Why I'm Rethinking the Personal Brand

I have loved the idea of branding forever.? I am fascinated by the power of marketing and the craft that is brand management.??

Early in my career, knee deep in CPG insights, I dreamed about one day managing “people brands,” like singers and actors.? This sounded more interesting and glamorous compared to the grocery store brands I was working on!? Back then I did not know that managing “people brands” was a real thing.? I thought I had made up a new idea.??

Certainly I had never heard of personal branding.???

Over those early years of my career I enjoyed learning about the basics of brand management and what it takes to build a successful brand.? One day a manager at my company told me that the same brand development process I was using for Downy and Pampers could be applied to ME.? I couldn’t wait to try it.??

I was going to create my own personal brand!

Develop your personal equity statement I was told.? Summarize what your brand stands for in a nice succinct sentence.? Then think about what will be your personal points of difference in the workplace.? How will you stand out versus your peers?? What will be your points of parity?? Next define your brand’s character.? How do you want others to describe you if they could only use a few select words?? Last, to tie it all together, select your visual identity.? For a brand this would be its colors, logos and fonts.? For me, I surmised it was what I would wear, maybe how I would style my hair, and which words I should choose when speaking to peers and superiors.????

Then I was reminded of the most important branding lesson of all.? Consistency.??

Staying consistent is what builds trust.? It is how people know what to expect from you.? Don’t deviate from your brand or you won’t develop the equity you want.? Be consistent.

As a young 20 something trying to figure out who I was, I ate this approach up.? Also, it worked! I created a persona that was hard-working, intellectually sharp, and saw the big picture.? I thought about which comments to make in which meetings and how to show up in front of different levels of stakeholders.? I wore dress pants and button up shirts.? I was pretty consistent.? There were times I didn’t feel like being that version of myself, but most days I could make it work.??

Over the years this topic of personal branding gained traction in the corporate world.? I attended many formal training sessions and spread the personal branding gospel to others that I coached and mentored.? I remember one workshop specifically that was tailored for mid-level women gunning for promotions. ? A super stylish female VP shared her tips for advancement, one of which was “dressing the part.” She noted that her favorite and most expensive items in her closet were jeans but she would never dream of wearing them to the office.? They were not a part of her work brand.

Of course times have changed a lot since then.? Jeans, and all sorts of more casual clothing, are commonplace in offices today.? But I never forgot this subtle lesson.? Suppress little parts of yourself.? Show up as you should be rather than as you are.??

Different from those early days, now there is a lot more acceptance for a variety of management styles and more personalized expression. ? Yet even amongst this more current corporate culture that urges everyone to “be your most authentic self at work” I can’t help but feel that there is a small asterisk on those statements.??

Be yourself - but only to the extent that it makes others feel comfortable.??

Be yourself - but understand if you show up too outside the norms it could have an impact on your reputation and career potential.?

The truth is that good branding is very effective.? A strong consumer goods brand is powerful and can convince a consumer to buy.? A good personal brand is powerful too.? If you execute it well, it likely will be career advancing.??

The question becomes at what personal cost.

At first I didn’t see anything wrong with the way I was presenting myself.? After all, the attributes I showcased were most certainly me.? Or more accurately, they were parts of me.? But after presenting the same parts of myself over and over again those attributes got stronger while other aspects of me started to shrink.? I felt more and more one-dimensional.??

The problems started to come when the lines between work-me and real-me started to blur.? I had spent so much time as “Corporate Melissa” I wasn’t really sure where she ended and I began.? Perhaps now I was her?? Maybe the personal brand I created for myself many years ago had become the center of my actual identity?

As I looked around I saw versions of this everywhere.? People showing up as kind of caricature versions of themselves.? Not inauthentic, per say.? But not 100% themselves either.??

I can’t help but wonder… by creating personal brands, are we painting ourselves into a corner??

I realize that it is probably not realistic to get to be one hundred percent yourself one hundred percent of the time.? Yet the dissonance created by living in two, even slightly different, worlds continued to bother me.??

As I got older I became better at showing up more like myself.? I told more vulnerable stories.? I spoke my mind more freely in meetings.? I wore flats and glasses on days I could not bear heels and contacts.? I showcased what made me multidimensional.? Yet rather than these things making me feel more comfortable, they made me feel more different.? Like I didn’t fit the mold anymore.? Ironic, as I believe this more authentic style made me more effective in my roles and improved my working relationships with others.? It just didn’t fix the feeling inside myself.

I think the error that I made was not understanding that people are not, and never should become, brands.??

Unlike brands, we are not designed for consistency.? I have a hard time following the same morning routine for more than a few days at a time!? What made me ever think I could show up the same way at a job for years?

