Keep it personal

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Welcome to our latest addition to our blog series on realising the potential of your brand. We’re taking you through the mine field that is unravelling the challenges of optimising your brand for business success – from uncovering your purpose to developing the right positioning, finessing your identity and tone of voice to driving brand awareness in a crowded market,

The latest blog in our series focusses on Personal Brands.

Kyle Jenner, Jamie Oliver, Bradley Simmonds, Tony Robbins and Marie Forleo all work in completely different industries, with different audiences and stand for different things. But what do they all have in common? They are their own brand.

Since the launch of social media (and in particular the last five years), the growth of Personal Brands has exploded. That’s not to say they didn’t exist prior to the increased popularity of Facebook and Instagram, but they have certainly gained a lot of traction since and have the opportunity to make for big business.

So, what is a Personal Brand? It’s defined as the practice of marketing yourself and your career as to increase either the profile of your business or your personal value to the market by building:

  • your profile
  • your credibility
  • your network
  • new connections and partnerships

Put simply, it’s more than just using your name to promote your business and the same brand rules apply that we have discussed in previous blogs – creating a positioning , having a purpose, a tone of voice and more.

So, how do you go about defining your personal brand?

Your purpose:

What’s your why? Why are you doing this, what are you setting out to achieve and how will others benefit?

Identify your audience:

You will never appeal to everyone, so who are you trying to reach?

Create clear messaging:

A concise brand message and a tone of voice that aligns with your purpose and audience.

Establish your identity

Create a clear brand identity that positions you at the heart of the brand.

Promote yourself correctly

Identify the right channels to reach your audience and ‘dial in’ to the conversation. Over time this strategy should evolve to leading the conversation.

There is one constant that has to carry through every stage when defining and living your brand – authenticity. After all, as it’s personal you’re living it every single day. You have to be yourself; that’s what people are buying in to and it’s what helps you stand out against all of the other people in your industry. If you’re not authentic, it’s likely you will fail as people will see through you.

Joe Wicks is a great example of an authentic Personal Brand. He describes himself as ‘a man on a mission to rescue people from the awful dieting industry’ and wants to ‘educate people and give them the knowledge they need to get a lean, healthy, strong body without going hungry’.

Since creating his 15 second Instagram videos and growing his ‘90 day plan’ business, he has released recipe books (selling over 3.5 million copies) and partnered with a number of different businesses – MyProtein, Gousto and a kitchenware brand. Since the COVID-19 lockdown begun he has become the nation’s PE teacher, motivating children every day to exercise, donating any money earned from his YouTube channel to the NHS.

Joe Wick My Protein - Personal brands

Joe Wicks x My Protein

Joe wicks kitchen - Personal Brands

Joe Wicks Kitchen Utensils

But most importantly, throughout the success of building his career, he has remained true to himself and his purpose, as tempting as it may be to steer away from this. For example, he was approached by a national supermarket to create a range of exclusive microwave meals for a substantial amount of money. But, microwave meals don’t align with the healthy eating message he is so passionate about, so he turned it down and instead partnered with Gousto – a company that supplies fresh ingredients and recipe steps to create healthy meals.

Joe Wicks has a clear purpose, proposition, audience, identity and comms strategy with authenticity at the heart of it. And this blueprint is true for all of the names (and more) listed at the start of this blog and have built and executed their personal brand across whichever industry they are in.

Whether you’re looking to launch a personal brand or you have one but aren’t quite reaching the traction you’re aiming for, please get in touch. Our brand and strategy team can help you bring your brand to life, from articulating your purpose, designing your identity through to developing your comms strategy.