The Brand Called You

By Ashutosh Garg

There is no one else in the world like you.

Your personal brand has been registered in your name and patented with your persona even though there may be hundreds of people carrying the same name. Creating, building, and developing your personal brand is entirely in your own hands. Conversely, destroying or diminishing your brand is also only in your own hands.

Your brand is the essence of your own unique story. The key to this is reaching deep inside yourself and pulling out the authentic, the unique 'you', from within your own self.

What we do with our own brand name could be the difference between being very successful and not so successful. This is as true for personal branding as it is for business branding. The Brand Called You outlines how critical it is for each one of us to understand the power and vulnerabilities of our brand and invest wisely and consistently in our persona and our name.

Remember, the only legacy you will leave behind in the world is your name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Dec 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9789388038621

Book preview

http://www.ogilvymalta.com/home/about-ogilvy/

Chapter 1

Brand You? Who Me?

If you don’t build a personal brand,

someone else will brand you with the wrong label.

—Richie Norton

What exactly is a brand, or rather, who is a brand?

What does it mean? Is there a difference between a product and/or service brand and your personal brand?

I think ‘brand’ is one of those words that is widely used, but is understood very differently by different people, depending on which side of the spectrum they are on.

What does ‘brand’ mean, and how has the word’s application changed over time?

How does the term ‘brand’ apply to you and me as individuals, as distinct from the product brands that you and I buy from store shelves or the service brands we use across sectors ranging from hotels to e-commerce sites?

According to the Business Dictionary,³ a ‘brand’ is defined as a unique design, sign, symbol, words, or a combination of these, employed in creating an image that identifies a product and differentiates it from its competitors. Over a period of time, this image becomes associated with a level of credibility, quality, and satisfaction in the consumer’s mind. Thus, brands help confused consumers looking for their personal satisfaction in a crowded and complex marketplace by standing for certain benefits and value.

The legal protection for a brand is a trademark or copyright.

As mentioned earlier, I looked for the term in the dictionary and found the following answers:

Brand is a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name.

Brand is an identifying mark burnt on livestock or (especially in former times) criminals or slaves with a branding iron.

We are certainly not going to talk about that second definition of the word, but we will adapt the meaning of the first and second definitions to help you understand and create a strategy to develop your personal brand.

The Brand Called You

Branding is as old as humanity itself.

It was only in the later part of the twentieth century that marketers and advertising experts started to understand that they could create a specific perception in the minds of their consumers for specific qualities and attributes of their products, which were so far only labelled with a name, but existed as a generic product.

These experts started to call this ‘perception’ a ‘brand’.

When I posed the question of what a ‘brand’ really is to friends, who are experts in the world of marketing, I got some very interesting answers.

A brand is what your prospect thinks of when he or she hears the name.

A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services, or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed.

A brand name is the name of the distinctive product, service, or concept.

Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name.

Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual products and services.

Each of these definitions could very easily apply to each one of us, if we think of ourselves as a ‘brand’. We have distinctive characteristics, we have well-defined mannerisms, and we have favourite phrases that we tend to use over and over again. From our childhood, we are stereotyped by our family and friends.

Whenever we think of someone, we always associate him or her with a quality, a physical attribute, a perception, a feeling, an image, or an opinion.

Think of all the times you have met someone and created a first impression of them. I am sure you would easily be able to think of people who you could classify as:

Is reliable or unreliable

Can be trusted or cannot be trusted

Loves to gossip or does not gossip

Willing to help or will not be helpful

Very smart or not so smart

Charitable or a miser

Competent or incompetent

Thinks out of the box or is predictable

Rigid or flexible

Honest or dishonest

Logical or illogical

Smartly dressed or shabbily dressed

Polished shoes or unpolished shoes

iOS person or Android person

Overweight or fit

Tall or short

Black, White, Brown, or Yellow as identified by the colour of our skin

Religion, caste, or tribe

Additionally, there are so many others that we use to create our own impressions, and others do the same when they see us.

When someone talks to another individual about you, moreover, they could be using a blend of one or more of these adjectives to define you. In essence, therefore, they are creating your ‘brand’ image and outlining your personal attributes.

Based on their assessment of you, matched with their own assessment of themselves, they will choose whether or not to interact with you. Or if they do interact, they will modify their behaviour to match with what they perceive of you. If you think of the hundreds of people you know, you will invariably have given some of them some adjectives to define their persona in your own mind.

I am reminded of an interesting story that helped me learn about ‘Brand You’ when I was building Guardian Pharmacy across India.

During routine biweekly visits to our stores, I used to find our store staff misusing company stationery, company-branded paper bags, using our Guardian-branded newspapers to wrap foodstuff, stand on top of Guardian-branded damaged signages, etc. On one of my rounds, on a rainy day, I came across a store staff who had taken off his wet shoes. To keep his feet dry, he was standing on a point-of-sale poster with the Guardian brand written in bold across the page. Instead of getting upset, I decided to try something different. I asked the employee to write his name on a blank sheet of paper in bold capital letters. Thinking that he would be recognized by the management, he took the largest sheet of paper he could find and proudly wrote his name on it.

Once he did this, I placed the paper on the ground. Then I slowly took off my shoes and started to stand on the paper with his name on it. He reacted immediately and put out his hand to stop me from putting my feet on the sheet of paper. His reaction was one of horror and he asked, Sir, how can you put your feet on my name?

When I pointed to the Guardian-branded poster under his feet, the message was loud and clear. This experience spread throughout the company like wildfire. Since that day, I never came across any staff member disrespecting the Guardian brand.

What better example could I give to establish that each one of us subconsciously is aware of the power of our name as a brand; however, we either choose not to do anything about it or do not know what to do with it.

Very seldom have I experienced such an emotional response to ‘Brand You’.

Each time we meet someone, we assess the person carefully, most of which is done by our subconscious mind. How many times have you sized up a person on the basis of how he or she dresses or walks or talks? How many times have you commented on their accent? How many times have you wrinkled your nose in disgust because of their body or mouth odour? Each perception gets tagged on to the persona of an individual and stays there unless concrete steps are taken to effect a change.

The value of your own brand is what will give you the valuation that you may be seeking. A well-crafted ‘Brand You’ could get you that coveted promotion or the next senior job. This brand valuation could also help you to determine what you are capable of earning for yourself, because of the value you and your name could add to someone else’s business. This could be in the form of recognition and acceptance in your society, in your country or in the World.

Look at the incredible care movie stars, cricketers, politicians, sports celebrities, and corporate bigwigs take to ensure that their name is protected. Think of the hundreds of legal cases that are filed for defamation when a celebrity feels that his or her name has been hurt or dishonoured. Why do they do this? Is it simply because they love their name? They do it because of the huge sums of money their name makes for them. Their audience likes to see or hear them talk about their experiences with a product or