You are a Product

The packaging of a product is sometimes more important than the product itself. Take for examples albums and cassettes. Recording companies spend more on the cover than the actual tape or CD that is, more on pictures, printing and the graphics goes into the production. The album will not sell regardless of how good it is unless it looks good.

Research have found out that people will simply buy a product because of the package it comes in, have you ever noticed how manufacturers are so extravagant with labels on cloths? Some clothe have silk labels with very elegant writing. The label could last 50 years while the clothe will just last 5 months. The packaging and label is the tool with which the manufacturers project their product into the mind of the prospective buyers.

You are a product and there is something in you that your world is so much in need of. In most cases they don’t know it’s inside of you. Here is where packaging coming in and what does that entail; put yourself together, play around your passion, strength and interest. Get information on such areas, package them into good or service! I just heard you asked ‘Is it that easy?’ Yes, because it’s worth it.  

So many young people carry crowded brains about. Crowded with inspired life changing ideas but will not do anything about it, until it expires. If for example your interest is event management, start with a street or departmental, age-group, carnival, show, concert, competition just name it. Don’t snuff yourself with writing a nationwide reality show script. Yes, that where you are going but start small to gain experience and credibility.

If your interest is dancing, it doesn’t matter if you are currently studying law in the university, join a dance group or organize one, watch steps from clips and video, offer to dancer free in some events or at low charge, read about your model dance-group or dance hero, how they came to prominence. Give time to rehearsals, and watch your diet. In short, give everything your vision deserves to see it actualized.

For professionals who want to work with an organization in their field, one of the questions you will sure get from the interview panel is ‘what can you do for us?’ indirectly they are asking what value can you add to our organization or simply put what’s your value. It is a question that also probes to know what you have done with/on yourself to make you deserve a place at the expense of others.

Most young people don’t know their value in workplace because they really don’t have much, not in terms of experience now but the initial know-how! “If I cannot proof myself my HR cannot approve,” that’s an American company’s slogan that was coined to regulate the employee-HR relationship.

There is rarely any product in the market that those not have a substitute, but packaging and quality separate buyers’ choices. Quality is quantity processed and approved. So it not only about the number of credentials you compile, it really about the result you get when it is tested in the furnace of work-place. Have you ever observed that employers are more willing to acquire products that will enhance their business than pay salaries of their employee? And in the mist of what will seem as extravagance to employee they slash salaries and owe allowances. If you present yourself as an indispensable product you’ll be treated as such. If I understand my business gets a staggering blow from losing you, and then I don’t mess with you!

I strongly, agree with Fela Durotoye who categorized labour force into The Available and The Desirable. Unfortunately most actors in work place belong to the former. True to that axiom which says, “when ‘The Desirable’ is not available ‘The Available’ becomes desirable’. So many forgetting that they are filling in the gap for someone go permanently into complacence-mood and when the next down-sizing hurricane comes they get eroded and push blames to some household enemy!

How do you command higher value with your passion and at workplace? How do you become and remain a hot cake for your employee? How do you get a pay-rise at sunrise?