Personal Branding doesn't work in 2022 - It needs a rethink.

Personal brands have lost their way.

The irony of this piece does not escape me, I hold my hand up. I am a result of personal branding to some extent. Sadly I have fallen out of love with it. Let me explain why.

Background

Tom Peters penned his book in 1997 at a time when countless thousands worked in corporate America. The subtitle shows the emphasis, to move up you have to stand out. It is a way to get recruited and is rooted in being in employment and not self deployed. So why be a slave to the career path? Reinvent yourself, have regular mission statement reviews, set new horizons.

Brands dominate our lives, Nike was used often as an example, Just Do it, on how to get seen. So why not Brand yourself? Power shoulders, lunch is for wimps, greed is good type attitudes dominated, so being powerful was part of the culture.

So far so good, the idea is sound in principle.

Personal Branding worked in a sea of corporate sameness. It was novel, different, it was easier to be that taller sun flower that brighter spark with some clever personal attributes that were marketed to prospective employers.

Few people worked for themselves , there was no entrepreneurial zest, it was not fashionable to branch out on your own, to be the driver of your own financial destiny. This factor in itself made the message easier to use.

Fast Forward

25 years on in 2022 we have seen so many changes.

Web revolution in the internet, personal communications, Social Media, ease of networking and COVID. The latter doing more in my mind than anything else to shake up how things are done. It made the old rule book no longer valid. The sadness is that so many are sticking it back together with sellotape and fondness for what was and not the reality of what is.

Brand You was about visibility, rising above the herd to be heard and noticed. Brand Now is about the same things but forgetting that a visibility revolution allowed us to be just that and sadly at the same time hidden in plain sight.

Where's Wally or Waldo depending on where you are was a very popular series of illustrations and books by Martin Handford originating in 1987, now in 19 different languages.

Still very popular have to say and have a few myself. The point is that we are looking for a distinctive person in a crowd, searching for a stand out image, maybe someone who is lost in the picture, literally lost and out of context.

Brand You worked well as a mechanism to get you seen and not be that Wally lost in a crowd. We have all become Wally, dressed in the same language that everyone knows but ignores.

2022 Reality.

More people are self deployed than ever, this is economic, cultural and pandemic fuelled. COVID has made people realise that working from home or for themselves is now possible. Everyone's and entrepreneur it seems. Firms are releasing more 50 plus people than ever before, the pension time bomb as well as COVID has nudged this one along sadly.

Simply put there are more of us running our own businesses than ever before, by choice or by circumstances beyond our control. Being an "entrepreneur" is fashionable, its in, we are all Gary Vee, Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey rolled into one. We are this close to going on Dragons Den and getting backing, this time next year Rodney...

Twist

Here's the twist, the internet and social and platforms like this one have given us unprecedented visibility. So much so that we are without doubt hidden in plain view. We are all Wally now, waving and making the same noise that getting seen or heard is harder than ever, not easier. We have blanded in and become the crowd whilst still having to be players in the Attention Economy.

DNA

In my view the reliance and popularity of personal branding flies in the face of what the original approach stood for. There are too many experts who are self anointed, have little brand foot print themselves preaching their spin on how to do this business critical aspect of being in business. Its fashionable to be a personal brand expert without the proven expertise to deliver. The amount of times I see posts that have woolly advice and tips from writers with handfuls of followers and no proof of concept.

The 4 Pillars of Brand You are, one, you have to be a great teammate and supportive colleague. Secondly you have to an expert at something that has real value. Thirdly, this one I'm not sure worked then never mind now, you have to be a visionary, an "imagineer". Fourthly, and the crucial one, you've got to be a business person obsessed with pragmatic outcomes.

I think none of the above are part of modern personal branding where expertise is fluffy advice, where the business takes second place to the image. Posturing replaces profits and the Emperors New Clothes of the modern era.

People Buy from People

Massively over used in my view. People buy into people long before they buy from them but rarely use the personal element as a spending criteria. My local garage is run by a real lout, he's objectionable, rude and can be abrasive. As personal attributes go they stink.

I take my car there every time. Why? because he can do things to engines very few people can. He gets them, he can fix them. he delivers at a price that is good and you know that it is a fix not a patch. I buy his services DNA not him.

He delivers Dependable Notable Advantage, his DNA is brilliant, strong and I care nothing for his rudeness or lack of PC manners, sad, but my car is a necessity and his services keep me mobile.

He delivers DNA in spades. He is Distinctive, Noticeable and Adaptable, the adaptability being key. He does tyres, picks up the car and delivers it back. Things people want and are willing to pay for. Remember Clinton's Cards and their failure to notice the impact of Moon Pig? Polaroid and the abject business error of not seeing how digital photography was killing their core business. Polaroid owned instant photography branding and the generic sector tag and still blew it. Yellow Pages ignored the internet and the irony of a business promoting business was killed by a medium that made promoting business easier. They watched it happen. BlockBuster is another classic business being the victim of change that was obvious to everyone else and not them. Netflix came from nowhere and won.

??Personal Branding paints you into a corner, it's limiting, it makes change difficult. A generalisation maybe but based on truth. I am known as the LinkedIn Unlocker, great, but it is getting in the way of me delivering a wider service of business development and marketing. I am moving towards the Unlocker which in itself is a bit Wallyish, People buy into me not a handle, a name.

I do think its all about adaptability, we have to be open and ready to make changes and go with the flow. We are about to witness some very trying times.

Oscar Wilde said that if we know what we want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is our punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. Stephen Fry talked about being verbs not nouns borrowing from the quote by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In business we need to sell what we do as much if not more than who we are.

Knowing me is not crucial to spending money with me.

We need to be adaptable to customers needs and the change in the market.

??Cheesy as it may sound but be careful for what you are noun for and always verbalise how you help solve the problem that your customer has over being different. Be evolutionary and adjust to what is and less prescriptive as to what you are.

??As wonderful as Tenacious, Energised, Resilient, Experimental are and how phrases like "Be a unicorn in a sea of donkeys" grab attention think about what the business is that you deliver. When people do business they will see you are the business.

?Long article so if you get to here thank you and would love to hear any feedback.?

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