Xavier PRabhu is Founder of PRHUB – PR/integrated comms. firm + a consulting boutique & a practice supporting sr. executives/entrepreneurs.
Upfront disclaimer: One of the firms I founded and own provides branding support for dozens of executives worldwide and has supported up to 40 of them in the last seven years. And we’ve been searching for a better and more logical term to replace the word “personal branding” for a couple of years now. The search began as soon as I realized that being one of the early advocates of personal branding in India (I recall speaking on it at a large residential industry event in Goa a decade back) imbues in me some responsibility to ensure we are in-depth and grounded in sound reasoning that holds up to professional rigor of the highest standards. And we should ensure we don’t get carried away by the gold rush—which typically means everyone is just rushing to ride the wave and may treat little details like rigor and inherent logical contradictions as irritants.
Branding has a certain construct and rules. It’s simply not possible for human beings to adhere to many of them.
David Aaker, often called the father of modern branding, is someone whom I revere and refer to for things and questions that have to do with branding. While some of his ideas about branding do apply to individuals, that is where the similarity ends.
Human beings are more complex and prone to a whole lot of twists and turns that brands as “inanimate objects” don’t have to go through. Brands have human beings as creators and custodians. They create the brand, imbue it with a certain personality or characteristics, and then nurture it through a cycle of communicating, amplifying and engaging the target group in such a way that they receive, associate and buy into that persona. And over a period of time, they develop into brand loyalists or advocates.
However, when it comes to individuals as brands, it’s substantially different. Here, it’s human beings who are tasked with creating and nurturing another human being as a brand. The way a human being relates to an inanimate brand vastly differs from the way they relate to another human being. Also, human beings, by nature, are fragile in many senses. They are prone to uncertainties or periods where they are not in control of themselves. For example, they can fall sick, can experience depression due to personal tragedies, they can end up whimsically doing something that’s not part of their brand construct, or worse, can feel like just giving up everything they’ve worked for. Above all, we all have an unpredictable shelf life. But that is not how brands are constructed and nurtured. Brands typically live as long as they have an audience to buy them, and there is profit to be made. There are multiple teams that can transition brand custody and management from one to another over centuries. None of that is possible with human beings.
The process of personal branding imposes constraints on human beings. It’s time to really ask: Are they better off without these constraints?
Branding as a process is very rigorous. It’s all about consistent messaging and behavior or delivering a certain emotional or tangible benefit to audiences consistently all the time—rain or shine. That is what makes good brands, and brand custodians across the world are trained to be as good at this as possible. Of course, brands undergo positioning and persona changes, but they are structured and preceded by research and multiple processes.
The biggest benefit of being human is just the opposite of that. It’s the ability to think and behave differently as we evolve or based on our experiences or learning. We are liked in part because another human being understands where that sudden change or twist came from. That is what truly inspirational success stories are made of—stories that appeal to and connect with millions of audiences worldwide. Human beings are emotional—brands are not. Brands behave in ways their custodians and owners have ordained for them and their audiences’ expectations. When it comes to individuals, they are often better off taking some best practices from the company branding process. Beyond that or above that are the quirks and frailties that come with being a human. We can react differently to something that we read or saw or a major development that is all over. It’s allowed, and many people will appreciate that candid reaction because we are human beings, and that reaction was authentic—because the behavior was like that of a human being. But brands cannot react out of turn and have to ensure (or be conscious) alignment to the set brand values, persona and so on. For brands, any deviation is often seen as an oversight or error. There would be reviews and even changes in the team tasked with the brand’s management.
As much as we try to imbue brands with human characteristics like empathy and sensitivity, the reality is that they are inanimate objects that have no morals or ethics and are allowed to live as long as they are profitable for their owners—which are, again, inanimate things called businesses. And I believe human beings who want to position and build themselves for visibility or success are better off taking some of the best practices from the process adapted for brands. That is where the commonality ends. It’s time to rethink the term “personal branding” itself. I have toyed with “executive leadership branding,” “thought leadership branding” and so on, but I have not really been happy with these terms for one reason or another.
The change of term could make a huge difference because it then is something that could survive the application of a rigorous process. And it could probably send the right message to the audiences we are targeting: individuals who are our clients. Put on your thinking caps. Let’s coin a new apt term to replace “personal branding.”
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