I am not a brand
Can you imagine anything more corrosive to human interaction and our basic humanity than modeling our behavior on inanimate, imaginary, unmoving and un-evolving objects designed to generate profits?
Of all the self-helpy, business-y garbage out there, the thing I hate the most is the idea of Building Your Own Personal Brand that has been en vogue for the past decade or so. We are told opportunity awaits us if we just build our personal brand successfully! We are told we can be more authentic, more ourselves, more successful if we only clarify and stay true to our personal brand.
If we apply the thinking of branding, this means deciding who we are based on white space and growth (as in financial) opportunity, it means making choices based on the brand image we seek to promote. Can you imagine anything more corrosive to human interaction and our basic humanity than modeling our behavior on inanimate, imaginary, unmoving and un-evolving objects designed to generate profits?
I am not a brand. I’m a person. I don’t make decisions about what to say, how to act, what side of any particular issue I might be on based on building the equity of my personal brand. What could be more inauthentic than having a crafted and concocted personal brand driving our words and decisions? What could require less introspection, less openness, less critical thinking than having a “brand” and sticking to that idea of what and who we are without ever taking new information into account?
The very idea of a personal brand is toxic. It requires that we be static, un-empathetic, never open to new ideas or information. It requires we act like an imagined thing rather than behave like a person. In branding ourselves, we inevitably set ourselves on a course according to who we’ve decided we are and we go with it. We become avatars of the brand we are seeking to create in order to sell ourselves as a product.
Gross.
I don’t have a brand value proposition, or a brand guidelines book filled with fonts and color palettes and tone of voice descriptions. (Here’s how Jen talks! These colors are associated with the brand of Jen!) I don’t have a book that lays out what is on-brand and what is off-brand for me.
I don’t have a brand. I’m a thinking, living, imperfect human being.
Brands are conceptual imagined objects in the ether. They have no meaning. They don’t exist as something that you can touch. They do not live in the material world. They don’t have agency. They are ideas. Marketing folks pour meaning into them through advertising, copy, influencer selection and PR stunts. Marketers generate meaning for brands which are otherwise empty, fictional containers awaiting meaning and definition prescribed precisely to sell stuff.
According to renowned brander, marketing strategist and author, Seth Godin:
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
Brands are white space creations generated to sell goods. I am a flesh and blood person, moving through the world in search of fulfillment and purpose and human connection. There is no consumer deciding on me. My soul is not an empty vessel, needing to be filled in order for my person to be liked and chosen and purchased. I am not a thing to be purchased. Despite the loony and unfounded accusations of me being a grifter, my views, opinions and actions are not for sale.
There are endless books written on this subject of personal branding.
As well as endless articles written on the subject in business publications like Forbes and Harvard Business Review.
These articles are filled with gems of advice, like these:
Be genuine.
Tell a story.
Be consistent.
No. I don’t want to be consistent. I want to be open to new ideas. I don’t want to tell a story through my life choices. I want to live my life. I can’t be told to just be genuine and then be it, any more than I can be told to “be cool” and voila! As marketers know, when brands say (literally) I’m cool, they are anything but cool. Setting out to be genuine as your brand proposition is also anything but genuine.
Recently, Mayor of New York City Eric Adams told a story about how he carried a wrinkled and worn photograph in his wallet. The photo was of Robert Venable — a fallen police officer who had been his close friend. Venable died in the line of duty in 1987. By all accounts, the two men were actually friends.
During Adams’ first month in office as Mayor, he faced a tragedy — the deaths of two New York City police officers who were responding to a domestic violence call. In response, Mayor Adams said the deaths reminded him of his friend. At a news conference at City Hall, Adams said: “I still think about Robert. I keep a picture of Robert in my wallet.”
Adams then posed for a picture for The New York Times with this supposed photograph of Robert. Adams repeated the story in interviews.
But here’s the thing: the picture of Robert was fake. So says The New York Times.
“…the weathered photo of Officer Venable had not actually spent decades in the mayor’s wallet. It had been created by employees in the mayor’s office in the days after Mr. Adams claimed to have been carrying it in his wallet.
The employees were instructed to create a photo of Officer Venable, according to a person familiar with the request. A picture of the officer was found on Google; it was printed in black-and-white and made to look worn as if the mayor had been carrying it for some time, including by splashing some coffee on it, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.”
