You Are A Brand

I recently stumbled upon an article about how Coca-Cola’s iconic contour bottle had made 100 years, a very formidable feat. And it got me thinking about some of the brands whose longevity has spanned ages. Colgate, Wrigley chewing gum, Microsoft, Google, to mention but a few.

And by extension personalities that have also left permanent marks on the pages of history. Individuals like Nelson Mandela, Alexander Bell, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Florence Nightingale, Maya Angelou, among others.

What did they do right to not only survive such a long time but also thrive?

These men and women treated themselves like brands.

Everything they did was aimed at advancing the image they bore of themselves. And as a reward for this, they left indelible footprints in the annals of history.

Thankfully, the success they attained is not a preserve of just a chosen few, but is attainable if one can be a little bit more circumspect about certain areas in their day-to-day lives. And once these get fully rooted in our makeup, we can build out of ourselves the brands that we wish the world to know us by.

If we learn to treat ourselves like brands, it is limitless how much heights we could scale in whatever field we are in.

In recent times, social media has proven to be a handy platform for building a very formidable personal brand. So many people have leveraged the power that is social media to build worthwhile personas. It is surprising, however, that several others (especially the youth) share personal information on social media with reckless abandon. And yet in this information age, our social media accounts are like digital traces of our day-to-day lives, and a window into who we are. Prospective employers and even associates can gauge our personality to within inches of perfection by merely scanning through what we post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

Furthermore, for one to build and strengthen a personal brand, it is vital to find a niche, a forte, something you are deeply passionate about. This is a step toward self-discovery. Remember you can’t do all things but you can do some things exceptionally well. So if you are going to develop a lasting brand of who you are, discover your passion and devote all your effort into becoming better and better at it.

There’s a popular adage which goes, if you do not know a man, look at his friends. The friends we choose to associate with not only say a lot about us but also more often than not determine how we turn out in life. It is important to note that there are normally three categories of friends a man has. Those that are better than him and therefore inspire him to up his game in life, those that are peers with him, and finally those that are at a lower tier than him in the game of life. Much as it is ideal to associate with all and sundry, it is prudent to spend most of your time with people who inspire you to be a better person and pursue your dreams, people whose lives alone push you to be better than you were yesterday.

What’s more, questionable lifestyles like an overly flashy social life may appear cool but in the long run will have you lose out on potential worthwhile connections. Because we are living in a world that is looking for the value in you, being a champ of tipples will not do your reputation any justice but will only injure it instead. Much as it is okay to have and maintain a healthy and vibrant lifestyle, it is more important to ensure that it does not involve questionable activities.

Finally, the kind of attire one chooses to wear greatly defines them, and man is subsequently addressed the way he dresses. As a result, it is extremely hard to prove to people that beneath the tattered or ripped skinny jeans is a professional of immense ability. Building a professional personal brand dictates that we adorn ourselves the way we would like to be addressed, in line with the expectation from the kind of industry we are in and the associates we would like to draw, and in the long run the brand we hope to espouse.