Note from Nick Armstrong: Today we have a guest blogger, Ron Marks. Ron is a Gen-X’er who is highly respected in the Fort Collins area. He wanted to share with you his thoughts on the concept of Personal Branding. There is some adult language – but, in comparison to some of my previous posts, it’s pretty mild. Enjoy!
“Personal branding: how we market ourselves to others.”
- Dan Schawbel, Personal Branding Cheerleader
“A man’s true purpose is to find the path into his self.”
- Herman Hesse, novelist
My dearest Gen Y careerist, I am sure that, as many of you are job seekers or are beginning your careers, you have by now – or will shortly – be given the advice to develop your “personal brand.” That very concept should give you pause. Let me share with you why.
Personal branding is described by advocates such as the Personal Branding Blog as a process by which you “create your career and command your future.” “You will learn how to position yourself for success so that you become known for your passion and expertise. In the digital age, your name is the only currency….” Now, the first question is whether this is actually something new. Is this just fancy new jargon to describe something as old as putting on some nice clothes and brushing your hair before a job interview? If so, then you are just being marketed to, like the proverbial salesman selling an icebox to an Eskimo. But I believe that something in the above quote betrays the fact that this is a new concept of us and our roles in this society.
What does the word “brand” add to the former concept of “reputation.” Our name and reputation, our set of skills, connections, and track record have always been what defined us in the job marketplace. That has always been our currency. What does the word “brand” add to the mix? The same thing it adds in any other marketplace. The elevation of a created identity over the product itself, where the image becomes the identity, where what people buy is the identity itself. (Think of the substantive differences between brands of cola, or jeans.) If you are a brand, rather than a professional with a list of skills, accomplishments, and connections, it is your image that you are creating and marketing. This image is not represented by any kind of packaging, by a logo. It is represented by how you sell your personality. This is the hidden risk I see in a concept that gets talked about as if it were no big deal, because when your personality is what identifies you and your “brand,” then there are consequences that don’t occur with the normal building of a professional resume.
This is a critique not just of the phrase “personal branding,” but of the very concept, and what it implies about our culture and society here in the US. People are using this phrase without realizing what the concept implies or what they are giving away. To say that I am a personal brand is to force me to reduce myself, my whole multi-dimensional self, to the economic dimension. This raises some serious problems for those who value authenticity. For if we allow this idea of personal branding to go to its logical conclusion, then every aspect of our personality, in our quest to know ourselves and become responsible, caring, autonomous adults is not questioned as to whether or not it is the real self – as opposed to the self defined for us by our parents and community, the one we are supposed to start to outgrow in adolescence – but rather whether it is marketable to some niche out there. Self-reliance and self-knowledge, always the most difficult of our Homeric quests in this life, are suppressed and superseded entirely. (In other words, in practice, the danger is that the marketing will distort the product.) Your worth can never again be found to have any inherent value, based on your own autonomy and self-esteem, but must from now on be based solely on social approval. I sure hope you liked high school. I suppose this is fine for those shallow enough not to question popularity and marketability as the ultimate measure of your life.
And you can’t resolve it by saying that personal branding is actually quite empowering, that it’s all about leadership, about building your “Tribe.” Bullshit. Not when everyone is forced to compete as a fucking “brand.”
What this concept signals is the ultimate in economic insecurity, where we all collectively agree to reduce our personality and our value to the gods of consumerism, and let our “tribe” – our potential employers and bosses – see our Facebook page. Privacy gone, growth becomes about developing a sale-able personality, and branding becomes wishing it won’t be me to fail in this supposed meritocracy of “brands.”
This goes to our notions of success and failure in this country. The reason why I view the concept of personal branding as detrimental to our grown-up responsibility to strive for some measure of self-knowledge and authenticity is because of how strong this other concept is in US society: the concept of meritocracy. We already live in a culture that believes we live in a uniquely meritocratic society (despite having far less social mobility than many other industrialized nations – as always, our myths outpace reality by quite a lot). Which means we already live with quite a high degree of pressure. I just recently witnessed a talk by Alain de Botton where he quite brilliantly explained this, making the key powerful point that totally turned my own thinking on personal branding. He said that in a meritocracy, you’ll believe that your position in life is merited and deserved, which makes failure more crushing. Rather than being unfortunate, you are now a loser. What happens when you take this cultural myth of meritocracy, and then say to people, “Your success or failure in life will depend in large part on how you market your personal brand.” People will focus on their personal brand. In fact, it will generate a new line of self-help books. As it has. And branding will take preeminence over substance.
