To brand (verb) – to impress unforgettably on one’s mind
Concise Oxford Dictionary
In the business world, brands play an important role to distinguish them from competitive offerings, give products personality, speak and sometimes even shout about the owner of the branded product… Brands have a power over people, as the last spend huge amounts of money, hunt for the deals, and proud of wearing something branded. Brands show personality, status, how you perceive yourself and would like to be perceived by others…
What is brand? Powerful marketing tool or the way people live and want to live?! Companies spend enormous advertising budgets to build and sustain brand name, its status…
In recent years, self-development literature was enriched by Personal Branding books… Most of them are concerned about building image and how one’s appearance is important in building the overall impression about one’s brand or personality. However, building a personal brand is not limited to only what you are from outside, but more with the feelings and courage you carry out with you to this outside world.
Consistency is very important. Consistency in everything – clothes, eye contact, manners, speed of the speech, body language with what is inside of you: thoughts, feelings, motivation, drives and your personality. It is like a puzzle (mosaic) – if you miss one single piece of the picture, people around will not be able to see the whole picture of who you are, of that personal brand you were trying to build in yourself and outside of yourself. It is extremely important as nature does not like emptiness, and the mind of the people around will fill the gaps, and you will not be able to control with what kind of content it is filled up with….
Working on yourself… building strong brand… is a lifelong journey, which should never stop…The more time one spends for personal development, the higher are outcomes of that work… Direct correlation – the same as the expenditures on advertising, which are in direct correlation to the sales over the consecutive period.
Furthermore, other marketing concepts are also applicable to the personal brand development. Such as segmentation-targeting-positioning– you divide people by the certain criteria into homogeneous groups, and target those you need, and position your personal brand in the context of that group, according to their needs and wants, and position your brand in their minds.
Positioning and differentiation are extremely important. In order to be seemed as a personality, not just a person, or individuality, one needs to be able to position himself in the minds of other people, and be differentiatedable from people around.
Brand equity and brand loyalty are also applicable to the personal branding… but people tend to switch to other brands from time to time, and increased advertising expenditure or repositioning can save declining brand popularity ; )))….
People always want something better… and better is the enemy of good… Trying to be good is not the right strategy to pursue to build a strong brand… you need to be the best… the best in your category… always work hard on your brand, spend time, money, effort, energy to make your brand unbeatable, highly competitive, leading in the category, “must-have” one – because it is only one asset which shows your true value…
Even the most expensive luxury products cannot make you shine, unless you are shining from within… Go for it… Invest in yourself, and you will see ROI (return on investment) very soon…
PS… in a case of natural disasters (and no-one is insured from them), one can lose everything tangible – house, car, money, etc…. but intangible things, such as who we are (our personal brand) are the most important thing – once you develop certain qualities in yourself, they will be with you whole your life… That is the most effective investment, which is not affected by inflation, PESTEL factors, natural disasters, only by you…