Build Personal Brand: Why the Controversy?
As I have become increasingly interested and involved in the world of personal branding, both for myself and for the purpose of helping others in their career search and development, I have read hundreds of articles and encountered many different opinions on the concept.
After boiling them all down, there appear to be three basic positions on personal branding:
- The first strongly advocates online personal branding, placing a much stronger focus on image and reputation building through social media, blogging and other online networking tools.
- The second strongly supports overall personal branding which entails identifying and communicating your true unique and differentiating value and supporting your brand through your actions and achievements both offline and online.
- The third is generally against the entire concept, considering it to be more of a narcissistic fad to over-promote oneself in a tough job market and economy.
While I support overall personal branding and take the second position on personal branding listed above, I most certainly respect those whose positions on the matter differ. However, I am surprised by the number of articles against a concept and process that is aimed to help people better understand their natural strengths and leverage them to take advantage of new opportunities in their career.
Why would anyone ridicule personal branding or argue against it?
There are definitely selfish over-promoters out there “tooting their own horns” and forcing their personal brands in others’ faces, but they wouldn’t generate so much negative press for personal branding overall, just for themselves, right? So, what else could it be?
We all have a personal brand (a.k.a. our own unique and differentiating value) and by identifying it and forming a personal branding strategy, we can more effectively communicate it in everything we do–both when we are looking for a job and when we have already obtained one.
Is it that they don’t fully understand personal branding?
This is definitely possible and was brought up and supported as a plausible explanation in Meg Guiseppi’s article, Some People Hate Personal Branding Because They Just Don’t Get It.
But, how don’t they get it?
Then the answer came to me. They don’t get it and in turn, don’t like it, because it hasn’t been defined correctly. In other words, personal branding hasn’t been branded right.
Based on the specific arguments against personal branding, it becomes increasingly clearer that it is in fact the people and experts taking the first position listed above who have defined personal branding as principally what you do online to create and promote your desired image and who are, for a lack of better words, “tainting” personal branding for the rest of us. By pushing this solely online-focused concept of personal branding under the same name, more and more people are being turned against it when they are actually against the concept of creating an image or personal brand online through blogs and social media without backing it up with an authentic in-person personal brand offline.
Personal branding will always be invaluable for career seekers and developers across all industries and functional areas. While it is a “self-centered” process, it should be only so as to help an individual identify the unique and differentiating value that he or she can then offer and contribute to an organization.
To discover your personal brand, start with Pete’s post Everything You Need to Start Building Your Personal Brand Right Now. Then make things concrete by filling out Meg’s Personal Branding Worksheet. Only now are you ready to take start making people aware of your brand with RJ’s post, How to Brand Yourself.
My advice, while still respecting all opinions and voices on the web, is to filter out the handful of over-promoters and experts who don’t know what personal branding really is. Personal branding is so much more than what you put on your social network pages or write on your blog. It’s who you are inside and out, online and offline. Your personal brand, in essence, encompasses your overall lifestyle.
Chris Perry is a Gen Y Brand and Marketing Generator, a Career Search and Personal Branding Expert and the Founder of Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.
11 Comments
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Wonderful post, Chris. Thanks so much for referring and linking to my post at Executive Resume Branding, and my worksheet here on Brandyourself.
Your very well-put clarifications can’t be written about enough. No surprise, I put myself in your explanation #2. Unlike you, I don’t particularly respect those who fall into #3. To me, they’re misinformed, misguided, and frankly wrong-thinking.
If people are going to vilify and then dismiss personal branding, shouldn’t they work from a clear understanding of what it actually is?
I find it so tiresome to read blog posts by self-proclaimed social media experts (those you describe in #3) who misrepresent what branding is and how to go about “getting you some”.
Personal branding online is (or should be) the same as personal branding in person.
-Meg Guiseppi
C-level / Senior-level Executive Branding & Job Search Strategist
Right on Chris. Personal Branding has been getting a negative rep because people misunderstand its underlying purpose: to evaluate and discover your most valuable qualities and then promote them to the right people.
Personal branding has always existed in the job market, it’s just that web 2.0 tools and social technolgoies have extended their reach farther than ever before. As is always the case, you have some people who abuse the tools. People who promote themselves blindly without having anything of value to back up their claims.
Lying and misrepresenting yourself is bad. It always has been, always will be. Understanding yourself and connecting with other–what we call personal branding–is good.
