We’re all familiar with the concept of brands and branding, and we all ‘touch’ hundreds of brands every day – whether it’s our phone, the car, washing powder or the latest training shoes – they are ubiquitous. Many of us also realise that to varying degrees many brands are more than just the sum of the product and the organisation that makes or delivers them. The higher up the value-chain you go, the more likely it is that companies invest heavily to develop, promote and grow their brands and the price you pay for many premium brands will be exponentially more that the additional cost to manufacture the product or deliver the service.
A recent survey by consumer champion Which?, rated Lidl’s own-brand soap powder the best one on the market, even though it was less than half the price of the next best, Ariel. Clearly, quite a lot of what you pay for Ariel is the ‘premium’ for a (perceived) quality brand. What you are actually paying for is the enormous advertising and brand budgets that the likes of Proctor and Gamble spend on convincing us that theirs is the better product.
So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that over the past 20 years, the concept of a ‘Personal Brand’ has slowly been developing and becoming a core part of many marketing and business studies curricula. The theory behind the concept is that, with some thoughtful planning and maybe a little investment, people can create their own personal brand and ‘brand premium’ which will help them stand out from the crowd, be more successful, get better jobs and ultimately make them richer! All sound a bit Californian? Of course it is! The idea was first used and discussed in a 1997 article by business guru Tom Peters.
Here’s a definition: “Personal branding is the ongoing process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual”
Now, each of us already has a brand out there in the ether. These days, it’s largely defined by our online presence, our social media posts, photographs and drunken Facebook rants – they all help define us in the eyes of an audience. Yet many ‘offline’ things also say a lot about us and hence shape ‘Brand YOU’: your car; where you live; what aftershave/perfume you wear; those Manolo Blahnik heels or Prada eye wear all say something about you. All a bit obvious? It is, but many of the choices we all make in terms of our image or profile have hitherto tended to be unconscious and are largely unplanned in a strategic sense. The key thing about personal branding is that we make a conscious effort to ponder, develop and document our own brand, then invest time and money in order to reach our brand goal – the process makes us more conscious of who we are and crucially, how we want to be perceived by other people. It’s in this sense that it adds a level of strategic planning into our personal lives.
Personal branding suggests we follow a process similar to that of a product or organisational brand, setting out a clear vision of who we are, who we want to be, and what do we want to be known for in the next 10 – 20 years. This vision statement, like a corporate one, combines your purpose, values and aspirations, as well as a view of what you want to achieve.
Having defined the goal, you then take a look at where you are now, and build a roadmap to get from A to B. This will likely include professional training, experiential elements, maybe certain jobs, but also some deep work on your own personality – your own motivations, issues, attitudes and values. This is really important as so many people are great at what they do, but poor at communication and engagement – this reduces their attractiveness to others, including employers and hence reduces their value. Brands are as much about emotional connections as they are about your career and life expertise, so acknowledging and working on the inner control freak/bully/workaholic/self obsession and making sure you come across as authentic is as important as attaining the MBA!