Let’s not talk about personal brand

After one too many tweets appeared in my stream using the terms personal brand and personal branding I’d had about as much as I could take and tweeted the following:

“Need a twitter filter to auto delete tweets using the term “personal branding” – unless you have a hot piece of metal in hand just stop it.”

I’m not going to rehash previous blogs on this topic (which you can find here), they pretty much cover everything I have to say on that tired old topic. Instead I’d like everyone to just stop.

So, let’s not talk about personal brand.

Let’s give it all a rest and get off the treadmill of manufactured public personas. Let’s get back to interacting with each other as people not as “brands”. Let’s have a conversation not share elevator pitches. Let’s talk about how we can work together on something great instead of how we can leverage our “brands” for greater value. Let’s focus on doing what we say we will do and keeping our promises. Let’s spend more time thinking about who we are today – faults and all, rather than marching relentlessly towards some future aspiration of who we should be.

Because in the over-manufactured, over-thought, just over it thing that personal brand seems to have become there is less and less room to be who you are. And that’s the biggest joke of all – because when it comes down to it, that’s all your personal brand is. It is who you are.

So let’s talk about that. And let’s not talk about personal brand.

See you next week.

Michel is an independent brand advocate dedicated to helping organisations make promises they can keep and keep the promises they make – with a strong, resilient organisation as the result. She also publishes a blog at michelhogan.com. You can follow Michel on Twitter @michelhogan