Ah! Personal Branding!
One of the things I’ve been working on lately is my whole attitude towards other people and especially people who take themselves too seriously. Because a lot of people do. As I said in a previous blogpost- I don’t want to be taken seriously too much – I want to inspire and serve as a primary goal. And I totally got inspired yesterday. If you’ve been following me on Twitter – you would have noticed that I saw Karl Lagerfeld yesterday. I would have loved to say “met” instead of “saw” but unfortunately that wasn’t possible. However, he did the keynote here at le Web- and I was totally amazed. I mean I have only seen him in “Elle” and “In Style” and other fashion magazines. And I have always seen him as one of the best when it comes to personal branding.
In Real life, he surprised me, because he seemed like such a down-to-earth man- and in my world that doesn’t really go together with the fashion industry.
So I had to change my perception a bit there. Secondly, he seemed like a true artist, taking his art seriously. It didn’t seem like he was the center of a huge fashion machine. He seemed so grounded.
As he said himself “I don’t do promotion- im just being myself”. A lot of people are saying that these days- but I totally believed him- in all his personal branding Karl-ness. I am convinced that what he does and what he creates is so amazing and energetic, that he doesn’t need to relate to promotion or his personal brand. And that, rockers, is one of my questions for you today. What Can you do to avoid marketing and promotion? Is the core of personal branding not to think about personal branding? I believe so actually. I have felt it on my own body, and some of the biggest personal brands I’ve met, in the perspective of others don’t have a branding approach to themselves, they’re just.. layered and themselves and non-apologetic about it. And that Rockers! is personal branding. Think about it for a bit. One of the things I l believe you can do is to create something that creates some sort of legacy within your field, as long as you don’t structure yourself too much around it. It All lies in the creation process for me- not in the tweeting or the Facebooking or stuff like that. So take it from Karl: focus on creating not on the personal branding. It becomes to… un-authentic.
