Nowadays, more than before, the recruiters and the employers are struggling with finding the right potential employees for a specific job position. Even the screening process is overwhelmed and bombarded by too much information and big data. Self-branding helps to differentiate ourselves from the crowded marketplace. This concept is not new and the extant literature gives us different definitions and terminologies as ‘impression management’ (Goffman 1959), or as the self-branding concepts in articles like ‘The Brand Called You’ (Peters 1987) and the following works (Peters 1997; Rampersad 2008; Horton 2011; Arruda 2002).
The supremacy of social media in the 21stcentury has complicated the procedure of choosing the most suitable employees. Let’s just think about a professional social network such as LinkedIn or social media like Facebook and YouTube which are becoming the core of international self-branding, avoiding the traditional media. “Socialmedia has added a new dimension to the creation and maintenance of personal brands. It acts as a steroid” (Agnes 2015). Otherwise, the good effort of technology which aims to speed up and improve our lives, at the same time it is overwhelming them. Just think about the recruiters that are completely lost in a repetitive and broad maze of words as: ‘specialise’, ‘expert’, ‘successful’, ‘motivated’, ‘creative’, ‘skilled’, ‘experienced’, ‘strategic’, ‘leadership’, ‘passionate’, which are decreasing their values and becoming useless in a long-term view. The uniqueness has become hard to be found and the more time passes, the more self-market grows and more difficult for the customers to find their suitable products.
“Everybody has a personal brand ora sign of distinction”(Peters, 1999). The problem is that some people are not able to stand out and identify their personal values and passions. “To be in business today, our most important job is to be a head marketer for the brand called You” (Peters 1997, p.83). However, sometimespeople can barely explain those words’ meanings which they list in their CVs and they even struggle to reply sentences like ‘What gets you out of bed in the morning?’ during a job interview. The purpose of ‘brand me’ helps recruiters to understand: people’s passions, motivations, goals, targets, daily life and so on. But “the first step is to understand what is distinctive and interesting about yourself, and what you want to be known for” (Alex2016).
‘Brand me’ or ‘self-branding’ is seen as a differentiator in an overpopulated marketplace.For this reason, itshouldn’t be only a list of words, but it should mirror our identity. Don’t fake your audience, avoid plagiarism, position yourself as an honest individual, be yourself because everyone else is already taken and “If you don't brand yourself, others will” (Kaputa 2003). That means that communication is playing a pivotal role in branding ourselves and we should be aware of non-communication, which give other people the power to brand us.
Moreover, it has been studied that consumers are less emotionally involved with traditional media because, as one-directional, the interaction is not as much as the current social media as Facebook or YouTube. Social media have eliminated these barriers and have helped the consumer to discover parts of their insight (Schau and Gilly 2003; Turkle 1995; Whitty 2008), establishing a consumer-brand relationship with a richer social connection made of two-directions (Szmigin, et al. 2005). The customers’ request is hugely increasing with technological enhancement. It brings to a higher focus on the worldwide recognized social media and social channels, where the two-directions communication have affirmed the first place of information sharing. At the same time, social media empowered consumers to become more technologic, changing lifestyles and creating new consumption trends (O’Brien 2011).
Now I can start to analyse how these extant pieces of literature helped me and made me reason, with a critical mind, about this essay topic. Giving me the right materials to set and sustain a convenient and a coherent ‘brand me’. On the one hand, we have to understand how and why amateur individuals, called ‘users’, implicitly or explicitly brand themselves online by using social media. On the other hand, how they influence the ‘consumers’ perception.
Let’s take into consideration YouTube (www.youtube.com), a ‘business machine’ that increases the ‘self-branding’ movement (personal channels) and nowadays “has become the market leader among video sharing websites” (Chen 2015). YouTube provides the opportunity to share videos to the global population, offering ‘self-presentation’ and ‘self-expression’, which help to ‘self-market’ our personal brands (Labrecque, et al. 2011). Social media help amateur individuals to demonstrate their capabilities and give them a sense of uniqueness that differentiates the users’ personal brands from their competitors. “Extract”, “express” and “exude” (Arruda 2003) are the three fundamental YouTube’s personal-branding steps. The first step is that how YouTube users recognize and apply their own skills, like filmmaking, design, socialization and entertainment to establish a ‘consumer-user’ relationship by using international social media. The second step is to find a catchy “personal brand statement” (Arruda 2003) in which the users can identify themselves, illustrating which are their passions and at the same time setting goals to achieve. The last step provides a marketing strategy for their brand visibility (Arruda 2003) by creating a marketing mix plan, choosing a target and being as unique as possible.
