I was recently talking with a colleague about personal branding, her area of expertise. Knowing that I am very experienced with corporate branding, she turned the conversation to the differences between the two. I think the approach is pretty similar.
In both personal branding and corporate branding, authenticity is paramount. You can’t go to market or to the Rotary Club and pretend to be something that you aren’t, even if that’s what you think the audience prefers. You will get exposed and actually hurt your brand. Further, you can’t change what you are to appeal to different audiences. Consistency builds brands.
Some of the largest differences in personal and corporate brands have to do with brand personality and attributes. With corporate branding, you get to choose your brand personality to some extent. That personality has to represent your brand well, but you can turn some things up and others down. Not so much with personal branding. Your personality is what it is. Sure, you might have to turn it on when you’re in public or speaking or have some sort of audience, but you don’t get to choose to be someone altogether different than who you are. You’ll eventually come across as inauthentic.
Another difference is your brand attributes. In corporate branding, we identify what those are and show them in their greatest light. You can’t train your staff on your brand and then tell them to hide some attributes at certain times. It defeats the purpose of building a brand. However, with personal branding, you don’t have to bring your entire self to the public. Perhaps your friends and family know you have extreme political views, hang-ups about your trashy neighbor or you can’t boil water. That’s stuff that you can keep private if it doesn’t serve your purpose.
Finally, perfection. Corporate brands need to try to get it right all the time. Corporate branding is less off-the-cuff when presenting itself to the marketplace. Personal brands don’t have that luxury and can’t be expected to never trip up. In fact, a mistake here or there is what makes us human. Take responsibility, move forward and try to turn that error into a positive for your personal brand.
How we approach personal and corporate branding is similar because there are fundamentals to branding as a whole. We just approach them with some nuance.
