David Banner or the Hulk: the Truth about Personal Brand

Over the weekend, I saw part of a documentary on women stand-up comedians called Why We Laugh: Funny Women. Part of the film focused on whether women are funny, citing a number of male comedians who don’t think women are funny. While I’m not a comedian, I actually think I’m kind of funny and I definitely believe that the women profiled in the film are side-splittingly funny! Anyway, as the women profiled talked about their professional journeys within comedy, I was taken by how much their stories aligned with women who broke barriers in corporate America and the proverbial old boys’ club. They discussed how just being funny wasn’t enough, though it should have been. They instead had to concern themselves with a whole host of other things to get the chance to “be heard”.

During the documentary, the filmmaker asked several women about their personal brands – another link to the corporate world. Most of the comedians scoffed at personal brand and encouraged women coming up in the industry behind them to just focus on being funny by being themselves, versus trying to be something or someone else. One comedian suggested that personal branding was the worst concept of the last 20 years. Let’s hope she was joking.

I get why people are turned off by the thought of applying the concept of branding to an individual person. They think about creating a fake persona or an alter ego, like pretending to be like Batman when you are just Bruce Wayne or trying to be like David Banner when you are actually the Hulk. You can try to fake it and that might work on your good days, but on those bad days you quickly revert to who you are, a green mutated humanoid with superhuman strength that can’t control your rage.

The concept of personal brand has been co-opted to mean being someone that you are not. Instead personal brand should help you get closer to who you truly are. Once you articulate your brand, which is the sum of who you are, what makes you unique and how you communicate those two things, you become so much more conscious of whether you are thinking, acting and speaking in ways that are consistent with your brand. When you say “this is who I am”, daily you will face instances where that’s not quite true. At that point, you have the opportunity to change your brand or change yourself.

When I work on projects, I am a stickler for execution. I want things to be done flawlessly, particularly when it comes to events. I want every situation to be considered, every detail managed and I want participants to have an incredible experience. Anyone who has worked with me knows that I want flawless execution. One tiny problem…I’m just a girl who “can’t say no” (Oklahoma! is playing in my head). I have been known to overcommit myself from time to time. Now imagine how signing up for too many projects that spread my attention can negatively impact flawless execution. It can be a brand killer.

Flawless execution as part of my brand:

(1)    Is authentic. I can deliver. I can get things done well.

(2)    Is partly aspirational. I am not now, nor ever will be perfect. “Flawless” is an aim that I will rarely achieve, but something meaningful to which I aspire.

(3)    Is consistent. In my work, civic and personal live this is part of my brand…well, except when it comes to cleaning my house. No wait, I can flawlessly supervise someone else doing that.

I understand the resistance to personal brand, but it is a useful tool to capture what you do well and what differentiates you and to hold you accountable to those standards. It also helps you consider whether what you are communicating to others is consistent with what you believe makes you unique.