Same Old Brand New You (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Building a brand you is just a beginning of a long journey. Its so important to take stock of your personal brand time and again. And most of us seldom do that.
With a thorough insight of our own competency and skills circle, and added to that our formal degrees, work experience and other paraphernalia, each one of us must be able to articulate what our personal brand statement is!
Almost entire careers or work-lifes get squandered in the absence of a personal brand statement – and a personal brand statement just mens that you are sold to yourself. Only when you have been successful in selling to you, will you be able to sell to the outside world… the outside world would mean anything, just about anyone of your stakeholders – family members, client, employer, workplace, society and so on.
Another notion which we all cherish, wrongly but, is to think that our personal brand remains the way it is for the rest of our life. This is far from true.
In a world where even product or service brands re-position, re-jig, and re-invent them in appropriate phases of their life cycle, it will be foolish and rather suicidal to think that you can do with a static personal brand.
Whether your personal brand works or not at any point in time, is not just dependent on who you are and what you stand for, plus your competencies; it is, more importantly, how the brand is seen to be, by the end user – it can be the job market, employer, and strangely even a spouse. For your brand to win in the ‘marketplace’, the users have to feel the relevance of the brand and a need for the same. If it’s an employer or someone who has to invest capital in your personal brand, they need to see a value add by “brand you” to them.
So, as you can see, the brand you as seen by others can be so much different from what it really is. The essence will be to communicate and clearly articulate the value of your brand to the relevant stakeholders – by making the right noises – your brand communication.
As we see many times, choice of the personal brand which an employer makes is purely his perception of the brand. So, success in the employer market could depend immensely on reducing the gap between your brand in reality and the perception of your brand. Its all about effectively creating your brand speak. And communicating it at the right time, in the right place, in the right quantity.
The most important part of the brand you, is to make sure that you also must do a reality check of the brand. Is it relevant to what you aspire for? Are you honing yourself with the right competencies, soft skills, knowledge etc, to be in the race for mindspace (with your stakeholders)….
In todays times of upheaval in the global economies, which does not spare any nook and corner of the world, and any individual, the probability of your brand taking a beating or being battered over time is very high. It is times like these that dictate a re-jig of your personal brand.
The key ingredient of your brand, irrespective of how you reposition and re-invent is – the brand must have persistence, and stay afloat against all odds. The brand must keep going. The brand must possess and live a never say die attitude. The brand must stay relevant and must be at the right place. The brand must be a powerhouse of knowledge, and niche skills, which could be transferable across different industries, timezones, and geography.
Ensure that you evaluate the credentials of your personal brand, and see how it must be re-invented or if need be re-born, time and again
Related articles
- What Batman Knows About Branding (luckyrobot.com)
- Bruised by Branding (joemooreblog.wordpress.com)
- The power of branding (ithinkstrategically.com)
- Are You a Brand? (cultofajracewood.wordpress.com)
Happiness, life.. all about the journey! 