(Im)personal Brands
Ballet Mécanique (1924) // Directed by Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy
If there has ever been a long-winded but very successful self-help campaign for waning souls looking for purpose, Personal Branding might be it. Every since the term was coined by Tom Peters in Fast Company back in 1997, I knew it was going to be a rabbit hole for millions to jump down and get drunk on…, well, themselves.
The concept of packaging yourself to be whatever you wanted to be couldn’t have come at a worse time. Or was it the natural time? Company brands and branding itself had just really grown up through the 90s and were quickly becoming more and more dialed into the human experience. This was all after decades of the advertising vs. design wars of the 70-80s. It was a battle between large agencies vs. small studios, project managers vs. designers, offering design rooted in strategy vs. creating the purest aesthetic imaginable. Designers finally began learning to think beyond visuals and actually figured out how to read and write, connect strategy to creative and, more importantly, branding in the ‘90s proved that all of the brains and aesthetics could and should live together. As a result, brilliant firms all over the world produced some truly dynamic work—everything matured and became much smarter. And this created smarter customers.
In looking further into the history of branding, design, and all commercial art for clients, author Marty Neumeier shared elegantly in his Gap Series Books how branding started out being all about features and gizmos and eventually evolved into being all about the customer’s desires and needs. Serving them up the world and doing it quickly became the new zeitgeist of brand. His book, Brand Flip, actually dove deeply into just how much control the customer had wielded over brands and, in turn, how creatives should be designing for them.
So why did so many people then feel it necessary to go create the “personal brand” and incessantly, endlessly carry on as if they were the messiahs of just about anything? All they needed was a catchphrase and then they seemed to leap. The buzz word was everywhere, and individuals quickly latched on to share with the world why they mattered. Was it a missing tactic because interviews and resumes were sadly failing, or were folks really that keen on propping themselves up with this newly found strategy? With the brand world becoming highly customized for users, customers, and people alike, it was only a matter of time before these individuals would take a crack at designing who “they” were, what their values meant, and what promises they would deliver. A true, live walking brand guideline complete with sharp thoughts, gabardine pants, and a little smirk.
But along the way, the customer and the ones paying for a service were actually not only getting ignored but also blatantly forgotten. There seemed to be a crazed movement of a billion personal brands all clamoring for attention, with no one to pick up the bill. Don’t get me wrong, there was and is nothing amiss about collecting your thoughts, your desires, and your abilities and packaging them into a professional tour de force of gumption and purpose. Every known employer out there has and does relish when candidates come through the door with their @#$% together. But somewhere along the way, the personal brand tribe went a bit too far. They got cocky and lazy, lost the focus, and if Pantone had issued the end-all color of the decade, it would have been called #Ego.
Social media didn’t help the cause any, as its own birthing only served up a trillion devices, not only reminding us that we were the center of everything, but that we could do anything, have everything, and be anything with very little effort. Actor Steve Martin, in his Master Class Series, sharply reminded his students that before they worry about naming and packaging themselves, why not actually worry about being good at something first? The personal brands all became experts at nothing but themselves, seemingly. The brilliant commercial by MullenLowe for UPS, entitled Consultants, nailed it when they showed two partners selling the lingo-laden special sauce to their client only to be aghast when they actually were awarded the job—they were unable to actually do the job.
Nothing has been more important in business, and maybe even in life for all of us to know our purpose. It’s really driven branding for the last 15 years, or maybe always in some guise, and seems to be, thankfully, at the core of all great creative work. But in all real communication, great creative and certainly clear understanding are in a realm that is clearly outside of ourselves. It’s about listening, being empathic to others, and putting ourselves in other people’s shoes. Shouldn’t we be seeing the world, products, and services through other eyes, and customer eyes if we’re selling a service? How can we design and write communication for others if we don’t grasp this simple concept? As important as it is to be bold and act with great confidence, the world actually cares very little about our paper-thin philosophies, our views on gender politics, or how the Feng Shui of our closet guides our aesthetic. They’d much rather hear what you think of them, their company and what results you can produce for them.
Know who you are and bring your best every day, but maybe make sure there’s no mirror involved.