Personal branding is also an extension of the ethos demonstrated and articulated by George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 when he famously told a (finally) introspective and ready-to-sacrifice nation to go shopping. If we are consumers rather than citizens (and money rather than majoritarian interests determines policy), then of course we are brands rather than self-determining beings. Wake up! You, sir, were mistaken to think that you are an autonomous self seeking meaning. You aren’t a citizen with human rights and responsibilities. You aren’t a contributor to culture. You are a consumer, nothing more, and your only creations and productions judged to be of value are economic. Don’t think you can create your own self on the side, for you are a brand. Someone who matters – a consumer of your brand, the owner of your soul – is watching, viewing your video or status update, reading your blog post.
You see, this is the real risk of where the ethos of personal branding and the self as consumer leads. Self-censorship. Self-censoring does not lead to flourishing, to diversity. Where marginal differences in image are what make or break a product, you and those around you will be engaging in a whole lot of image/reputation micromanagement, which means that aspects of your personality that don’t lead to a marketable advantage will tend to be self-censored. Your image, and therefore, your personality, will have to be managed to a fine degree to create this marginal competitive difference.
Nor is there any utopia about how your authenticity will be appealing as your brand. The truth is that the authentic personalities of the charismatic few sell really well. They are called celebrities. For example, when Gary Vaynerchuk talks of his social media success, of the success of his “brand,” he time and again talks about how he was just blessed with his particular DNA. Now, I am aware that the delusion that we can all be celebrities – Reality TV, for example – is so widespread that unless Orwell was right in protesting that sanity is not statistical, then I am certainly in need of joining the medicated masses of the US. But if you will grant that celebrity necessarily means a few will be loved by many (kind of definitional), then it is apparent that the rest of us will find very small audiences for our authentic selves, and not purchasing audiences either. These audiences for our “brand” will be identical to those we used to call “family” and “friends.” But I’m worrying about a mute point, because fewer of us will be seeking authentic selfhood anyway. We’ll be looking for our marketable selves.
We all live in the economic dimension as one of the dimensions of our lives. We must work to eat, to contribute to community, and to in fact be ethical beings. And we have always needed to develop marketable skills to survive or thrive and be of value in this dimension. But there was always something – call it a soul, a self – that could, sometimes, remain untouched, have non-economic dreams, and be explored. What the concept of personal branding does is says that you must now not just develop marketable skills that to a greater or lesser degree conform to your authentic self, but must also develop a marketable SELF! The supplantation of authenticity and autonomy by marketability. And the newest self-help gurus of personal branding are cheerleading this along. Life, personality, authenticity, no longer multi-dimensional, but flattened, subjugated to one dimension. Welcome to the machine, son.
To close, I’d like to ask whether one can use personal branding, and then transcend it. I’d like for us to look at a particular person who has done very well for himself through marketing his personal brand. He began as a community organizer with ambitions of helping the community, and ultimately of changing the way politics are played in this country. He wanted to prioritize Main Street over Wall Street, majoritarian concerns over monied interests. He became Brand Obama, a brand offering hope, transformational leadership, and an end of “politics as usual.” The campaign was a marketing campaign, like all of our political campaigns, focused on brands rather than substance, and Brand Obama won, beating out other established and powerful brands, such as Clinton, and then Republican. Brand Obama won. Brand Obama made history. But Obama the president, and more importantly, Obama the person, is facing a specific problem at the time of this writing. Health care reform is mired in turmoil, with nuts carrying automatic weapons to rallies, following just a few weeks behind other wackos getting plenty of media coverage for conspiracy theories regarding birth certificates and Hawaiian newspapers. But that’s not his problem. (Clinton faced a lot of weird media stuff when he pushed for health care reform.) Obama has recently seen his poll numbers drop by ten points in just a week. That’s a lot, but it’s not his problem. His problem is highlighted by where he lost support, and why. Obama lost the most support from Democrats, liberals. And he has lost support because he is not living up to Brand Obama, the brand that was to transform the politics as usual into something more about real reform. Obama has lost support because those who bought his “brand” see bailouts to Wall Street without any real reform, and they see concessions being made on health care, and with his softening on the public option, they see fading hopes of real reform here either. The hopeful are becoming disillusioned. Now, I can’t know what’s in the head of our president, but I view his tale as cautionary. If you promise people a slogan (whether it be “change you can believe in” or whether it be the slogan you establish for your brand), you are building expectations. Being able to deliver is not just about intentions. It is also about knowing what you can deliver. It is about self-knowledge. We have before us a man who became a brand. And what is being questioned now is his integrity as a self. What did he intend to do, and what will he actually do? Can he transcend a marketing campaign, and deliver to meet the expectations created by his brand?
