What’s your personal brand?

In the late 90s I loved the Spice Girls.  Blimey Posh has come a long way since then.  Her brand back then was ‘girl who couldn’t sing as well as the others but liked nice clothes, pouting and pointing.’  How would you define it now?

Joining forces with the endlessly beautiful David Beckham has produced one of the most manicured and forcefully marketed brands we have ever seen.  It must be exhausting frankly.  Four children and a husband to pour into designer clothes and act like the perfect family while your path is peppered by flash bulbs and shouts of, ‘Over here, Posh!’

Every now and then the perfection is marred by someone needing to finance their new car so they piggy back on your success by selling a kiss and tell to the rags then everyone stares at Brand Beckham wondering how they’ll handle this kind of PR.  When Rebecca Loos told everyone she’d slept with David, Posh smeared on some red lipstick, hoiked her tits into an anti-gravity dress, hauled her man to a premiere and draped herself all over him with the steeliest glint of commitment the paparazzi has ever seen.

This article by Will Yakowicz in Inc. magazine makes for an interesting read about personal brands.  He basically says be yourself and stand up for yourself.  If you invent an image and try to portray it, you’ll end up on sticky turf.  We talk lots to our clients about brand voice and maintaining a level of authenticity and consistency.  It’s different for companies because they can project a particular image onto a product through styling, branding and marketing.  Not people though.  Tricky to hide what you really are.

Brand Beckham all seems like a bit of a facade to me.  Declarations about the wonders of bee pollen whilst maintaining a size 0 figure sit alongside miniature piles of blueberries in filtered, Instagrammed murkiness with a mannequin for a husband.  They are quite likely a loving family with fun, rowdy children but unfortunately this healthy image isn’t pushed to the fore and loses out in favour of the airbrushed one with massive cracks running through it.