Today I had a meeting with quite the creative (and knowledgeable) mind and we spoke about branding. Check out www.thinkmarketing.net. For a company, business, or high-profile person, it’s a really necessary thing to have a brand. There’s a lot of competition. And marketing yourself, or your business is a fabulous tool to distinguish yourself - to make people remember you and all of the amazing things you “stand for”. But this sort of company branding is very deliberate and well thought out. Getting to the core of how you want people to identify you is a process. In essence, with the help of professionals, a company defines its own brand depending on its goals.
BUT our discussion got me to thinking about the whole idea of “regular” people and how we all constantly - and unknowingly - walk around as individual brands. I’m totally guilty (though I strive not to be) of doing the quick “personal” branding. One look and I can peg someone with a string of adjectives. If someone didn’t know me (like now because I’m a stranger to everyone in this city and it feels nice - and not nice - to be so anonymous again) and they watched me for a couple hours, how would THEY brand ME? The woman who checks that she has two MATCHING shoes on her feet? Who feels for tags to make certain that she hasn’t left the house with a shirt that’s inside out? The woman obsessed with pop-culture trivia? The woman who goes on and on about Starbucks, rose colored glasses & Anderson Cooper? Worse, what if someone saw me on a bad day when the coffee machine & the cable were down and my rose colored glasses were in for repair? Really. It’s frightening. It’s all very odd to think we’re all walking down the street - so complex and yet so terribly, terribly simple - oblivious to how the stranger who walks past us has “branded” us.
Maybe off the wall writer/teacher/mom/type people shouldn’t be branded. I think it’s much, much more useful for companies - celebrities - business personas - AND (naturally) COWS - to have good brands.
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