Mayor Adams, a former police captain, sought to reinforce his image (aka personal brand) — which he ran and won on — as a tough-on crime Democrat; a crime fighting leader with empathy for police officers and New York City citizens fed up with rising rates of violent crime. All while being a person sympathetic to those whose lives seem to present little opportunity outside of a criminal path.
From what I can glean, Adams made the choice to lie about a photograph he had been supposedly carrying in his wallet since 1987 to reinforce his personal brand. Why else do it? Why not just go with what is likely the truth — his police officer colleague and friend died in the line of duty and this deeply impacted him. Period. Instead he chose to telegraph what is probably true at its core, with a photo op to amplify his personal brand with a lie. He was advertising his brand. Because, one can only assume, the truth wasn’t truthy enough to embody his personal brand and sell it to voters.
Yes, this is a real life demonstration of the dishonesty in politics. But it is also a real life demonstration of how the philosophy (if it can be called such) of personal brand building corrodes our actions, warps the truth and deforms our behaviors to serve the commercialized idea of a person rather than the truth.
Now, in Adams’ clumsy, inauthentic attempt at caring authenticity, we are left to question all of his actions and motives. What else is he lying about? How else is he attempting to manipulate our emotions for his own personal gain?
Isn’t this what brands do, after all? Isn’t it not what people should do? Shouldn’t people just be people without always building towards something that resonates with consumers and sells?
I used to speak all the time at marketing and branding conferences. As the Chief Marketing Officer at Levi’s, I was considered a “get” at these things as Levi’s is one of the most well-known, well-loved brands in the world. The brand has staying power and resonance. We used to say: People don’t just wear Levi’s, they live their lives in them. This spoke to the connection and love people had for their favorite pair of 501s.
At Levi’s, we also used to say we punched above our weight class as a brand, given that we were often mentioned in the same breath as brands of much higher dollar value. Nike ($51 billion), Disney ($87 billion), Apple ($394 billion). At a measly $6+ billion, to be mentioned with these behemoths spoke to the sheer power of brand.
After my presentations, I was often asked about my personal brand. The first time I got the question back around 2014, I stumbled. Huh? I don’t have a brand. I just do stuff. I didn’t say that. I paused, awkwardly, my face inevitably revealing how dumb I thought the question was. I’m not good at arranging my face just so when confronted with a question I think is stupid. I probably furrowed my brow, squinched up my nose, pursed my lips, grimaced a little, then just said something like: I don’t really like to think of it that way. Smile. Face back on.
I came to expect the question over the course of my 8 year tenure as Chief Marketing Officer. I came to kindly bat the question away, while holding my face in check, with a simple: I’m not a brand. Smile. Next question.
Don’t be a brand. Develop critical thinking skills. Be open to having your mind changed. Be nice and respectful, always. But do not fix your sights on an idea of who you are and then never change because your brand dictates that you do not. Don’t play act qualities you think represent you. Don’t manipulate situations to amplify traits and stories that are perhaps already quite true. Let the truth of who you are be enough.
According to Julie Cottineau, the founder of Brand School (whatever that is) and author of Twist: How Fresh Perspectives Build Breakthrough Brands:
“. . . branding is your fundamental promise of whom you serve, how you make them feel and what’s different about how you deliver.”
I have made no promise to serve anyone. I will not and do not craft my choices based on who I am supposed to serve. I am a human being. I am not an idea created as a business opportunity. I am not a brand. And I will forever refuse to dehumanize myself by behaving like one.
What a great post and so well written. Finally someone with courage and credibility from experience calls out decades of juvenile thinking that has pervaded far too many “C-Suite” initiatives. As an MBA in marketing from a highly regarded B-School, this crap never sat well with me but I couldn’t articulate so wisely as you. Thank you!
After 75 years my brand is not what it was when I lived in Silicon Valley (before it was called that), NYC, Austin, NM., or during these last few years back in Texas. Frankly, I was what was necessary and it's just now that I could be my own brand if I had something to sell. These days it's just me and my imaginary buddy, Watts Nexx, and we just make it up as we go along. Life is too short for us to worry about a brand.