Personal branding is a concept that was slow to gain traction. Take it from me. I was there at the beginning; back then, few people knew what personal branding is and even fewer had any interest in investing in it. Personal branding has certainly come a long way since the term was coined by Tom Peters back in 1997. As “personal branding” turns 20 this year, I thought it would be valuable to check on its status and see what’s in store for the future.
The uptake was slow because the circumstances that require personal branding hadn’t fully formed. In 2005, even Fast Company – the magazine that introduced the concept – expressed concerns that personal branding wasn’t really a thing. People felt secure enough in their careers, and most people still worked alongside their co-workers in an office. The internet was just starting to become a phenomenon. The iPhone didn’t launch until June 2007. And according to the U.S. Census, the internet didn’t penetrate 80% of U..S homes until 2014.
But the convergence of technological advances, along with rapid changes in the global marketplace, gave personal branding the oxygen it needs to live. Combine these changes with a couple of serious downturns in the economy, and career-minded professionals started taking notice of the potential for personal branding to serve as a career management strategy. From there, even if they didn’t know exactly what it is, executives realized that having a brand is an essential career asset that could help them reach their goals. And companies got in on the act too. Most major corporations have incorporated personal branding programs into their talent development initiatives.
Now that personal branding has made it to the big league, there’s talk that the personal branding revolution is over. I have been hearing a lot lately about the supposed death of personal branding – from career coaches and the media to corporate HR leaders. The myth of the early demise of personal branding is the result of three powerful factors:
Confusion - Misunderstanding
Myopia - Not seeing where things are going
Success - Ubiquity
1. Confusion. The first pitfall is the misinterpretation of what personal branding is. In my Forbes piece Personal Branding Is Not About You, I explain that personal branding works when it is based in authenticity and a genuine desire to add value to those around you. It is not a “me me me” way of life. Personal branding does allow you to stand out in an increasingly competitive world. It helps you clarify and express the value you can deliver to your team and employer. Personal branding is not a competition to see how visible you can become – for the sake of being visible. It is not measured in the number of tweets you can post per minute and it is not a function of putting yourself at the center of the world.
Today, many apply the term personal branding to the mindless, endless online chatter and the grandiose desire to be visible, known, and popular. The term personal branding has been hijacked by those who try to associate it with endless inane posting on social media. Nothing could be further from the original definition. Conflating personal branding with social media excess has eroded the true value of personal branding as a serious career development strategy – reducing it to a TMZ story about the Kardashians.
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2. Myopia. The second problem is a wistful focus on the past, and a refusal to see where the world of work is really going.
The slow but steady rise of internet access has allowed more and more workers to become virtual employees. The rapid increase continues to accelerate. Many companies are going out of their way to let employees work from home; in a 2015 Gallup study, the number of American workers who have telecommuted climbed to 37% . The cost savings are just too big to ignore. But as work becomes more virtual, employees will need to find new ways to demonstrate their value. Being virtual means working harder to be visible. Personal branding will help.
Another employment trend is the shifting responsibility of career management. Companies are making it clear that even though you receive a paycheck with their name on it, when it comes to managing your career, they’re reducing their involvement. It’s up to you to identify your next role and connect with the right people in the organization to make it happen. The loosening of the reins is good news for those who want to be in control of their career – and it means that the employment timeline of the future will include alternating, intermittent periods of being employed, being a contractor, and being a solo-preneur. Like it or not, this means you have the same need to build and maintain your brand as any company.
Moreover, the security you feel “working for the man” is probably false security. In his Forbes post Why Big Company Doesn’t Mean Job Security, Jacob Morgan cites data from Innosight showing that the longevity of big companies is waning. The average life expectancy of a company on the S&P 500 used to be 75 years. Today, it’s barely 15 years. Research shows that by the year 2027, 75% of the companies on the S&P 500 will be replaced. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker has held ten different jobs. Forrester Research predicts that today's youngest workers are more likely to have fifteen jobs in their lifetime.
These are but a few of many work related trends that make personal branding essential for those who seek to have successful and fulfilling careers. Putting your head in the sand will yield less-than-stellar results.
3. Success. The final reason rumors are flying about the death of personal branding is the wholesale, successful integration of personal branding principles into career management strategy. Seemingly everyone is doing it. It’s like breathing – and who considers breathing an action that requires overt effort? In fact, personal branding has come a long way since the days when it was only being used by senior execs in large corporations. Today, university students are using it to stand out so they can land internships. Some colleges even have personal branding courses in their curriculum. And high school students are perfecting their LinkedIn profiles to help them get into their college of their choice according to an article in the New York Times.
In my own business, I can see how it has become a thread seamlessly woven into the fabric of career management. In 2016, my company signed on 8 new major corporate clients for personal branding programs (two of them rank in the top ten places to work). My company’s personal branding certification programs had near-record attendance in 2016, and the number of Google alerts I received on the term “personal branding” increased 15%.
Perhaps the term “personal branding” is getting a bad rap, or it’s tired, or it’s been co-opted by those who aren’t doing real personal branding, or it’s just not a big deal anymore because people treat it as a mundane, must-have career tool, just like having a resume. Here’s what I know about personal branding:
• This recent chatter about the death of personal branding is a good thing. It signifies that personal branding has made it into the big league of career management. People often try to tear something down once it reaches prominence.
• The most important part of the personal branding process is the hard part – determining who you are, what makes you great, what separates you from your peers, and what’s valuable to those who are making decisions about you. All the Twitter followers in the world are not going to help you build your brand if you don’t have a strategy for delivering value to them consistently and authentically.
• Over time, the term personal branding may be incorporated into other aspects of career maintenance, or it may evolve into something else, but the concept is alive and well and delivering value for those who truly embrace the entire philosophy. I see it all the time in my work with professionals throughout the world. It is a force that will remain because it’s based on timeless principles of human interaction. Those who embrace it will reap the benefits.
Personal branding is dead. Long live personal branding.
William Arruda is the cofounder of CareerBlast and author of 13 Things All Successful Professionals Do To Fuel Their Careers.
