Self-reflection is quite a ‘thing’ – you get to the very core of your inner voice. Something that you can trust when things seem a little wayward at times.
Quite paradoxically, having a personal brand is not ubiquitous. It is special, unique and personal to the very you. While having a rather bouncy and sometimes an erratic or a loose-ended career, you know that you can safely latch on to the brand that you have become over a period of time. Just like an ‘organism’ that at the very core doesn’t change – and for good – because that defines your purpose, philosophy, and persona, but still alters with changing market contexts and demands. For example, Virgin Group, no matter how diverse, has a central brand personality: that no matter how diverse in its businesses, serves the consumer with its purpose-led intent: ‘changing business for good’.
And that is precisely the reason why you should be relevant to what defines you today instead of past ruminations over why you weren’t dealing with your real self.
Which calls for some brand purging: figuring out how you cope up with your ecosystem – which includes your customers, consumers, and your general business circle.
That being said, here are three ways in which you can positively purge your brand – and pivot:
Remove the fluff that doesn’t speak your brand’s language.
You are a product – because you offer value. So, everything else, no matter how well tied-up with your narrative shouldn’t be a part of your brand-speak anymore. Stephen King rightly puts it as: ‘Kill your darlings’. Sounds a bit brutal, but brilliant. Speak-up your brand from your very core of what you constitute. Don’t add extra ‘marshmallows’ to your fancy differentiators that will not sustain in keeping you up for the long-haul.
Be the right balance of functional and emotional.
When you straddle well between functional and emotional elements of your brand, you provide a complete customer experience. However still be a little skewed toward providing an emotional experience when every brand is getting better at being ‘comfortably’ and ‘conveniently’ functional. Your most remembered – and etched – brand-led messages are the ones that speak of a certain kind of emotion. Think Starbucks. Think Apple. Think British Airways. Think The Body Shop. And more.
Fuel and sustain creativity in your communication.
Creativity is not just a visual experience, it helps you transcend to another level of consciousness. Creativity is your imagination, your critique, your quirks, your brand consciousness. Something that elevates you to your higher self. And rightly so, it does help with some ‘purging’ of your perception of your brand when paired with insight and self-awareness. When your brand needs a ‘reframe’ to address what problems you can solve or what synergies you can develop with your ecosystem, ‘creativity’, in its most encompassing form is the perfect dose for purging that doesn’t alter your meaning in the long-haul.
Do you believe in brand purgatory?
Let me know!