Humans evolve and change.? Sometimes rapidly.? Brands can change too, but generally this change is very slow and calculated.? Incremental.? And often the change is driven by the demands of the external market, not by the brand itself. ? McDonalds won’t ever sell hair products.? Nike would have a hard time becoming known for children's literature.? Making shifts this big would confuse consumers and erode trust.? Big brands could never take that kind of risk.? Yet a makeup artist can become a nurse.? A miser can become philanthropic. There is no limit to the number of times a person can reinvent themselves.? You could argue it is at the core of human nature to do so.? All living things want to grow.? We don’t feel good if we are stagnant.??

Also, people are a LOT of things!? Good brands are only a few things.? Part of the beauty of human nature is that we can be many things, even at the same time.? By definition, in trying to live up to your personal brand, you cannot show all aspects of your personality.? You need to focus on a few key attributes and present them consistently. ? The best brands are selective, differentiated.? Showcasing only a selective and differentiated version of a whole person is tricky.? Doing this consistently and over time is near impossible.

The scariest part of personal brands is that they can be crafted to be inconsistent with who we really are.? It is so easy to believe we need to be a certain way to be successful at a certain thing.? It is tempting to play the role versus be ourselves. But showing up as inconsistent with our true selves, even in small ways, can be painful. ??Left unchecked, personal brands can become enmeshed as one’s singular identity.? It becomes difficult to see where you end and your brand begins.??

And this isn’t just a problem for Corporate America.

It is not hard to find examples of this all over the media today.? Pop stars that struggle to remain consistent with a narrow image that has been created for them.? Grown child actors that, despite decades of growth and change, are still seen as the adolescent version of themselves.??

Perhaps the most prevalent examples are social media influencers that typecast themselves as one thing then are “exposed” and subsequently canceled when society learns they are also something else.? We are living in an increasingly filtered world that makes it far too easy to portray a version of life that is but a small and distorted slice of a much more complicated and multidimensional reality.? How difficult it must be to know yourself in one way, but to have the rest of the world view you differently?? The discordance could quickly become unmanageable.??

In the early 2010s I followed a Swedish woman who went by the online persona “Yoga Girl.”? She showcased this fabulous chill lifestyle living on a tropical island teaching yoga.? She was the total embodiment of self-care and zen.? Then one day she posted a picture of herself taking a tequila shot at a bar on girls night.? The Internet went crazy.? How dare Yoga Girl drink!? Totally off brand! ?She responded completely baffled that people would not expect her to be a normal 20-something girl having a normal 20-something night out with her girlfriends.? She failed to see that by sharing thousands and thousands of hours of content about one narrow aspect of her life, she had unknowingly turned herself into a (very effective, very consistent, very trusted) brand.? And no one likes when a brand’s actions are inconsistent with its image! This can be unsettling.? Trust can be quickly destroyed.????

Looking back I am glad I didn’t trade the world of inanimate CPG brands for people brands.? Being both a real person AND a public brand must be incredibly difficult to manage and at times emotionally painful.? These examples are so much more extreme than the little bit of dissonance I experienced in my corporate career.?

It seems (to me) there is a pretty compelling case for why people should not try to be brands.? But given the mass popularity of personal branding there must be a bright side, right???

If done well, perhaps personal branding can be effective and helpful.? Three ideas to consider:?

Based on Values

We can choose to build our personal brands based on our (true) values, rather than (aspirational) attributes.? Deep rooted values are not only more authentic to who we are as individuals, but they are also less likely to change significantly over time.? For example, if you really value empathetic listening and deep relationships, those would be excellent cornerstones to build a personal brand around.? These will be easier to live authentically every day compared to attributes like being a “bold communicator,” “go getter,” “boss babe,” “smart risk taker,” or “confident decision maker.”??

Unique to You

When defining a personal brand we can treat it as an opportunity to really get to better know ourselves.? Rather than indulging the temptation to model a brand off admired managers or qualities that we think stakeholders want to see from us, we can use it as a chance to really think about what we value and who we are.? What makes us tick?? What ticks us off? ?In this way the exercise can become more about self discovery and less about conformity and performance.? Personal branding can help us discover our unique nuances and nudge us to showcase more of our true selves more of the time.??

Flexible

Personal brands need to remain flexible.? Gasp, it might even be okay to be a little inconsistent.? If (when) there is no longer a fit between the brand and (work) life, we need to be comfortable changing one or the other.? If the brand is built on personal values that are still held dear, it is probably the environment that needs to be updated.? We shouldn’t change our values, or apologize for who we are or how we want to spend our lives just so we can better fit the environment of the moment.

Even with this more positive approach, I think if I could go back and offer advice to the 20 something version of myself, I would say this about personal branding.

Just don’t.??

I think the best advice to give a young person trying to figure out “who they need to be” so that they can #win in the next chapter of their life is… just be yourself.? You might not get as far as you otherwise may have, but at least you will have done it on your terms.? Over the long run that is probably more valuable than any number of achievements or promotions.??

Instead of thinking about a personal brand, spend the time getting to know yourself.? Try out enough different things to help inform what you do and do not like.? Experiment with a diverse range of ways of being in the world.? Don’t be limited by a brand; keep more options open.? There is so much out there to taste and try!?