Brand JESSICA

Become a brand. Sell yourself. It is your reputation – not your talent – that matters.

Personal branding – once the domain of politicians, authors, and celebrities – is now the obsession of everyone.

Today the New York Times published an intriguing article about the personal branding trend. At the end of the article the author asked several interesting questions, however three stood for me:

• Will it divert power and influence from the well-educated to the merely well-branded?
• Will brand-building distract us?
• And in marketing ourselves, will we neglect the pursuit of actually improving?

How will this affect the balance of power? Will education, training, and knowledge become less important than packaging? Are we entering a world where the same applies to people? And if that is true what are the potential consequences? Always focusing on people's personal brands over their skills, training, and knowledge could eventually lead to decreased quality of workforce output.

As personal brand building becomes more and more of an obsession, how will this affect our lives? Will we become so focused on living and sharing our lives “in brand” that we miss the actual experience? It is easy to hypothesize how this could cause a society-wide decrease in productivity. Melodramatic? Maybe.

Now what about the idea that improving how we market ourselves will become more important than bettering and updating our own skills? I think this goes back to the idea that image may be more important than substance. This does not bode well for future innovation and advancement in our society.

Do not misunderstand, I am an enthusiastic participant and promoter of the social web. I feel it is important for people to engage and participate in the global conversation. But, the idea that the brand you portray in this new virtual global space is more important than who you are is disturbing to me.

That brings me to a point the author of the article did not discuss – authenticity. As I discussed in a previous post, authenticity is essential for brands communicating marketing messages in social media. It is important to be true and transparent. This holds true for corporate brands and personal brands. I think it is more important for individuals to participate in the social web and be authentic than to create a persona and try to live up to that brand.

• Read the New York Times article about personal branding here: Branding and the 'Me' Economy