Personal Branding And How It Is Used !

Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands. It has been noted that while previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.

Many people believe that the use of personal branding will help them raise there sales and this has become a well known fact for quite a lot of people. The more you and your product become a house hold name the better your chances are for making sales.

We will give you samples of where you can start to personally brand yourself and your products on the following pages.

Just how does it work?

Brands like Nike and Starbucks prove that the product they sell is less important than the brand they market, and the same idea can be applied to image marketing. In The Persona Principle: How to Succeed in Business with Image Marketing (Simon & Schuster, 1996), Derek Lee Armstrong and Kim Wai Yu were among the first to use personal-brand or persona case studies as analogies to corporate branding. (Armstrong says he later declined an invitation from his publisher to write a sequel specifically dedicated to personal brands because he did not feel he had the expertise to write it.) Ultimately it was branding guru Tom Peters who spawned the personal branding movement with an essay that appeared in Fast Company in 1997 under the title "The Brand Called You." Peters writes, "Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called 'You.'"

To identify their personal brand, Peters told his readers to ask themselves what it was they did that made them different. Would-be brands were also asked to identify their greatest strengths, most noteworthy personal traits and what it was they did that added value. Writes Peters, "If you're going to be a brand, you've got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value.…" The final step, obviously, was to market the brand.

Just how that can or should be done remains controversial. A few consultants suggest that you can best promote a personal brand by paying close attention to personal grooming. Montoya, writing in The Brand Called You, by contrast, takes a less cosmetic approach and places more emphasis on business marketing strategies that promote a persona.

Nearly all personal branding gurus agree that cultivating an image -- and marketing it --takes real work. A cynic would not be surprised to learn that branding coaches are waiting in the wings to help you with that hard work. They recommend you make conscious choices about the people you associate with, the clothes you wear -- and even the way you speak.

But does the personal brand have any depth? Karl Speak, president of Beyond Marketing Thought and co-author of Be Your Own Brand (Berrett-Koehler, 2002), thinks it does. Arguing that personal branding is not simply applying an attractive veneer, Speak says, "It's learning to get credit for who you are -- which really means understanding what your values are, and learning to make your values relevant to other people."

Branding coach Jan Marie Dore seems to agree. Personal branding is "about determining who you are at your core authentic self, rather than inventing a brand that you would like to be perceived as," she says. According to Dore, one's personal brand emerges from the search for identity and meaning, out of which comes an awareness of personal strengths and talents.

To help the unbranded answer questions of personal value, strengths, and weaknesses, some consultants lead their students through exercises aimed at making them aware of the impressions they make on others. Fledgling brands are asked to take stock of their personal assets -- especially those that set them apart from the crowd. By just raising your self-awareness, branding gurus tell their charges, you can almost certainly kick your lot in life up a notch or two.

Much of developing a personal brand centers on identifying personal values. In Be Your Own Brand, Speak includes a brand-values profile intended to help his students identify their values. But he concedes that the checklist may not be enough for everyone. "You can go through the checklist and select things you think reflect your values. But one test is how people perceive you and your values. If I ask five of my friends or associates, and they don’t associate those values with me, that should bring into question how much I believe in those values."

It's not clear that everyone can or even should be branded, however. Speak, for example, finds it easiest to teach personal branding techniques to corporate employees; other consultants prefer to work with self-employed entrepreneurs. Montoya, for his part, doubts that everyone has the ability to do the soul searching required to become a brand. Although he feels that the ability to look at oneself honestly and openly is the most powerful and important skill in becoming a good personal brand, he says, "Some people have it and some people don’t. I’m not sure if it's something that can be learned or not."

But identifying one's core values is reportedly no big deal if you have the knack, according to Montoya. "The simplest way is to say, 'What’s most important to me in life?' The answer that pops in your head is the most important thing. Then ask what’s the second most important thing. That will very quickly tell you what some of your values are," he says.

Several years ago columnist Lucy Kellaway, writing in The Financial Times, labeled personal branding "a hybrid of homespun psychology, self-help and dressing for success." She went on to say, "It is born from the idea that each of us 'owns' our career and that we are never going to get anywhere unless we set out consciously and strategically to market ourselves for all we are worth." But, she added, "I am not a brand and neither are you. We are people, which is not the same thing at all.” Her conclusion: "Personal branding is distasteful for being blatantly ambitious, sneaky and superficial. Worse, it is surely bad for business... The more you focus on Me Inc., the less you are likely to be focusing on the job in hand” (The Financial Times, 4 December 2000).

Denise Kingsmill, deputy chairman of Britain's Monopolies and Mergers Commission and a strong advocate of personal branding, also saw a downside to the personal marketing strategy. Kingsmill told The Financial Times in 1998, "Conscious personal branding can turn into an ego trip unless you are very clear about your objectives."

Certainly the results of personal branding can leave the person feeling more empowered. According to branding consultant Chuck Pettis, one recently branded middle manager, referring to a conversation with her boss, reports, "Previously I... simply said 'I’d like to do more training.' Now I have real ammunition that lets me say: 'There is a recognized need in the library for more training, and these specific managers want me to do it. Furthermore, I’d like to put my analysis skills to use by assuming a leadership role in the implementation of a new library management system.' "

Judging by the proliferation of books and seminars devoted to the subject, personal branding's popularity has yet to peak. According to Speak much of the current appeal of this latest form of self-marketing can be traced to the current economic slowdown. "As more people are out of work, they search who they are in order to make themselves more attractive -- with a new veneer -- to a prospective employer." But, he adds, many workers who have been laid off are also asking themselves who they are in an honest attempt to find employment consistent with their values.

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