More importantly for us, can we?
To Thine Own Brand Be True: A caution on the concept of Personal Branding
Note from Nick Armstrong: Today we have a guest blogger, Ron Marks. Ron is a Gen-X’er who is highly respected in the Fort Collins area. He wanted to share with you his thoughts on the concept of Personal Branding. There is some adult language – but, in comparison to some of my previous posts, it’s pretty mild. Enjoy!
“Personal branding: how we market ourselves to others.”
- Dan Schawbel, Personal Branding Cheerleader
“A man’s true purpose is to find the path into his self.”
- Herman Hesse, novelist
Personal branding is described by advocates such as the Personal Branding Blog as a process by which you “create your career and command your future.” “You will learn how to position yourself for success so that you become known for your passion and expertise. In the digital age, your name is the only currency….” Now, the first question is whether this is actually something new. Is this just fancy new jargon to describe something as old as putting on some nice clothes and brushing your hair before a job interview? If so, then you are just being marketed to, like the proverbial salesman selling an icebox to an Eskimo. But I believe that something in the above quote betrays the fact that this is a new concept of us and our roles in this society.
What does the word “brand” add to the former concept of “reputation.” Our name and reputation, our set of skills, connections, and track record have always been what defined us in the job marketplace. That has always been our currency. What does the word “brand” add to the mix? The same thing it adds in any other marketplace. The elevation of a created identity over the product itself, where the image becomes the identity, where what people buy is the identity itself. (Think of the substantive differences between brands of cola, or jeans.) If you are a brand, rather than a professional with a list of skills, accomplishments, and connections, it is your image that you are creating and marketing. This image is not represented by any kind of packaging, by a logo. It is represented by how you sell your personality. This is the hidden risk I see in a concept that gets talked about as if it were no big deal, because when your personality is what identifies you and your “brand,” then there are consequences that don’t occur with the normal building of a professional resume.
This is a critique not just of the phrase “personal branding,” but of the very concept, and what it implies about our culture and society here in the US. People are using this phrase without realizing what the concept implies or what they are giving away. To say that I am a personal brand is to force me to reduce myself, my whole multi-dimensional self, to the economic dimension. This raises some serious problems for those who value authenticity. For if we allow this idea of personal branding to go to its logical conclusion, then every aspect of our personality, in our quest to know ourselves and become responsible, caring, autonomous adults is not questioned as to whether or not it is the real self – as opposed to the self defined for us by our parents and community, the one we are supposed to start to outgrow in adolescence – but rather whether it is marketable to some niche out there. Self-reliance and self-knowledge, always the most difficult of our Homeric quests in this life, are suppressed and superseded entirely. (In other words, in practice, the danger is that the marketing will distort the product.) Your worth can never again be found to have any inherent value, based on your own autonomy and self-esteem, but must from now on be based solely on social approval. I sure hope you liked high school. I suppose this is fine for those shallow enough not to question popularity and marketability as the ultimate measure of your life.
And you can’t resolve it by saying that personal branding is actually quite empowering, that it’s all about leadership, about building your “Tribe.” Bullshit. Not when everyone is forced to compete as a fucking “brand.”
What this concept signals is the ultimate in economic insecurity, where we all collectively agree to reduce our personality and our value to the gods of consumerism, and let our “tribe” – our potential employers and bosses – see our Facebook page. Privacy gone, growth becomes about developing a sale-able personality, and branding becomes wishing it won’t be me to fail in this supposed meritocracy of “brands.”
Personal branding is also an extension of the ethos demonstrated and articulated by George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 when he famously told a (finally) introspective and ready-to-sacrifice nation to go shopping. If we are consumers rather than citizens (and money rather than majoritarian interests determines policy), then of course we are brands rather than self-determining beings. Wake up! You, sir, were mistaken to think that you are an autonomous self seeking meaning. You aren’t a citizen with human rights and responsibilities. You aren’t a contributor to culture. You are a consumer, nothing more, and your only creations and productions judged to be of value are economic. Don’t think you can create your own self on the side, for you are a brand. Someone who matters – a consumer of your brand, the owner of your soul – is watching, viewing your video or status update, reading your blog post.
