Big news: I became the owner of my local gym in March 2023. You’d already know that if you read my last letter.
Yes, it’s a crazy milestone and not one I expected to be encountering so soon (if ever). Aside from the standard symptoms of reduced time, increased stress and just generally having a self-filling plate, there’s one topic which always seems to be stirring beneath the surface—brand.
I. Brand for a business is a requirement
Let’s look at what defines each of us, and how we’re able to differentiate ourselves.
We have names – unique enough, but sometimes there’s overlap.
We have a face and body structure that’s more personal, again sometimes there’s overlap with others but much less common.
And then we have our styling—how we present; whether through looks, actions or words.
A combination of all of these things could be considered a “brand”.
A business starts off with a name and an idea of what they want to do. But they need a face and body, something to be represented by. So we create a logos and brand guidelines so when this business is out in the world, people are familiar with how they look and interact.
But today we've almost come full circle. We are beginning to create the:
II. Personal brand
Some people create logos for themselves, have presets for their photographs, write in specific ways and don't deviate because that's them. I don't think there's an issue with any of that. It's natural for us to lean certain ways with most endeavours. For example, I may enjoy my steak a little more cooked than yours. That’s not so much brand, but it aligns with me.
As most things evolve over time, social media is no exception. When it began gaining traction, it was for people to connect and share. I want to emphasise people in that sentence. It was an unprecedented way to connect with anyone—instantly. But as things grow, and become their own little economy, everyone and everything needs to capitalise. Today, we have brands, businesses, influencers, advertisers and the like all pushing their agendas, sponsorships or new fragrances.
Inevitably, this… for lack of a better phrase, ‘online society’ has changed the way many of us approach these platforms, and also how these platforms are built.
Being on a social platform today means having a personal brand. Why do people follow you? What value are you giving to all your subscribers?
I do appreciate that not everyone has this mindset. But I’m quietly confident you’ve come across this concept before. Personally, it changes the way I approach social platforms, and I don’t like it.
A lot of what I’m writing about here was sparked by this article.
III. Whether you like it or not, you’re a brand
Branding is imperative today. But to bring it into such a delicate space—the self—is on a new level. The advent of self-help books have pushed this 'personal' brand along. And it's not like we need to have social media accounts to participate. The clothes we buy, the grocery stores we shop at, the sports we play. There are things we identify with, we are proud of, we don't like. These make up our 'personal brand’.
This is normal. It’s what makes us, us. But we’re in an age where we potentially make an income from this brand. And our competition is everyone else trying to make their brand profitable—that includes every business out there as well.
But why!? How did it get to this?
Simply, we’ve come full circle. As creative beings who can create brands for businesses—to give names on a page a unique design, a profile to interact with, a personality to express—we look at what we’ve done for these very carefully considered brands and think “I want to be more like that”. Maybe you’ve have one of the following thoughts:
“I want a graphic to represent me.”
“I should be tuning in my art style, something that is new.”
“How can I set myself apart?"
“I don’t share those things on my story.”
“Yep, this one deserves a post".”
Those last ones in particular are very simple, but a part of the personal brand. We all share on social media for those who follow us. And whether we like it or not, we all filter what gets shared. What do we want people to see? What don’t we want them to see?
The same questions are often asked of businesses.
This is dangerous territory. The advent of brands that look and say things like we do, slotted into the platforms we use in exactly the same way, has us creating this strange, unconscious comparison.
You may not think we’re like businesses at all–trying to sell things to everyone. We just want a couple of likes, right?
Put plainly:
Your post is your product. Likes are the currency.
Businesses have teams of people curating what they post and researching how it will perform.
We are individuals. We require space and autonomy to make our decisions. Creeping into this business mindset is exactly the opposite of what humans can be. Spontaneous, instantaneous, frivolous, creative, risky.
Being famous, or having celebrity means playing the personal brand game hard, and the current culture even harder. I’m not quite interested in that myself, I just wanna chill and make some stuff along the way.
But the temptation is there. I’m tech savvy. I can write well-enough. I can express ideas through graphics. I can string together video clips to create a compelling story.
“Play to your strengths.” We’ve all heard it. I’m sure that originates from some time ago where ‘strengths’ were a little more physical.
Today, playing to your strengths could be creating vases from scratch, painting portraits, playing games, coding software. Strengths today are boundless and so refined that we don’t need to spread very far to be able to perform these skills. And honestly, just like a business, we can pick the strength we want to develop and the industry we want to be in.
We are more like businesses than ever before, and I’m not sure what impact that may have on the development of… us.
Stay safe, and pass-it-on.