Why Building a Personal Brand Can Hurt You — Master Publicity Instead

What we talked about.

Sunny Ray talks with Justin Oberman, founder of Oberman and Partners, about the difference between personal branding and true publicity. Oberman explains how his firm acts as an old school Hollywood style publicist, helping executives, founders, and celebrities make news rather than simply report it. He traces his philosophy back to his insurance broker father's belief that if you can sell yourself, you can sell anything, and to his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who became a circus trapeze catcher and later helped wire the Statue of Liberty. Oberman describes leaving the family insurance business to study advertising, breaking through with a Dixon Ticonderoga pencil campaign that led to relaunching the legendary Blackwing pencil, and how a mentor's advice to start in direct mail reshaped his approach to brand response advertising. The conversation blends family history, advertising craft, and hard won lessons on persuasion, offering listeners a grounded look at what real publicity requires.

A publicist explains why chasing a personal brand is the wrong game and how to actually make news instead.

The questions, and the answers.

Tell me a little about what you guys do at Oberman and Partners.

We started as an ad agency and evolved into personal publicists, mostly for high level executives, founders, marketing minded CEOs, record labels, mortgage companies, and celebrities entering the business world. Our approach is more inbound than outbound, closer to old school Hollywood publicists. Instead of covering our clients' boring news, we get them to make their own news and do exciting things to earn attention, both on and off social media.

You're the fourth generation of an insurance family. What did dinner table conversation sound like growing up?

My father ran a business with about 20 people, so I grew up understanding what it takes to run one. His strength was sales and he loved games, like refusing to leave a restaurant until he got an unsmiling waiter to smile. He trained me under the Dale Carnegie philosophy. His main lesson was that if you can sell yourself, you can sell anything, whether it's insurance, cars, or hats.

Your grandfather survived the camps and started over cleaning up after circus elephants in America. How does that story sit with you?

He was half Jewish, sent to Dachau, and nearly died of tuberculosis before liberation. He came to America, joined his uncle's circus cleaning up after elephants, and one day was told to fill in as a trapeze catcher. He did that for five years, then started his own electricity company that helped wire the Statue of Liberty. He could have given up after everything he survived, but he went up there anyway.

What's the one Stewism you live by today?

In terms of work it is very much if you can sell yourself, you can sell anything.

Walk me back to the moment you knew you couldn't stay in the family business.

My father put me in charge of marketing since the firm had never really done much of it, and I entered a flow state working on it. My brother was the straight and narrow one, already established there, and wasn't going to push new ideas. I had grown up around a recording studio and an ad agency creative director, so one day I just said I wanted to try advertising and quit.

What was the first piece of copy you wrote that made you think, yeah, this is the thing?

In ad school we made a poster for Dixon Ticonderoga pencils based on watching people at Staples grab cheap pencils without thinking. I wrote that we make the world's greatest pencils, we should know, backed with real physics data on pencil strength. It won a student award, pencil bloggers picked it up, and it led to relaunching the legendary Blackwing pencil with coverage in the New York Times and New Yorker.

David Ogilvy said every copywriter should start in direct mail. Was he right? How did that idea shape your career?

I asked to transfer into my agency's direct mail department and my mentor had me hand copy the ten best direct mail letters ever written, every day for a week, before giving me an assignment. Something clicked and I absorbed the structure almost subconsciously. That skill carried into email marketing and eventually into what I call brand response advertising, blending brand philosophy with direct response principles.