An Appeal In Opposition To Personal Branding
07.28.2009 | Chris Bailey
Yesterday, Steve Roesler asked Will You Survive Your Branding? I’ve actually been struggling with this concept of personal branding and even though I’ve presented on the subject a few times, I’m still a bit of a skeptic. There has been something nagging at me, a voice inside that has grown steadily louder that something about personal branding doesn’t jive with me. But something about Steve’s post provided a pedestal for my inner voice. Here’s the full comment I left:
Lately, I’ve been thinking how great individuals of the past would have “branded” themselves. Think Ben Franklin could have put together an effective elevator speech lasting under 30 seconds? How about Tom Jefferson or Marie Curie? And for that matter…would they even have entertained the notion of engaging in personal branding?
It’s with this in mind that I continue to feel a bit sad about where we are right now. We’re expected to distill our essence down to something that can be drunk from a thimble. For those of us who curiously explore many things and have a bit of a renaissance soul, the exercise of personal branding is one that feels awkward and confusing.
The question that we face is: how to blaze a different path in today’s world? It’s not easy to swim against the current which preaches the necessity of the singular expertise, the narrowness of personal expression. Ahh, but maybe this is just the time to reinvent the renaissance thinker, doer, explorer, creator. Every challenge is an opening for opportunity.
Are you a fellow renaissance soul who openly rebels against the constrictions of today’s personal branding movement? Speak out and make your voice heard. We can be more than one thing. We can reclaim the idea of passionate eclecticism that guided the great minds of the past. What do you think?
20 Responses to “An Appeal In Opposition To Personal Branding”
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Chris – great piece and I totally get it as someone who has a very diverse set of interests myself. I think that as everyone gets online and the breadth of everyone's lives becomes more apparent that the personal brand ideal of being a focused expert will start to fade away in favor of an agile skill set and a heavy influence in a broad social graph.
With the current flood of information, the desired quality isn't going to be who has the information in their head, but rather who can retrieve, dissect, distill, and apply the information best. Companies will seek creative minds, and in my opinion those with more diverse experiences and interests will more quickly see analogs between fields and come up with better solutions.
Aaron, thanks for kicking off the dialogue here. I really like your point about how wide diversity of experience and interests is going to be much sought-after in the professional world (hopefully we're already moving in that direction).
Part of it is just keeping the faith and continuing to swim against the tide.
Chris–I also agree. I've been frustrated by advice that I need to specialize in my writing. Why? My current interests range from the health care crisis to Sara Bareilles to the opening of the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp to political commentators right and left and on and on. IMHO, the only way to hire a full time staffer or a freelancer is to allow him/her to fully express themselves so that you can really find out what they might offer your organization, now, or down the road.
Bill, I hear your frustration. And yet we all face the challenge not to want to easily label things…and worse people: he's this or she's that. It's like expressing yourself in monosyllables.
I appreciate your thoughts on allowing your people to explore their many facets and how they might put them into play for your organization. We're full of surprises if given a chance to find them.
Hi Chris,
This topic has been near and dear to my heart and mind in 2009. I find it helpful at times to use branding concepts to think about who I am and what I do? I hate elevator speeches and the “social media experts” who know a touch about form and little about substance. I think there is a place for authentic personal branding based on strengths+value+visibility+authenticity. So I contradict myself and close with a line from Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself, very well I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
David
David, actually you're one of the key reasons why I've given personal branding a more critical eye. I often return to this dialogue from CV Harquail's post Don’t Let Personal Branding Stifle your Authentic Voice (http://bit.ly/vyYlf). So between you and Steve Roesler, you continue to provoke some deep, intensive thinking. And I thank you.
Aloha Chris, fine discussion you have started here. Aaron, Bill and David, I kept nodding my head as I read through all of your comments: You all make such good points.
Like David I have been a pretty vocal proponent of strengths and values because they focus on the why and how we do the things we do instead of what those things are. I much prefer thinking of brand as Ho‘ohanohano: The value of conducting oneself with Aloha, dignity, and a distinction – reputation if you will, but one that is based on the consistent grace and honorable reliability with which you do what you do, whether a single thing, or the whole capacity-filling variety of what you might do from dabbling and experimentation to full-fledged evangelism. Plus I so dearly love projects, that concentrating on just one thing seems so boring… it seems we deprive ourselves of living in as complete a way as we are meant to.
As far as other people not getting that, so what? Would you prefer to please their conventions, or have a great life?
Rosa I agree with you here. As I think about it, personal branding and online voice can be more about creating the right reputation and building trust than about narrow expertise. Maybe it's just two different valid strategies.
I think that “branding” as it pertains to reputation is a legitimate exercise, and that's why I stop short of saying that Authentic Voice is a desired ideal. Of course if you allow yourself to follow the full breadth of your passions you'll may just end up more authentic and with a stronger reputation than if you're out there with one specific purpose.
I think a lot of people end up surprised at how the peripheral interests can move into focus and change your path, and also how they can help create the ties that may serve us well in the future.
Rosa and Aaron, I love what you've added here. The linking of Ho‘ohanohano brings in a level of integrity that can get lost in the wilds of personal branding exercises.
But here's my question for you (and others): I partially equate personal branding to the quick and clean labeling that is expected at networking events. *How do we introduce our selves when asked what we do?* This question is what got me thinking about Franklin and others who dabbled in several pursuits. Is this a matter of blazing our own iconoclastic trail and not giving in to the conventions of our times?
Hi all,
Great conversation. I hope you won't mind the thoughts of a new grad. Excuse me if I'm simply restating already accepted ideas. I'm just starting to read “theorists” on these concepts.
