Me as a brand

‘Gosh Ina if you were a brand, what would this brand look like?’

As a marketing manager, you should be able to answer this question easily. But that’s challenging as filling out a brand model for a company, product, service or any other person than yourself is just that little bit easier.

Based on theories and methods you can fill out a number of important elements using a brand model to make the right transition:

• Strong inner self
• Recognizable appearance
• Matching behavior

The core is formed by the inner self, the character of the brand, which determines how the brand expresses itself and behaves. This is fundamental and something that is not easy to change in people, as well as in companies, services or products. Someone who has been ‘dead serious’ all his life cannot suddenly become a ‘loose cannon’. It’s no different with brands: the big and serious Philips cannot suddenly become a deviant and hip brand like Apple. But to define your inner self as an important element for the determination of the personal brand Ina, that is not so easy. Not only is it less easy, it is also quite scary to expose a part of your inner self.

Six questions offer guidance and help to find a way out of this:

‘Your inner self’

• Vision: What do you want to realize in the long term, what is your dream for the future?
• Mission: What do you want to achieve in the shorter term, what is your goal?
• Values: What makes you valuable, what do you stand for?
• Characteristics: What brands symbolize your personality?
• Credo: What is your credo or motto?
• Core concept: What typifies you in one or two words?

Around the brand interior is the brand exterior. The design of the brand in the broad sense of the word. The exterior is more flexible than the interior, but also has its limits in terms of adaptability. DE can modernize the logo for its coffee, but if all the warm and cozy red is replaced with moody black you no longer recognize the brand. If you translate this to yourself it is more like a critical self-image when you look in the mirror. Appearance of a brand or of yourself is more than just physical characteristics. Mimicry and sound also play a role and that is just what makes it difficult to describe your appearance. If you want to burn yourself anyway try to answer the following points:

‘Your appearance’

• Your senses; what typifies you:
• Seeing: What people see of you? (physique, clothing, hairstyle, facial expression, posture, movement)
• Hearing: What one hears from you? (use of voice and other sounds)
• Feeling: What one feels about you? (handshake, humor, ad rem, authority)
• Smell: Your smell, your perfume?
• Your language: What is characteristic in your use of language and in your pronunciation?
• Your persons: Which persons influence your appearance?
• The inner and outer combined then lead to the brand’s behavior:

‘Your behavior’

• Your offer: What do you have to offer? (knowledge, experience, attributes, etc.)
• Your internal communication: What is the most important feedback you will seek to inform and motivate yourself?
• Your external communication: For key audiences, what is your message and what media do you use?
• Your environment: How do others influence your behaviour and which lifestyle group do you belong to?

Successful brands have a clear and distinct inner, outer and behavioral profile. And of course there will be differences between inner, outer and behavior. As long as it is authentic, unique and clear. In this area, there are indeed parallels to be drawn between defining a brand and a person. And the handles of the brand model translated as above into a personal brand model help with this. Only now the testing of your self-knowledge and showing a little courage to actually show yourself. Because only when it is authentic, unique and clear, it works!