Personal Brand for Sale
By Becky Lang
A couple posts ago, I called my generation “Generation Why Bother?” I’ve also called them “The iGeneration,” “Generation [This Space for Sale]” and “Generation Personal Brand®.” While I think “iGeneration” is the term most likely to be worked into a Miley Cyrus Pepsi jingle, I think the idea of personal branding digs the deepest into our worldview.
Personal branding can be explained in terms of this paradigm shift:
Paradigm one: “It doesn’t matter if someone is wearing second-hand clothing. It’s what’s inside that counts.”
Paradigm two: “I can infer by his thrift-store wardrobe that he both hates Keith Urban and feels mild remorse after eating from McDonalds’ late night menu.”
This move from general and emotional to specific and distanced is a result of a highly branded culture. But how did we get this way? Branding is a two-way process. Brands can only do so much to communicate what they are and who they’re targeted for. But customers can become more and more adept at interpreting these symbols, making brand communication possible in complex new ways. My generation hit puberty right when Britney Spears was first showing her midriff, and this bubble gum pop culture led branding to a new peak of sophistication. For the first time, youth was literally plugged into an influx of mass marketing, allowing brand language to become as intimate to us as English.
As a result, we interpret everything around us through branding lenses, namely, each other. Facebook interests and activities are charged with broadcasting who you are in the shortest space possible. And don’t think you can become truly “individual” by rejecting the system; choosing not to engage with these processes is just as telling about what you might like, what you find funny and what you might buy.
In a sense, personal branding could be considered a pathetic fantasy. The scenester blog Hipster Runoff does a hilarious job at making members of different subcultures look pitiful in their attempts to grasp at individualism using glow sticks, slang, cereal box sunglasses, aurora borealis shirts, whatever. But the fantasy itself is as much about power as it is individualism. Kids don’t want to be proletariats, minions, plebeians. They want to be miniature corporations. They treat their identity the same way Kraft treats Macaroni and Cheese. It’s serious business.
But don’t get depressed. I think that behind the tsks tsks at superficial culture, this reveals a complex system of interpersonal sophistication. Not only are there more and more nuanced levels of communication at hand – fashion, media choice, location check-ins, online presence, foodie culture – but there are more nodes where these symbols can replicate and become widely shared. Faced with a recession, kids know they can’t afford to misrepresent themselves. Generation Personal Brand® is, if anything, precise.
For marketers, this means it’s crucial to view communication as a two-way street. It’s no longer about the message you’re sending out, but instead about understanding the messages that your audience are broadcasting about their own lives. Think of it this way: You want people to “like” your product on Facebook. The question you have to ask is, what does “liking” your product publicly allow someone to express about themselves?
So what do you think?
Is personal branding just an ironic joke among hipsters trying to mock their consumer habits, or is it a legitimate system of thought?
Is my generation more marketed to than previous generations?
Can symbols transmit and replicate faster in the digital media age?
Do you consciously think about how the choices you make – where you work, what you put on your bumper – create and broadcast your personal brand?