« Exit, Stage Right | Main | Time, Treasure or Talent - A New Fundraising Blog »
On Building Personal Brand
As the notion of applying branding principles to an individual has gained currency and momentum - and it has a LOT of momentum these days - I've pondered whether this idea simply re-purposes an established strategy for another audience niche - individuals - or if the idea really has merit.
According to Business Week's Building a Brand Called Me, "one need only type in the words 'sell' + 'yourself' in a few search engines to realize the scale of existing knowledge on the subject -- over 2,000 products on Amazon.com and at least 72,000 Web sites listed on Google."
Does "Brand You" cleverly repackage the branding concept to open new markets and new opportunities? The cynic inside me answers with a strong "Yes," but that doesn't mean that there isn't some merit in the idea. However, I believe that the idea's merit is more metaphorical than real.
When one considers applying brand strategy to a person, the substantive question one must answer is this:
Is brand strategy scalable to an individual? If so, how will the strategy create marketplace leverage for the person applying it? Does the application create value?
Before going further with this, let me take a moment to define what effective branding is all about.
Brand strategy is an organizational analog for a human identity. In other words, branding is all about taking something that isn't human and giving it human dimensions - ideally unique, likable, and attractive dimensions.
So, the application of branding strategy to an individual is to construct a human identity for a real human being. When it comes to creating value, at least there's humor here.
Personal branding firms will quite sincerely tell you that you - a person - are a product when it comes to marketing you. And that you should treat yourself as a product. So, now that you are established as "a product," you must get to work and give that product some human - or personal - attributes. As Yogi Berra might quip, "It's deja vu all over again."
On a more serious note, I think what matters here is not what we call the strategy set (branding), but whether or not the strategy set will create value through its application.
To that question, I answer "Yes." Having answered yes, it is with some reluctance and with qualifications.
Qualification No. 1 - Be Real.
Trust and authenticity are two values that most consumers today hold dear. I would go so far as to call them cardinal values. Most people, when they construct what they think is a marketable identity for themselves, pump up the good and downplay the bad to the point that what they create is a caricature of themselves.
They turn themselves into a brand promise that is not only not credible, but is also not keepable. Fundamentally, a brand is a promise. Making a promise that you can't keep is nothing more than that old road to hell that is paved with good intentions. If you're going to treat yourself as a personal brand, remember just how important authenticity is to any consumer target market.
Qualification No. 2 - Respect Yourself.
Most of us, from the time we were little, have been taught by well-meaning parents and Sunday school teachers that we will only be loved for what is good about ourselves and never for what is bad.
Since most of us go through life seeking love and approval, we spend a lot of time coping with guilt, shame, and other crippling psychological pathologies. Learning to accept and cope with one's foibles and weaknesses is way down on the self-actualization agenda. So, many of us are not well-practiced in real self-respect. We are quite practiced in respecting what is good about ourselves, and loathing what is bad.
Here's a newsflash: What's not so good about us is often much more visible (and irritating) than what we consider good.
If you think your weaknesses are your secret, I'd urge you to reconsider. The most successful people I know have cultivated a certain gentle affection for those parts of themselves that ail them. This affection - which comes across as acknowledgment and humility - creates trust in those who know us as imperfect beings. There are no values so strategically vital in building a personal brand as: credible, trustworthy, and reliable. These are cardinal personal brand values that will get you a lot more traction in your personal and professional lives than will intelligence, diligence, and energy - though these things are important, too.
I have a close friend and colleague who is quite simply a brilliant professional. He lives and works in a small city in the Southern United States and has diligently, if impatiently, built his business and reputation into quite the enterprise. In my business, I work with a lot of people in his category - most good, some very good, and occasionally some great. This guy is not only good, he's great. He's world-class, but doesn't really accept it - not in his bones, anyway.
We have co-presented on occasion and he is always comparing his style to mine. I'm a very skilled presenter; having been on stage for 20+ years, I can sense an audience. I have a big and forceful personality and I project a lot of confidence. People who prefer a more modest style would call me a "blowhard," and sometimes they're right. But, I'm an entertaining and energetic blowhard.
My friend, who is soft-spoken and mild-mannered, thinks he would be more effective if his style were more like mine. The truth is that his understated, gentle, and congenial style are incredibly effective. He flies under the "bullshit radar" so effectively that clients listen keenly to what he says. I've told him often to forget trying to be bigger and bolder, and to focus more on being himself. When we co-present, we are amazingly effective. We run the style-gamut and the contrast works well. If either of us moved more toward the other's "brand," it wouldn't serve either of us.
What I'm trying to underscore here is that while you might consider particular traits weaknesses, there are those who would consider them strengths. If you start tinkering with who you authentically are - for brand-building reasons - you run the risk of losing something precious and gaining little or nothing in return. It's very important to start from a place of self-respect.
Qualification No. 3 - Get Others Involved.
We've all seen television shows that advise us "not to try this at home." When it comes to building a personal brand, doing this for yourself - without some objective counsel - may cause serious injury.
Think about it. The subjective concept wouldn't exist if you could be objective about yourself. Great brands blend the objective and the subjective. They capture and communicate idiosyncratic elements that are experienced as human and endearing. How aware are you of your own idiosyncrasies? How skillful are you at crafting communications that signal them?
If you insist on doing this for yourself - and you probably will consider it if you are the type of person to intentionally undertake a personal branding campaign - find a way to involve an array of other people who can lend insights as to what your brand is and/or should be.
But, do not - I repeat - do NOT interview these people yourself after you've identified them.
People are not going to tell you to your face that you are a geek. Or that you wear loud ties. Or that you use too much makeup, etc. They also will not tell you the really good stuff. Giving extravagant compliments, even when they are deserved, is something that makes many people uncomfortable.
If you want to get this information, you've got to engage someone else in your brand discovery process. They're going to have to make appointments, interview your respondent set, do the sense-making work, and create a distillation of the findings.
Once you get this information, it's up to you to listen. Remember this: a brand doesn't live in a product or a person. It lives in the minds of the audience or target market. In short, it isn't about you, it's about them. What they think about you. You need a way to locate and benchmark your existing brand before you start trying to re-map it.
Qualification No. 4 - Stay Real
If you decided to build a personal brand, you're building a promise - a BIG promise. (Actually, you're building a set of promises.)
Understand this: you may seriously complicate your life. The brand that you create, if you fully operationalize it, could put you on a set of self-improvement programs that will make those person-building programs employed by the United States Marine Corps pale by comparison.
The only way to ensure that the brand you build is deliverable is to 1) make it real, 2) don't over-reach, and 3) construct a plan of real action items that will ensure that you deliver on your promise.
It is that plan that will ensure that you "Stay Real."
Posted on November 28, 2006 09:11 AM | Permalink
Bookmark with: 
del.icio.us, 
StumbleUpon, 
digg
Comments
Great advice, Neill. Anyone who has any interaction at all with people is already a brand -- it may be the Brand Called Sloppy, or the Brand Called Brilliant, but no one has control over it until they start to pay attention to what others see in them. The great Tom Peters described it back in 1997 in "The Brand Called You:" http://www.fastcompany.com/online/10/brandyou.html