes why I do anything, why I like to do what I like to do. My biggest “Why” categories are creating (making things), improving (making things better), and discovering/exploring (finding new things, the latest and greatest). This was very helpful in reinforcing that I found an accurate tagline for my personal brand. “Innovative Ideas. Stylish Solutions.” succinctly describes creative problem-solving in many aspects of business, including creatively solving problems within strict deadlines and budgets, with great attention to detail and design.
If I have ever given you an innovative idea or stylish solution to a problem, I would love to hear about it in the comments!
Read More
Buy Sally’s books on Amazon
Reserve books at the San Diego Library
(While linking this, I saw she wrote a career book as well, now on hold, score!)