Personal Branding

Personal Branding In today’s digital economy, personal branding is more important than ever. Whether they recognize it or not, everyone has a personal brand. That brand needs to be managed strategically—and authentically.

Jeff D. Brazell

Steve R. Brazell

University of Utah

Hitman, Inc.

February, 2022

Everyone we meet has an impression of us. Whether we just walked into the room, chatted for a few minutes, read someone’s LinkedIn profile, exchanged emails, or were old friends. We can think of that overall impression as our brand.

So what’s a personal brand?

In business, people can confuse brands with logos, slogans, or other recognizable marks.

But the Nike swoosh isn’t Nike, and the Disneyland castle isn’t Disney. Instead, a brand is an intangible bundle of meaning that helps people identify a company, product, or individual. Is it the logo, shape of a bottle, the color of the box, or the smell of the fries? Yes. Is it the way you dress, the way you talk, the way you listen? Yes, it can be all these things and more.

All of us need to understand the importance of branding.

We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. –Tom Peters

A brand is the bundle of things you believe to be true about a person, place, or thing. A personal brand is the bundle of meaning created by our personalities, our combination of skills and experiences, how we interact with others, and how we present ourselves to the world.

We all have a brand, whether we consciously recognize it or not. As Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said, “your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

Company and product branding help people identify and recognize products and services. They help people differentiate products from the competition, connect with customers emotionally, and tell consumers what to expect.

Personal brands do the same for us as individuals.

Why is a personal brand so important?

Brands help simplify and categorize our world to make choices easier. The world is filled with products and people, and the only way to make sense of all the complexity is to categorize them. The ability to form categories is a central component of human cognition. We take in countless details with every glance, sound, or touch. As we categorize our world, we look for what is new, what is different, and what has changed. We try to match the new information to existing categories in our minds, and when we find a category that seems to fit, we drop it into that bucket. We have rules that tell us how to deal with each category. For example: Ice cream => only sold in pints => expensive => probably premium ice cream and good to eat Gossip monger => shares confidential information and spreads rumors => avoid

As humans, we categorize everything around us to make our choices easier, including people.

People who went to law school, passed the bar, and work as attorneys are “lawyers.” People who graduated from medical school and practice medicine are “doctors.” People use our brand to categorize us, and the bucket they put us in can affect our lives significantly. For example:

0%

• If our name as the sender of an email promises the recipient’s value, they will spend time reading the message.

Employers who use social media to screen

30 %

• 70% of employers use social media to screen hires. That means that our brand, as told on social media, will impact whether we get the job.

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So, we all have a personal brand, and that brand allows people to categorize us into buckets. These buckets allow people to decide how they will interact with us. Now what?

Use social to screen Don’t use social to screen

How can we manage our brand strategically?

Building and managing our brand shares similarities and differences to building a business or product brand. We say manage, not create, for a reason. Many people make the mistake of thinking their brand can be created.

Product brands can be created because products are created. Products are created on marketing principles that suggest who the product should serve, what needs it will fill, and what it will do. Once a product is created to fulfill specific benefits, the brand is then created to support the product. But, this process does not work with personal brands. We come with personality traits, preferred ways of communicating and interacting, cultural background, a set of skills, strengths and weaknesses, education, experience, and all the rest. It’s possible to develop new skills and grow personally and professionally, but those who do so to create a brand are doomed to fail. Sooner or later, if your brand doesn’t match reality, you won’t be able to maintain it, and it will come crashing down. We’ve all seen those people on Instagram and Facebook who fashion a personal brand completely different from reality. We probably think “that’s fake” long before we find out that, yep, it was fake.

So, the best place to start is to think of ourselves as a “product” that is mostly complete. That means our job is to find the best way to promote and market “me” by understanding the unique value we represent. Then we need to communicate that value to the world as a brand — our unique bundle of meaning.

Begin with self-analysis — understanding ourselves. What do I value? What am I good at?

What am I not good at? What experience do I have? What are my core values and competencies?

What do I hate? Love? What makes me different? How do I stand out? Why do people come to me? What would my colleagues or clients say are my strengths? What are my most noteworthy traits?

