Aren’t most people brands already? The way we control the information about us that others see. For example, when I create my CV I included or don’t include the information that I want or don’t want others to know about me. On a very simple level that is a branding technique.

Is a brand a personality? What I wear, how I walk, how I speak all contribute to my identity and how others see me. Some control this more than others.

Describing (and crafting) a “brand” is about revealing accessible truths — about identity, personality, style, actions and behaviors. Whether it’s a collection of people working as a company, or a single person, branding helps others make selective choice in a very crowded marketplace That’s the idea.

In a limited timeframe, with limited resources and limited information, how do I choose wisely with so many choices available to me?

Will Smith, Tom Cruise, Mr. T, Rod Serling, Elvis, Elvis Costello, Wayne Newton, Frank Sinatra, Donald Trump, Wolf Blitzer, Sean Hannity, Barack Obama, JayZ, The Bee Gees, Courtney Love, Sharon Stone, Newt Gingrinch, The Dixie Chicks, Malcolm Gladwell. These people and anyone you can name are all “brands”. Why? Because they have recognizable traits, styles, patterns and features — archetypal and/or otherwise — that we individually and collectively label, respond to and interact with. Choose/don’t choose, like/don’t like.

A brand is shorthand. It’s a fast means to recognize and categorize patterns, and understand how to label and “file” an entity. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re reacting to people as brands — categorizing and interacting with them with certain expectations, watching and waiting for patterns — in the same basic ways you’re reacting to companies. Brands are conscious, or seek to be so — to more effectively, more truthfully and more simply interact.

Your clients are reacting to you as a “brand”, too. They’re selecting you and paying for your services (or not) because of the actions you’re repeating and the patterns you manifest — consciously or unconsciously — and which they like or dislilke, trust or are confused by.

As novelist Philip Dick (“Minority Report”) once said, reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. Brands — and people as brands — are a major and consensual reality on the planet. You can choose to ignore the effects of such reality. But you can’t choose to ignore the impact of that ignoring. Especially as competition for mindshare, awareness and dollars increases.

The assertion that human beings make decisions “rationally” and without emotional and psychic undercurrents totally misunderstands our brain and CNS and how we function in the world, especially based on thousands of years of evolution.

Brands help us make decisions and interact given limited information, time and resources. And the idea that “individuals are a sort of brand” is merely a natural outcropping and extension of corporate branding.

My take:

Brands and people have been defined very differently for years. Brands are signifiers within the sphere of commerce, and people are, well, people. The notion of equating people with brands is relatively recent: According to most, we can blame a 1997 Tom Peters article. Thus, the onus is on the personal branding proponents (PBPs, I call ’em) to demonstrate conclusively that people are brands (and, it would follow, that brands are people). Of course, the PBPs have an impossible task.

It doesn’t help that the PBPs can’t agree among themselves. Ries, Trout & VanAuken say SOME people are brands. Certain comments above suggest that ALL people are brands (“Anything that you can perceive becomes a brand in your mind.”). In other forums, PBPs have suggested that businesspeople are brands but homemakers (for example) are not. So which answer is right? None of the above.

Most PBPs seem to think that, because there are (sometimes!) similarities in the way that we perceive people and brands, they can be considered to be one and the same. There are a number of issues with this argument:

1) Brands and people serve very different roles in our lives. Therefore, the perceptual framework we bring to each, by definition, must also differ.

2) Yes, we sometimes categorize people on first impressions, limited information, etc., just as we do with brands (and sometimes we don’t). No, it absolutely does not follow that “people = brands.” That’s bad logic. That’s like saying that because my sofa is green, and celery is green, then my sofa must be celery, and I’ll just ignore the obvious differences between the two.

3) To boil down all perceptions to “branding” is erroneous and dangerous. Human perception predates the idea of branding, and to suddenly label anything that is perceived as a “brand” misuses the language and gives brands way too much credit. Am I now to believe that Vonnegut was not an author, but a brand? And that “Player Piano,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and “Timequake” are not books Vonnegut authored, but brands unto themselves? Should I applaud the sky for so successfully “owning” blue within its visual brand identity system? How about your kids? Your mother? What’s their brand?

Seriously, where does line of thinking end?

No, people are not brands. People are people, and brands are brands. They occasionally have things in common, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same. Using the word “brand” to simultaneously replace disparate concepts like “celebrity,” “self-image” and “personal presentation” undermines clarity and does more harm than good.

On that note, Mark makes a great argument: That the “personal branding” concept runs the risk of ignoring the “the essential humanity that sets people apart from things.” Instead of asking whether people ARE brands, Mark hints at a better, deeper question: SHOULD people be brands? Reflect on that. I think the answer is clearly “no,” and so the case for personal branding falls apart pretty quickly.

Finally, I doubt we’ll be having this conversation in 5 years, as “personal branding” probably will have been supplanted by that time by some other buzzword.

To Mark, Brad, and all the commenters: Thanks for a thoughtful discussion. I recently presented 5 other arguments against the concept of personal branding at my blog, in a post entitled “You’re Not a Brand.” It can be viewed at: http://www.thatbrandingthing.com/2009/05/youre-not-brand_29.html

However, while I certainly don’t think of myself as a brand, people are going to know me based on their perception of every interaction they have with me. Every detail matters, just like it does with a company brand.

Don’t be afraid to think of the brand in such simple ways.

The only difference is the outcome. A company needs to persuade me to part with money (or time) to sustain the brand. Brands that are in authentic become undesirable, and undesirable company brands die. People with undesirable personal brands don’t die – though they might be lonely.

Stephen Abbott