Chris, you mention famous people from the past avoiding personal branding. I actually disagree a bit. Sure, maybe they didn't actively brand themselves, or ever consider that the might be viewed as a brand, but they functioned as brands regardless. That's why they gathered a crowd when they gave speeches or why other politicians, scientists, etc publicly aligned themselves with these names. Personal branding is really just a focus on reputation. With the tools at our disposal, it's the natural evolution of reputation dissemination.
Also, when anyone mentions social media causing a lower quality of content it makes me think back to my New Media class at school. In the beginning of the semester, our professor badly laid out the claims scholars make about us Millennials. Some see us as leading the curve since we're born digital and easily navigate technology. Others see us as the stupidest generation since we rely so heavily on technology such as Google for the easy fix. Neither is entirely correct in my opinion. It's the same for personal branding. For those who are smart enough to understand it as the chance to make a unified impression and build a platform for themselves, personal branding enables their thoughts to be heard to an active audience. For the rest, well… it's still the chance to contribute, whether they capitalize on it properly or not.
Personal branding, elevator speeches, and business plans have eluded me over the years. What I find appealing and beneficial about personal branding is how the twitter profile has helped me focus on the most important message that I would like others to perceive as my most pressing interest.
There are many interests from which to choose, however, In practice over only the last 4 months, the twitter short profile concept has directed me down a path where I now have an elevator speech, (people are engaging and asking focused questions about my intentions), a business plan is in progress that supports this profile, and I am branding myself. Short and easy.
The twitter profile as a seed inspired this “branding”, not so much as about “me” but about a problem, about a cause, about a solution.
I feel confident I will survive my branding, I have another few ready to go when wild salmon return to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I'm resisting the temptation to think about it now.
I see shallow personal branding as a slick logo, a forced elevator speech, having 2000 friends on cyberspace but not knowing any of them.
Personal branding is much less what we say about ourselves and more about what others say about us. It helps me to get outside of myself by hearing what others say and what they think.
I am certainly more than a brand and my brand is only a guide not some narrow view of myself that I always have to fit into. of course, I easily get carried away into a million things and my intention with branding is to bring back the focus. I will be redoing my website this September and I want to have a tighter focus that really contributes to what I want to offer others beyond a great batch of interesting articles on engagement.
The value for me is to keep thinking about strengths, value, visibility, authenticity and how I engaged in these.
I believe personal branding can play a very vital role in employee engagement. Help employees recognize their strengths, value, and visibility and they will be less vulnerable to work changes and shifts.
I love the dialogue as it is getting me thinking in helpful ways about projects I am currently immersed in. Thanks to each of you.
I think the exercise of personal strengths analysis can be quite useful, however the application of self-conceptualization for the purpose of personal branding is useful only for particular situations involving interacting with new people. In those contexts, we should be free to talk however we like, and creatively so!
The danger in personal branding is taking the exercise to the extreme and getting personal about it. The self is non-existent and impermanent. But the more we identify with it, the more susceptible we are to potential pain (conceit, low self-esteem) or perhaps a constriction of potential (if we have established tight boundaries).
I like this approach.
Your introduction and your “brand” is what's in your focus *right now*. When you introduce yourself, distill it to the reason why you're there.
Your reputation is what those you've influenced have seen – a meta-brand, essentially.
Chris, my guess would be that Franklin or Jefferson would have introduced themselves in a different way depending on the day.
When it comes to how we work in an organization, though, I think that strategy definitely is iconoclastic.
Kelly, I'm so glad you came and offered a divergent perspective. New grad or not…we're all still playing around and exploring ideas. And your opinion is very much welcome. (And hopefully you're not thinking I'm being a bit contrary or disingenuous since I did a presentation on personal branding last month.)
I agree with the reputation part of branding. It's similar to what Rosa proposed as Ho‘ohanohano. We carry our reputation and integrity with us every day and everywhere we go. Where I fall off the boat is the notion of unified impression. This is really where my point of the renaissance person kicks in. To intentionally limit ourselves in order to fit into a brand model is poor bargain. Yet, as Bill mentions below, there is some benefits to working from a Twitter profile approach.
There really are no right answers here, which is liberating all on its own.
Mario, I absolutely love what you say in the second paragraph. It puts the idea of the “personal” in personal branding in a radically new context. And I agree with you: the more we identify and crystalize what's truly non-existent and impermanent, the more we struggle with a lost cause.
Thanks so much for adding a fresh perspective to the dialogue.
Chris, you really got a great conversation going. So thanks so much for that. My question is this: why does personal branding necessarily limit a person? Twitter shows us aspects of lives not usually revealed in “brands” such as celebrities, CEOs, etc. As long as these people/brands continue displaying themselves as dynamic, engaging people (even with various interests) in their other forms of media usage, where are these imposed limits?
I agree with David Zinger when he said, “My brand is only a guide not some narrow view of myself that I always have to fit into.”
I'd love to understand your perspective though. How is it that you feel restricted in your personal branding?
And I would never consider you disingenuous for voicing your concerns. I consider you engaged.
Kelly, I'm honestly trying to reflect and figure out what particularly rankles me about personal branding. I think part of it is that we're now expecting people to be all-put-together and have their public persona nice and neat. Or is that overextending the definition of personal branding? Have we become so ADD that we now want people to get on with their “who they are” as quickly as possible so we can move on to something else?
And yet, as David mentions, I contradict myself openly because I know that I need to brand myself for my own work. And maybe that's the critical distinction. I brand what I do…I can never brand who I am.
THE PEARL: I brand what I do…I can never brand who I am. Thanks Chris