Is There a Personal Brand System?
An executive-coach acquaintance of mine asked me if brand system theory could apply to one’s personal brand. To some extent, yes, it can just as to some extent it can apply to commercial brands (but not so much to portfolio brands). After all, the brand system is the feedstock for the organization’s reputation. And what is a personal brand if it isn’t one’s reputation? The question is how much of the feedstock is the same or similar.
Just to level set, I am not an expert in personal brand development and never consciously applied its tenets to my own life or career. However, its core concepts have plenty of similarities to that of reputational brand stewardship, and enough to where I feel deputized to offer a few thoughts based on that experience and in the context of brand system theory.
Remember that according to brand system theory, brand fundamentally is the reputational shorthand through which organizations express their values and value. Organizations signal their values through the hallmarks of culture (who we are, what we do, how we do it, why we do it), and activate their value through people and operations.
But there’s a “Big Bang” behind every organization, which is the core expertise that powers any productive effort. It’s true that some organizations (especially nonprofits) originate from a driving sense of purpose; however, a purpose without the requisite enabling expertise is little more than fantasy. Correspondingly, expertise forms an important part of a personal brand.
So, in the most salient aspects of brand system theory, personal brands are analogous to reputational brands. But let’s stipulate that there are many people who don’t care about their personal brand or who are indifferent to the idea altogether. What follows applies primarily to those who do care and are interested in cultivating a unique, exceptional, or high-barrier personal brand (by which I mean something distinct, differentiated, and memorable).
Expertise: We all have something that we know or do well. Whether that translates to productive effort (profitable or otherwise) is immaterial. What matters is what one wants to be known for, and that usually comes down to some measure of competence. Just as with the reputational brand, expertise is the anchor of the personal brand. The problem comes from the alignment between what one does well and what one would prefer to do but lacks the requisite competence for creating a distinct, differentiated, and memorable personal brand.
If that’s the situation one either needs to pursue the necessary training, education, and licensing/certifications for whatever one’s heart compels them toward or accept the gift of one’s innate talent and make the best of it. And when it comes to the personal brand, expertise can’t be faked. At the same time, expertise has a shelf life without some measure of curiosity and interest in staying current with the field of knowledge in which one declares authority. In other words, you will have competition throughout your life and career for whatever expertise you claim to possess, so keep tending your intellectual crop.
Values: While I’m somewhat skeptical about the utility of an organization’s expressed values (along with its vision, mission, and purpose statements), at the individual level values matter greatly when it comes to the personal brand. My skepticism at the organizational level has more to do with the motivational power of corporate values than their aspirational intent. Ultimately, an organization’s values must be demonstrated through words and deeds that aggregate as its evident character. But, at the individual level, values are indispensable as an animating force of the personal brand.
Certainly, we all are more than our expertise, and expertise without some civilizing ointments eventually will be problematic for the personal brand (although more than a few influencers do represent an effective counterargument to that assertion). Remember, however, that one’s authentic self does not necessarily correspond to universally admired values. Here is where it might be better to adopt what the field of psychology refers to as congruence — the alignment between one’s self-image and one’s ideal self. Indeed personal brand development is essentially the pursuit of congruence: calibrating what we believe about ourself (our self-image) with the values and value we aspire to represent (our ideal self).
Value: While the definition of value is highly subjective according to what matters to others, anyone cultivating a personal brand should have some idea of what they have to offer and what it’s worth. But the larger question is why one really cares about what they have to offer to others, because the answer to that is what will keep the motivational fires stoked. Answers typically arrange around career, financial, familial, psychic, identitary, or social considerations and establish a reason for action and a bias toward value.
Just as a brand promise is the pledge of organizational value, one’s personal brand should be representative of the value others can expect, however that value is defined. Still, whatever value one advertises must be capable of consistent, reliable, and sustained performance. While one’s values plays a role in shaping perceptions around the personal brand, one’s behind-the-scenes “operations” carries the greater weight in maintaining favorable perceptions. In this context, “operations” can mean anything from work habits to time management to actual productive endeavors.
As with the reputational brand, one’s personal brand is subject to numerous influences and inputs. For the reputational brand, organizational cross-currents and operational choreography continuously pulsate with brand implications. This is the nature of the brand system — a factory of signals, actions, and experiences that perpetually regulate brand reputation.
A similar environment exists for the personal brand, comprising life events, never-ending to-do’s, social calendars, career navigation, personal choices, and a host of other unavoidable real-world intrusions and demands. How one accommodates, responds to, or compartmentalizes these will be reflected in the personal brand that’s otherwise being carefully cultivated. If a personal brand matters to you, it helps to harmonize the operating system of quotidian affairs that runs continuously in the background and to manage your sleep, diet, exercise, and stressors (not to mention mind your social media presence and shun jackass friends).
We also should remember that whether one cares about their personal brand, one nevertheless still carries a reputation. Here’s hoping any baggage is light enough not to matter.