Personal branding
If you had to list three things that you think best define you, what would they be?
I’ll go first:
Being a weird mix of French, Vietnamese and Anglo-Saxon cultures
Not eating to live, but living to eat
Being passionate about triggering nostalgia through film photography
Now, listed like this, none of these traits alone are particularly unique. However, why each of these components is key to how I identify myself, well I like to think those are pretty unique stories. And explaining how they blend together to come to define me, that’s a complicated one, probably too long to explain in a newsletter let alone to work as my “personal brand”. You know, that “process that involves finding your uniqueness, building a reputation on the things you want to be known for, and then allowing yourself to be known for them. Ultimately, the goal is to create something that conveys a message and that can be monetised.” (very legit source)
But as much as I could try to monetise each of my own identity pillars, I personally struggle with the idea of putting my own identity and story up “for sale”. And yet, I keep hearing over and over, especially in the professional world, that you should brand yourself.
Because yes, branding is super important. Working in media, and marketing, I can testify to the major stepping stone that is building an identity and crafting a story for your business. You need this foundation to allow your brand to speak to your target audience, and build a long lasting relationship with it. Because ultimately, having a loyal fanbase is what will propel your success and allow your business to establish itself in the industry.
In a fast paced and over-saturated world, brand stories must on the one hand be easily digested: a one line summary, a recognisable 9 square Instagram feed, or a tagline should suffice to reveal what your brand is about. On the other hand, you want to engage your audience with a compelling story, one that is complex and human. Good branding is finding that right balance between pitching a clear and easily recognisable marketing message, and injecting a convincing human story to it.
But real branding doesn’t end there. If your business is in it for the long run, you cannot rely on the success of chapter 1 of your brand’s story. You need to provide it with sequels, because everyone’s story evolves, especially your audience’s. If you’re the brand that spoke to them at one point in their life, and never outgrow it, that’s all your brand will ever be (like this brand, or that one). One of the worst things that can happen to a brand is having to look back and cling on the highest point of its history, and never move on from it. It’s in fact mostly in that regard that brand stories must be inherently human: people grow, change, move on, so should brands.
So where am I going with this? Wasn’t this supposed to be about personal branding? I’m getting to it.
So why would you need to create your personal brand? I asked myself that question, when I was encouraged, a while back, to participate in a two part workshop about “personal branding”. We talked about personality traits for sure, but the focus was to find ways for our appearances to translate those traits, and to help us crack those visual details (clothing, accessories, hairdo, etc.) that would help us stand out.
I remember feeling confused, as the things which I thought best described me were quite varied and difficult to manifest through consistent appearance, and were only really interesting if I took the time to explain them, or better yet, if I exercised them.
While business brands need to craft stories for themselves, real people on the other hand already have their own story, inherently human and complex. And most of the time, too complex actually. Personally, life has not bestowed me with a perfectly crafted story that can be pitched in a 10 slide deck.
I realised that branding your own person, is in a way the opposite of branding a business, in that a personal brand must simplify your story, to create an easily digestible image of yourself: a visual or abstract shell, so that only a few details can trigger a person into thinking of you, and the specific story you crafted.
But making your personal story easily digestible isn’t all that innocent. Indeed, branding and personal branding have the same pitfalls wherein they run the risk of losing the humanity in their story, which is ironic for a personal brand because the object you’re branding is your human story.
Some personal branding pitfalls:
Imprisoning yourself in a rigid image that prevents you from growing, just like business brands (eg: actors often worry they will be typecast and never develop or showcase their acting potential);
Losing all authenticity because you fall into a caricature of your brand (eg: Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show since 2016… ugh);
Setting standards in the public eye that will be unforgiving if you, the real person, slip up (eg: Ellen DeGeneres’s downfall when it turned out she did not practice the same kindness in real life as she preached in the public space).
I think the tricky thing with the business of personal branding… is its business aspect. Although there is a distinction between someone’s personal brand and their true self, relying on the monetisation of your own identity eventually turns the branding from personal to professional at the expense of the real person behind. This is an issue Instagram influencers complain about all the fricking time, and yet keep on feeding… #InstagramIsNotRealLife
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-personal branding! The whole point of this newsletter is to celebrate it actually. Just a whole other kind of personal branding, one that is… well, quite personal.
My favourite personal brands are actually the ones that are somewhat disconnected from someone’s work or art, but tackle their most personal traits, often in a self-deprecating way.
How great would it be to find out that on some level, Anna Wintour, who can certainly self-deprecate, has worn the same haircut all these years, ironically? This purely personal hairstyle choice has nothing to do with her getting to the top of her career, but her public persona doesn’t exist without it, to the ridiculous point that this hairstyle is basically trademarked “Anna Wintour” today.
And that’s where I think the secret to successful personal branding lies: it’s embracing one’s own ridiculousness. Because working to craft a persona which will live in the eyes of the public, and be taken very seriously, is kind of actively building your own caricature and thus quite a ridiculous affair in itself. So you might as well play with it a little.
My favourite example of that ridiculous personal branding is of course, Taylor Swift. Although from a professional point of view, she has never stopped branding herself as a thriving musician (she is, after all, the music industry), she is also widely scrutinised by the public and the media from a personal point of view. So she’s built herself a personal brand: the cat lady. All three of her cats, Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson and Benjamin Button (all named after popular characters – a form of branding in itself!) are featured throughout Taylor Swift’s online presence and sometimes even her work in a self-deprecating way. This branding is so on point that even advertisers like DirectTV Now would rather capitalise on her ridiculous cat lady persona, than on her music, which Taylor clearly doesn’t mind and fully embraces with a pinch of glitter and irony.
So to wrap things up: as the goal of this newsletter is quite a personal one, I will set the three pillars I listed earlier aside for now, and only ever worry whether I’m “on brand” with this newsletter in regards to what I think is most ridiculous about myself. Which are the following points:
Being an unapologetic Swiftie to the bone: this is not the first, nor the last time you will encounter my praising analysis of Taylor Swift and everything she does and touches
Finding myself at a crossroads between Gen Z and Millennial generations: no, I cannot write anything (email, text, newsletter, Powerpoint presentation, etc.) without resorting to the use of GIFs
Providing you with my top notch views on all the Internet content I spend my time gobbling instead of reading books: yes I can discuss the feminism in Stendhal’s work, but wouldn’t you rather I dissect the latest TikTok trends?
So what about you? What are the three ridiculous things about yourself that you would fully embrace to build your personal brand?
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Some content which is more or less related to personal brands:
Netflix’s series “Pretend It’s a city” where witty writer Fran Lebowitz discusses her opinion on culture, art and modern life and fully assumes the ridiculous role of the critic
The Cut article “Buying myself back” which revealed a side of model Emily Ratajkowski’s story that my prejudice about her personal brand made me completely oblivious to
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter account which I follow less for the sassy views about the American political landscape, than for the incongruous apolitical real life tweets
Image credit: wise words of Schmidt from New Girl, Season 2 Episode 1 “Re-Launch”