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Authentic personal branding: most buying decisions are based on trust, confidence, and emotions people have related to a product, service, or person. Branding is more important than marketing and sales. Branding is influencing, by creating a brand identity that associates certain perceptions and feelings with that identity. To be successful in life, you need a personal brand to sell yourself

Today's Manager, Dec-Jan, 2008 by Hubert Rampersad

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A BRAND is the expectations, image, and perceptions it creates in the minds of others, when they see or hear a name, product or logo. Microsoft, Nike, Toyota, Volvo, and Coke tell us how they want us to perceive their products. These brands don't communicate about what they are, but about what they want our perceptions and expectations of their products to be.

Branding can be defined as a promise that the product or service is better than competing products, a promise that must be delivered to be successful. For example, Volvo is differentiated from other car companies by its promise of safety, and security and IBM stands for dependability.

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Branding isn't just for products, services, and companies any more. There is a new trend called personal branding. Personal branding is essential to career development and is an effective career tool because it helps define who you are, what do you stand for, and what makes you unique, special, and different. Personal branding is also essential to business development. People want to do business with people they know or with whom they feel some sort of connection. If you are a familiar and consistent presence, they will have the sense that they know you and are more receptive to doing business with you.

Traditional personal branding works in the same way as company branding; communicating values, personality, and ability to its audience to produce a positive emotional response. You can shape the market's perception of your personal brand simply by defining your unique strengths, values, and personality, sharing it with others in an exciting, persuasive manner, and cultivating your brand continuously. It's something that you can develop and manage, which is essential for future employability and success.

Everyone should take the responsibility to learn, improve, build up their skills and be a strong brand. It's time to make an effort to discover your genius and authentic dream, imagining and developing yourself as a powerful, consistent, and memorable personal brand. It was branding guru Tom Peters who launched the personal branding movement with an essay published in Fast Company in 1997 under the title "The Brand Called You".

He wrote: "Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are the CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc.... To be in business today, our most important job is to be the head marketer for the brand called You.... You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand.... You need to think of yourself differently. You're not an employee, you don't belong to any company for life, you're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description.... Being CEO of Me Inc requires you to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself".

Your personal brand is a critical asset in today's online, virtual, and individual age. Having a good professional reputation is the key to success. Personal branding is becoming increasingly essential to personal success. It is the strategy behind the world's most successful people, like Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Donald Trump, Richard Branson and Bill Gates. It's therefore important to be your own brand in order to be successful in life.

The image of your brand is a perception held in someone else's mind. Successful personal branding also entails managing this perception effectively. Your personal brand is the expectations, image, and perceptions it creates in the minds of others, when they see or hear your name.

Traditional personal branding concepts focus mainly on personal marketing, by building a name for yourself, showing what sets you apart from others, and describing the related added value. I focus on sustainable authentic personal branding in a holistic way; on a trusted image of yourself that you want to project in everything you do, which is about your true values, beliefs, dream, and genius, combined with powerful tools to deliver peak performance and to create a stable basis for trustworthiness, credibility, and personal charisma.

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The underlying assumption is that each of us has unique gifts and a distinct purpose and dream in life. By connecting these gifts, purpose, and dreams, we open ourselves to greater success in life. The authentic personal branding concept is durable and less cosmetic than current methods. It places more emphasis on personal development, growth in life and empowerment, and focuses on the human side of branding. Traditional personal branding approaches can turn into an ego trip.

Authentic Personal Branding Model

The Authentic Personal Branding model consists of four phases (see Figure 1).

* Define and Formulate your Personal Ambition.

This phase involves defining and formulating your Personal Ambition in an exciting and persuasive manner and making it visible. Your Personal Ambition encompasses your personal vision, mission, and key roles, related to four perspectives, which should be in balance: internal, external, knowledge and learning, and financial perspectives.

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Today's Manager, Dec-Jan, 2008 by Hubert Rampersad

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