So I was reading this article today
msn.careerbuilder.com: What Do You Have in Common with Coca-Cola, the iPhone, and Paris Hilton?
Which is all about “building your personal brand.” I have nothing against this article per se, it was all very good advice information, except… except for saying "make yourself remarkable," it said absolutely nothing about building a personal brand.
The very title of the article, which includes the phrase “what do you have in common with…”, kind of runs counter to the whole idea of branding. What makes you a brand is not what you have in common with anyone. Your brand is what makes you different. What makes you different is what makes you a brand. What you have in common with existing market-domineering brands, in terms of building your brand, is useless to you.
Paris Hilton is a brand, but not because she’s beautiful and rich. There are lots of women who are just as beautiful and just as rich. Paris Hilton is a brand because she’s willing to be different. There are very few women who are that gorgeous and that rich who choose to appear in porno flicks on the Internet. There are very few women who are that gorgeous and that rich who also occasionally get tossed in the slammer (okay, maybe Martha Stewart, but who ever heard of her?? ;-). It is these unique elements, and the willingness to flout society’s rules, that make her a brand.
Now bear in mind, I have nothing against schmoozing potential customers via social media. It’s great, and I do it all the time myself. But there is a big difference between schmoozing and branding. Being on facebook or having a blog just makes you what, one of how many tens of millions of people that do the same thing? Building a brand requires that you emphasize what it is that makes you unique. This runs counter to most people’s personalities, just about everyone’s training, and primate societies in general. This is the hard part.
Again, that’s why I wrote “Principles of Applied Stupidity.” One of its many purposes is to analyze the insidious forces of conformity training, as all too often they can lead you to being a generic commodity instead of a unique brand.
Yes, schmooze, but build your brand by daring to be different.
© Justin Locke
