Personal branding

Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging. The term is thought to have been first used and discussed in a 1997 article by Tom Peters.

Personal branding is essentially the ongoing process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual, group, or organization. Personal branding often involves the application of one's name to various products. For example, the celebrity real-estate mogul turned President of the United States, Donald Trump uses his last name extensively on his buildings and on the products he endorses (e.g. Trump Tower). Marketers McNally and Speak define the personal brand in this way: "Your brand is a perception or emotion, maintained by somebody other than you, that describes the total experience of having a relationship with you."

The relationship between brands and consumers needs to be constantly made and remade, and this continuous process creates a demonstration of the ambivalence in brand cultures. This same logic follows for personal brands- there is a constant desire for a reinforcement of the self-brand.

Personal branding, self-positioning, and all individual branding by whatever name, was first introduced in 1937 in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This relates specifically to Chapter 6, Organized Planning, Planning the Sale of Services, where Hill states, "It should be encouraging to know that practically all the great fortunes began in the form of compensation for personal services, or from the sale of IDEAS." The idea surfaced later in the 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, by Al Ries and Jack Trout. More specifically in "Chapter 23. Positioning Yourself and Your Career - You can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance your own career. Key principle: Don't try to do everything yourself. Find a horse to ride". It was later popularized by Tom Peters.

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