There is an adage that says, “the more important a person is, the more likely they are to be polite and open-hearted.”
If there were ever a personal brand to prove that rule, it’s Layer3 TV’s Eric Kuhn.
Currently in Marketing and Business Development at Layer3 TV, Eric Kuhn was the Social Media Agent at United Talent Agency (UTA) from January 2011 to December 2013. Prior to that, he was the Audience Interaction Producer at CNN, where he created and produced programs and pioneered “two screen experiences.” Previous to CNN, as a marketing and new media consultant for the NBA, Eric grew @NBA from zero to 1 million followers.
At 24 years of age, at the start of his UTA tenure, Eric Kuhn was named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” in entertainment, for having “revolutionized social networking” at major brands.
So, you can imagine my curiosity when Eric Kuhn called my office last week.
He turns out to sound almost exactly like MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. They both speak with a friendly, yet uncommon wisdom. They evoke the thought: these two are voices of leadership for their generation and beyond.
If I used the ShoutBRAND personal branding triad, I’d say Eric Kuhn is smart, inventive, and generous. His past is stellar and his future is limitless.
This is hugely important to me plus all the people who will ever type “Eric Kuhn” into a search engine. Why? That’s the reason he called.
Two weeks ago in a blog post, I misrepresented Eric Kuhn’s work history when I was discussing the rise and institutionalization of Twitter as a fundamental job skill. I simply recollected Eric Kuhn’s early prowess in social media, rather than fact check the positions he held.
Because as many as 420 media outlets cover my blog and me: when I make a mistake it can be pandemic.
To clue me in that I had erred and to see how I could go about making the correction, Eric reached out to me. We had such a rich conversation before he introduced the mission critical subject; I thought how lucky I was to make his acquaintance. Of course, I wish it had been under better circumstances!
As the former host of International Business on public radio, I’ve spoken to many of the world’s most important people in business, politics, labor and government. Almost to a person, they were intelligent, engaging and congenial.
Eric Kuhn is certainly of that caliber. I apologized to him directly, and I want to apologize to readers and editors for my error. Please update your columns, clip files and thoughts, if I have not yet reached you directly to make the correction about his work history as it appears on my blog post on or about April 28, 2015, “If You Can Tweet, You Can Eat.”
As we know from neuroscience, mistakes we correct make the biggest impressions on our brains. This time it’s one of the best impressions.
