The brand is ‘you’
Many readers may remember a poster that was created (almost a century ago) as a recruitment ad for soldiers in America. It had Uncle Sam (the American national mascot) staring beady-eyed from under a tall top hat decorated with stars. “I want YOU for the US Army,” it said. Not only was the poster extremely successful in recruiting soldiers, the image of Uncle Sam and the message soon gathered a force of its own. It has been referenced and reused several times over, even if none remembers what it once stood for—a true measure of advertising success, by any metric in any part of the world.
This book is a bit like that poster in the flourish and certainty with which it speaks, telling young (and even older) readers that the “brand is YOU”. It leaves little space for doubt or disbelief, and much like the poster, is likely to recruit many to the cause.
The book mines the rich cache of insights and anecdotes that author and columnist, Ambi Parameswaran, has gathered over his long and successful career in marketing and advertising. It talks about the need for professionals to be mindful about the brand that they create and to keep a close watch on its reputational value.
A personal brand must be treated much like a product or a service and must be considered in its entirety— from external appearance to public presence and visibility on all media. It is crafted, needs to be upgraded from time to time and actively promoted, or so the book proposes. It suggests that a personal brand needs to be watered and its soil turned, at regular intervals, for a person to stay relevant.
Humans must reposition and relaunch to be able to make a mark for themselves in the corporate world, the book advocates. Just as one would do for a brand of noodles that is losing customers, the individual whose appeal is dwindling should find out what aspect of his/her brand has lost its appeal and work towards getting the shine back.
Many readers are likely to gag at the suggestion—that the individual is no different from a product or a service is not an easy swallow. But Mr Parameswaran writes that every executive is a brand and hence, no one can walk the corporate tightrope without understanding one’s brand value and maximising it.
The book treads an interesting line through the many ways one must build a brand, being mindful of the lines that separate brand-building from braggadocio. It is constructed as a conversation between old friends, all batchmates from a reputed business school and fictionalised from characters in the real world. The chapters are written as long answers to questions that the friends raise in their bid to know more about personal branding.
The book is an easy read and brings up interesting examples but on the flip side, it ends up being too glib. It also falls into an evangelical trap—keen to make its point, it asks soft questions and skirts the inconsistencies and challenges that its hypotheses run into. For example, the numerous challenges with women executives and personal branding and work-life balance do not come up at all. Also, how does one keep artifice out of the endeavour to create a successful personal brand is not very clear either. The author either stays away from such discussions, or when he does pick it up, lets conviction trump over reason. Perhaps, he is leaving them for another book.
Still, it is interesting that such a book has been written, and that Mr Parameswaran, who built his career in the pre-digital era where any talk of personal branding was accompanied by discreet throat clearing noises, chose to write it. Image and brand are two powerful career-propelling engines in the age of social media, and everyone wants a ride. A book like this one fills a gap.
Mr Parameswaran makes an interesting point for those looking at social media to build their image—he says that equating social media with personal branding is missing the forest for the trees. Digital platforms, according to him, have provided new fuel to an old fire. They have not invented the art of personal branding; to fuse the two, is a mistake.
The book is simply written and the language is jargon free. Understanding marketing or branding is not a prerequisite, the author states very clearly right at the start of the book. Interestingly, in a somewhat Hitchcockian tactic, the author inserts himself into the book, as Ambi. Do not mistake the Ambi in the book for Ambi the writer, however, he tells us. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Why would he create a namesake that is not him, in a book that dips freely into his years as an adman? Mr Parameswaran is not telling and the reader is free to read between the lines to find her version of his truth.