You see, this is the real risk of where the ethos of personal branding and the self as consumer leads. Self-censorship. Self-censoring does not lead to flourishing, to diversity. Where marginal differences in image are what make or break a product, you and those around you will be engaging in a whole lot of image/reputation micromanagement, which means that aspects of your personality that don’t lead to a marketable advantage will tend to be self-censored. Your image, and therefore, your personality, will have to be managed to a fine degree to create this marginal competitive difference.
Nor is there any utopia about how your authenticity will be appealing as your brand. The truth is that the authentic personalities of the charismatic few sell really well. They are called celebrities. For example, when Gary Vaynerchuk talks of his social media success, of the success of his “brand,” he time and again talks about how he was just blessed with his particular DNA. Now, I am aware that the delusion that we can all be celebrities – Reality TV, for example – is so widespread that unless Orwell was right in protesting that sanity is not statistical, then I am certainly in need of joining the medicated masses of the US. But if you will grant that celebrity necessarily means a few will be loved by many (kind of definitional), then it is apparent that the rest of us will find very small audiences for our authentic selves, and not purchasing audiences either. These audiences for our “brand” will be identical to those we used to call “family” and “friends.” But I’m worrying about a mute point, because fewer of us will be seeking authentic selfhood anyway. We’ll be looking for our marketable selves.
We all live in the economic dimension as one of the dimensions of our lives. We must work to eat, to contribute to community, and to in fact be ethical beings. And we have always needed to develop marketable skills to survive or thrive and be of value in this dimension. But there was always something – call it a soul, a self – that could, sometimes, remain untouched, have non-economic dreams, and be explored. What the concept of personal branding does is says that you must now not just develop marketable skills that to a greater or lesser degree conform to your authentic self, but must also develop a marketable SELF! The supplantation of authenticity and autonomy by marketability. And the newest self-help gurus of personal branding are cheerleading this along. Life, personality, authenticity, no longer multi-dimensional, but flattened, subjugated to one dimension. Welcome to the machine, son.
To close, I’d like to ask whether one can use personal branding, and then transcend it. I’d like for us to look at a particular person who has done very well for himself through marketing his personal brand. He began as a community organizer with ambitions of helping the community, and ultimately of changing the way politics are played in this country. He wanted to prioritize Main Street over Wall Street, majoritarian concerns over monied interests. He became Brand Obama, a brand offering hope, transformational leadership, and an end of “politics as usual.” The campaign was a marketing campaign, like all of our political campaigns, focused on brands rather than substance, and Brand Obama won, beating out other established and powerful brands, such as Clinton, and then Republican. Brand Obama won. Brand Obama made history. But Obama the president, and more importantly, Obama the person, is facing a specific problem at the time of this writing. Health care reform is mired in turmoil, with nuts carrying automatic weapons to rallies, following just a few weeks behind other wackos getting plenty of media coverage for conspiracy theories regarding birth certificates and Hawaiian newspapers. But that’s not his problem. (Clinton faced a lot of weird media stuff when he pushed for health care reform.) Obama has recently seen his poll numbers drop by ten points in just a week. That’s a lot, but it’s not his problem. His problem is highlighted by where he lost support, and why. Obama lost the most support from Democrats, liberals. And he has lost support because he is not living up to Brand Obama, the brand that was to transform the politics as usual into something more about real reform. Obama has lost support because those who bought his “brand” see bailouts to Wall Street without any real reform, and they see concessions being made on health care, and with his softening on the public option, they see fading hopes of real reform here either. The hopeful are becoming disillusioned. Now, I can’t know what’s in the head of our president, but I view his tale as cautionary. If you promise people a slogan (whether it be “change you can believe in” or whether it be the slogan you establish for your brand), you are building expectations. Being able to deliver is not just about intentions. It is also about knowing what you can deliver. It is about self-knowledge. We have before us a man who became a brand. And what is being questioned now is his integrity as a self. What did he intend to do, and what will he actually do? Can he transcend a marketing campaign, and deliver to meet the expectations created by his brand?
More importantly for us, can we?