Chris,
I am personally with you in ‘camp 2’. However I understand and sympathise with group 3. Why I hear you cry…..the answer is simple. For me personal branding is no different to marketing a product or service, you understand what people value in the item and play to it’s strengths. The real issue comes when people use personal branding to try and ‘pretend’ to be something they are not. Personal branding is, in my opinion, all about knowing who you are, it is disingenuine to pretend to be something you are not and that is why people ‘attack’ it.
This is no different to marketing the discipline that has been attacked as being nonsense by other functions for years. In the UK marketing directors on the boards of PLC’s has fallen to an all time low. Reason is simple, people dont understand and value the ‘abstract’ concept.
Great article – keep it up.
Marc
So true…personal branding, like branding has gotten such a bad rap simply because there are so many definitions. Right now, branding feels like the “wild, wild west” out there because it’s just one big land grab and everyone’s trying to claim it as their own. They all want to be the king of their piece of land instead of co-existing in harmony.
Until we can come together and unite under a common agreed-upon definition of branding, we will constantly be in a battle with unqualified “branding experts” to educate our clients as to the power of branding and it’s impact on the bottom line.
hello Chris,
It is interesting to see that this 1st AND 3rd opinion on personal branding is also strong across the “big pond”.
Living in a small country in Europe, I come across the same categories here.
However, I have mostly attributed the 3rd category mainly to the widely spread Calvinistic nature of many Europeans, therefore harbouring an attitude of disdain to everything American, because it is all about self promotion, competition because of the competition and shallowness…..
In the Netherlands there is even an saying (badly translated): if you stick out your head above the corn field, it gets chopped off….. In other words, don’t even think you are special or different than the rest or you will get in trouble.
But coincidentally, last week, I reacted to a Dutch column posted about Personal Branding needing a different name, so that it doesn’t sound so foreign and scary….
I came to a similar conclusion: personal branding is the perfect name, it only has a big branding problem itself.
This is mostly because people in the 3rd category just don’t take the time to explore the idea and really discover what personal branding can be….. which is very paradoxal because that is a very shallow thing to do….
Needless to say, I belong to category 2
Im with everyone else on this, definitely in the 2nd boat. It needs to be a conscious effort to expand your brand not just online but to maintain it offline as well. If you want to create an alias, that’s great but never lie about who you are online.
A solid definition and re-branding is definitely in order but it will only change the message and not the core value.
@Tessa
That is very interesting. I never thought about how professionals across “the pond” interpreted it. Sadly I do see their point of view as it could be seen as another American capitalistic movement which falls under category 3 because they seem to take it only at face value and not try to understand the true meaning behind it.
I’d say another problem is terminology.
We call it personal branding, taking existing terms for what are essentially business activities and applying them to a similar goal of personal self-discovery and self-definition.
The problem is we also drag along the baggage of branding – of shallow branding, ridiculous ad campaigns, and soforth seen in the business world. Branding is a loaded term for the public at large. That baggage comes with it, and perhaps understandably so.
What I always tell people it’s about finding yourself and communicating yourself positively. The term “branding” is the best term we have, but branding-for-product doesn’t truly encompass what personal branding is.
@David
I agree that we should stop wasting time “defending” and just continue to add value to it. Also thank you for sharing your articles with us!
@Steve
It is unfortunate that there is some extra baggage with it and negative connotations but that’s life.
This article is condescending to me. How easy is it to say someone “doesn’t understand” when really what you mean is, “doesn’t agree”?
Personally I think branding, as a concept, is a bad left-over from the psychology driven sales revolution of the 20th century, and trying to apply its principles to a human being (by that same human being, no less) is a recipe for personality disaster.
Just how self-conscious and weird are you willing to get in order to be liked and have a job? It’s a valid question.
@David
It is definitely a valid question and it is fine by me that you “don’t agree” with it. I apologize if this article came off condescending because it obviously wasn’t Chris’ intention.
To go along with the example you brought up, while “selling” oneself may seem selfish it can be very beneficial in the end depending on what your goal is. I like to think of it more as preparation. How can you go into an interview and explain to someone who you are if you don’t even take the time to figure out yourself. Or if someone asks you what you do, and you give a candid yet professional response, it comes off a lot better than if you fumbled over the answer that you just made up.
So whether you don’t understand or don’t agree, I still feel that personal branding is very valuable in every shape and form.
The emotion against people having a way to stand out from the crowd is confusing! If a job seeker can create a memorable (call it whatever) way to convey what they will do for a hiring company, they just might go to the head of the line. And people will be remember them in a way that let's me tell other people about them.