Leadership Branding

Julie Hodges from Durham University and I are exploring the use of Ulrich and Smallwood's introduction of the term, 'leadership branding' into HR. For those not familiar with the notion, it focuses on how an organization wants to position its leadership and governance idenity with customers, investors, media and, importantly, employees. Julie has been exploring the use of leadership branding in a piece of action research with a major multinational and we are in the process of writing this work up for publication (suitably anonymised).

We are interested in hearing from anyone who has experience of leadership branding, either as having been involved in the design and implementation phase or as an employee? What was your experience? Or, it this just another brand extension too far?