The Celebrity Personal Branding Myth
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Why does every personal branding evangelist talk about a major celebrity when they preach on building a personal brand?
To begin with the top tier celebrity does not have a personal brand.
Celebrities have well crafted personal images. The top tier celebrities like Oprah, Donald Trump, Tiger Woods (before the Viagra) didn’t focus on building a personal brand.
Read Further or watch video below…
What Are They Doing?
They are building a personal based image that can be leveraged to sell, endorse, and profit. I guess you could argue this is somewhat a brand but not really.
I remember watching Oprah when I was younger. 5 days a week Oprah was on TV. She was good, could bring the audience and the guest to tears. But beyond that she knew how to run, manage, and create a very effective media empire.
Did she leverage her name? Yes. Did she do this first? Did she only focus on this? I’ll let you answer that.
Donald Trump, he didn’t build a personal brand. He bought low sold high. Bought raw land or dilapidated buildings added value and sold. Shrewd real estate and business deals built Donald Trump. Not some focus on building a personal brand. Heck have you seen his hair?
Tiger Woods before his straying ways was and will be by far the greatest golfer of modern times. His driving, putting, and dedication to improvement can’t be touched by anybody else on the course. Did Tiger say years ago… I’m not going to range today instead I’m going to start working on my personal brand. Uh… no!
What Did They Really Do?
These celebrities are known for what they are good at. Not because they focused on some personal marketing or corporate rejected term like personal branding.
I know personal brand fan boys and girls[sarcasm] use those as examples as to what’s possible. Okay I get that but maybe you should talk more about how they refined their craft or their talent. They molded that talent day after day. How they took their skill and leveraged that into a very profitable personal image.
So what should you do?
Don’t focus on building a personal brand. Focus on being great. Focus on being the best at what you do. Focus on being YOU.
I have a feeling that if you do that the whole personal brand thing will take care of itself.
About Scott Scanlon
Is chief doer at You Brand, Inc. and also master curator at the WordPress content curation platform Curation Suite.
Donald Trump’s hair is ridiculous lol….. had to add that. But I really do like this post. It brings to the surface a very important point, anyone who is expecting to create a “personal brand” must be good at something first. That is the only way “personal branding” works is by being great at something and using the internet to share it with the world. Trying to build a personal brand before being an expert in your field is like putting the cart before the horse. Good Post Scott thanks for sharing!
Yes, he has amazing hair.
Being good at something first then possibly focusing on personal branding is to me the solution.
.-= Scott Scanlon´s last blog ..Defining New Media Marketing Podcast =-.
You’ve got this right. No gimmicks or high marketing budget can make a fool or a pretender, an authority over the long-term. People love exposing fakes.
People like brands develop their value (or ‘moat’ as Buffet calls it) over time. And when you continuously try to improve yourself, it gets harder to compete with your brand.
.-= Matthew from Video Marketing´s last blog ..Website Design Basics =-.
Do you not think that people are still brands though - like any other product? I mean, products have brands and brand images. In the same people, people are brands and they have brand images (personal image). Perhaps image constitutes more of what is made up of a personal brand than with a product…?
This is a topic I’ll have to give more thought to and post on another comment for another article.This would be an interesting conversation to have someday, as I find what’s done in the media to be different than what most perceive. I think there are two different things here brand and personal image. I think many of the top brands don’t have a great image, but good enough. I think Oprah has a great brand, and is highly respected. She really didn’t take advantage of her brand until later in life with the magazine and the tv station. I think she did just try to really care about people and give great content. Tiger, well I think that’s different than the others, he focused every day on being the best, he later became in the public eye which probably made him continue to have a great image, to be focused on that. I think he became a brand, through endorsements. Endorsements told him he was, but his original intent was just to play a game he loved. Trump and Paris Hilton to me are a different type. They know they have success and money and they use that to there advantage and put there name on everything. I think this is very smart of them. I don’t agree with Trump on some of the stuff he does to get press, or attention. I respect him a lot for letting people roast him for charity, or make fun of him for his hair, but the birth certificate and stuff like that I didn’t like that side of him. I felt the entire president talk was to get in the media, and was very easy to detect, I don’t agree with that. Overall Trump is very smart, and knows what he wants and you have to have a lot of respect for him for that. I feel the brand topic got more into a “do they have a good image” conversation, and I think many don’t, fame changes people.
Will smith had a quote something about how money doesn’t change people it just makes them more of who they already are. I find a brand and personal image to be quite different. Tommy Lee, Dennis rodman have great brands, but not an image I’d ever consider. Jackass Steve-O, bam, all of those guys have a great brand, but I wouldn’t ever be like any of them. This brings the image conversation into role models and a whole other topic.
What Trump does, where he gets paid just to put his name on a building, or how Robert Kiyosaki can sell a book just because it says rich dad and has black yellow and purple, to me that’s branding and that’s where it’s mastered. I think Mercedes and BMW also have great brands.