Elaine Follis: A Personal Brand Seen in the Obituaries
Posted by Rahna on March 20, 2008 under Personal Branding | 
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This week, I received the sad news that one of my favorite college professors had passed on, and I can’t help but reflect on what a HUGE brand Dr. Elaine Follis was. For more than 30 years, she taught Religious Studies at the small liberal arts college I attended. Her reputation for storytelling was strong enough to convince everyone from Business Administration majors to Art History majors to get on a waiting list to take Old Testament.   In the class, she communicated facts about Biblical history, but more importantly, she inspired students by elucidating the modern-day relevance of Bible stories to our lives. Elaine Follis always had a way to answer the “So What?†question about (seemingly) ancient, boring, stuffy old stories about building the walls of Jericho or the Biblical figure Jeremiah.
So why am I writing this in a marketing blog? Because if you were to ask any of the (literally) tens of thousands of people whose lives she touched what her influence was, you would get similar answers. This woman had such a strong brand; she knew what she was about, and she just did it CONSISTENTLY. Her brand remained the same throughout her lifetime.Â
After college, I continued to keep in touch with her by phone, and over the past few years, she broadcast podcasts. Whether talking to her on the phone, listening to her podcasts, or sitting in her lecture hall, Elaine Follis was always the same: engaging, funny, self-deprecating, approachable, interesting, passionate, and brilliant. That’s a pretty strong personal brand. Here’s what the Boston Globe obituary said:
I teach about personal branding, and one of the exercises is to think about what you would like people to say about you in your obituary. Morbid, perhaps, but instructive. So I have two thoughts for today:
·        Think about what you are (and what you would like to be known for), and be that…consistently.Â
·        Respect other people’s personal brands and celebrate what other people bring to you…while you can.
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