Edmiston’s (2014) Professional Online Presence (POP) has developed another 10-steps framework that uses students’ personal portfolios to empower the fundamentals of brand marketing. She considers these steps as a path toward the ‘self-understanding’ and ‘self-branding’ into the online marketplace. In particular, taking into consideration one of the most relevant professional social media, LinkedIn. She affirms relevant information that I share in the 10-steps path towards online self-branding. Edmiston writes about establishing online identity by applying professional names that express your expertise. She advises to utilize different social media and to have a personalized URL which helps you to be easily found. Moreover, the contents and promotion that she stresses should be the tag with which we identify ourselves. The last steps focus on being active in the network, monitoring and managing your brand by keeping your profiles updated with further documentation (Edmiston 2014).
Another fundamental element that enhance your ‘brand me’ effectiveness and uniqueness is ‘typeface design’. It confers to a brand more attention from the consumers, which are influenced by its appeal (Childers and Jass 2002; McCarthy and Mothersbaugh 2002). It affects customers responses (‘graceful’, ‘intense’, ‘happy’), which could have a positive or negative relationship with the different ‘typeface designs’. Firms should be aware of the advantages of how it engages different targets and which responses it generates. Some brands use ‘typeface design’ to display characteristics such as describing a harmful behaviour like in NfP companies, delivering a mental image of themselves or conveying negative information (Henderson et al. 2004). Further concerns are the different orthographies all around the globe (e.g. Chinese, Japanese and Thai symbols), which definitely affect the brand ‘typeface design’ perception (Pan and Schmitt 1996).
Moreover, Edmiston’s (2016) work “Perfect Pitch”, which focuses on developing a one-minute YouTube video, gives us additional knowledge for the use of social media and for a more complete self-branding perception. In addition, Paul S. B. et al.’s (IOPB) assignment, which wants to study the inside-out personal branding, closes the circle of these critical literature research.
My ‘brand me’ project is the consequence of the application of cartoon animated techniques, which are, in my opinion, really catchy and engaging. These techniques gave me the possibility to deliver my messages as fast as possible without misunderstanding by emphasizing some characteristics like textual elements, music, animations and typeface designs. As Shepherd(2005) states“One of the key branding precepts is that a brand should be simple, clear and consistent”(Shepherd,2005).So, I didn’t care so much about the design, as you can notice that I focused on the meaning of my ‘brand me’ presentation and how to deliver more messages with the lowest amount of energies.
Being brief, concise, synthetic and accurate, by applying engaging and clever techniques (connotation, denotation, paraphrasing, music, simple design and engaging typeface design) are the first main pillars that come into my mind for a good ‘brand me’. Moreover, after briefly introducing myself into the music market, I agreed with Peters’ (1999) statement: "Work with what you've got! ... And make it special"(Peters 1999), which brought me to underline my strengths and my ‘badly managed strengths’ (weaknesses).
Moreover, I agree with Arruda's (2005) statement "What makes us unique makes us successful" (Arruda 2005). In fact, "Respect", "Loyalty", "Reliability" and "Responsibility” are the most suitable values to identify me a unique person. These values explain how I approach my life and how I act in my daily life. Furthermore, I applied a marketing strategy approach, identifying my Marketing Mix 4P’s, showing how I collocate myself in the professional world as a potential employee.
The video presentation finishes showing my brand logo which wants to represent an eye with “be yourself”, as a trademark, inside. It means that only us can see what we have inside and it is at the same time a sign of insight. Underneath the eye I found interesting putting the caption “life is one” as a warning stating that we cannot afford to waste time. Finally, the caption has been represented in the middle of a ‘life’ line that has a start and an end.
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