As we go through the self-analysis process, most people find it helpful to ask friends and colleagues some of these questions — like doing market research for products. We will often be surprised by the answers.

I hate it when people talk about personal brand. Those words imply that people need to adopt identities that are artificial and plastic and packaged, when what actually works is authenticity.

–Shelly Lazarus

Next, we should map some of our “features” to the benefits they provide. For example, suppose one of my strengths is anticipating and solving problems before they become crises. In that case, I’m delivering the benefit of saving customers and clients money and headaches by having me on the team. Likewise, if I always complete projects within the allotted budget, I’m providing a much-loved benefit of avoiding cost overruns.

Next, translate your answers to these questions into descriptors that capture the remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value that we bring to the table. For example, what do we do that we are most proud of? What have we accomplished that we can talk about? What do we want to be famous for?

Finally, it’s time to wrap it all into the meaning we communicate to clients, customers, colleagues, and our virtual networks — and to get others to spread the word through word-of-mouth.

Initially, there are four questions people have about us.

1. Who are you? Our names carry meaning that can affect the perception of our brand. For one group, “Jimmy” might be what I want to convey. For another, “James” would serve better.

2. What do you do? The answer to this question highly influences the category people assign to us. Therefore, we need to quickly and clearly articulate what we do.

3. Is this person valuable to me? As we explain what we do, we need to identify the attributes that are either valuable to the market or to the person we’re talking to. For example, “I’m a doctor, and my team is on the cutting edge of treating viruses like COVID-19” both clearly explains a category and how the person might be of value. Using the term “cutting edge” positions the speaker as a leader in the field.

4. Why should I believe them? Our final introduction may sound something like this, “I’m Dr. James Murphy. My team is on the cutting edge of treating viruses like COVID-19. I graduated from Harvard Medical School and interned in the Mayo Clinic’s virology department.” Here, we’d be using brand association to link ourselves with Harvard and Mayo. In a different setting, the same person might say, “Hi, I’m Jimmy. I played some guard in college and was the three-point champion my senior year.” This example avoids the brand association references that work in the professional world but might not play well with a pick-up basketball group.

Remember that everything we do communicates the value and character of our brand. So, it’s not enough to get our introduction right. How we write/respond to an email, talk on the phone, interact in meetings, dress, react to a stressful situation, post on LinkedIn profiles are all a part of the message we’re sending about our brand.

Both substance and style make a difference. Do our written communications demonstrate a command of the technology and subject? In meetings, are we short and to the point? Or do others dread when we take the floor? Given all our day-to-day actions, what are we famous for?

We should also actively leverage our strengths and skills into our brand-building campaign. For example, if one of our strengths is public speaking, we might speak at a conference. If we’re better at writing, we might start a blog or write a column for our company’s site. If we love to teach, we might try leading a seminar at our company or a class at a community college. The key is to get visibility in a way that communicates the bundle of meaning for which we want to be known.

All of us should take a regular look at our digital presence and do auditing to ensure our online image is consistent with the brand we’re delivering elsewhere. Again, the goal is not to “create” a false image but to ensure our online message is consistent with the brand we’re managing.

It’s important to be consistent with our “message” wherever we are. Like product brands, it takes five to seven impressions for someone to remember us, and 87% of customers think brands should work harder at delivering a consistent experience. So, consistency, consistency, consistency.

We are all brands, and our brand matters in our dynamic, digital world more than ever. Because we are all so different and define success differently, there is no one path we should take.

However, studies have shown that those who actively manage their brands (and work to match their values and competencies with their organizations and customers) increase both tangible and intangible measures of success.

References Brand, Will Kenton, Investopedia, September 6, 2021 *Career Builder poll by The Harris Poll among 1,012 hiring and human resource managers weighted where necessary by company size and job level, August 09, 2018 The Brand Called You, Tom Peters, Fast Company, August 31, 1997 The Former CEO of Olgivy & Mather on Personal Branding, by Joan Solotar, HBR.org, July 29, 2014 Why Personal Branding Is More Important Than Ever, Caroline Castrillon, Forbes, February 12, 2019 Why Categorize?, Susan Feldman, KMWorld, October 1, 2004