You Don’t Have One Brand, You Have Eight Billion

Your brand is not a single, unified entity; it is a complex, ever-evolving idea that lives in the minds of every person who encounters it.

Once you embrace the fact that you don’t have one brand, but eight billion individual perceptions of it, you unlock a powerful, human-centered foundation for all your strategic efforts.

We’re talking about brand and branding.

If you think they’re the same, you’re not alone. But here’s the difference: Branding is everything you do to shape what people think. It’s the logo, the colors, your website, and what your social media posts sound like.

Your Brand, however, exists in the mind of your audience. It’s the sum of everything you’ve done, everything you haven’t done, and all the associations people have with you. As we like to say, you don’t have one brand—you have eight billion, one for every person on the planet.

The trick is, how do you manage eight billion different perceptions? You start with the one thing you can actually control.

The Brand Profile: Why You Can’t Just “Wing It”

Within your overall branding efforts, there are three major components: your visual identity, your tone and voice, and your Brand Profile.

This profile—which includes your mission, core values, audience, competitors, and differentiators—is the pinnacle. It’s the map for everything else.

Your logo and your social media voice will inevitably form over time, whether you’re deliberate about them or not. You could be a ten-year-old business, and I could reverse-engineer a tone and identity for you. But the Brand Profile? If you don’t document it and put it in writing, it arguably doesn’t exist.

Are you asking questions you haven’t written down yet? What is your brand’s purpose? Where do you want to be in five years? Who are you really trying to reach?

If you haven’t codified your answers, you can’t share them. And if you can’t translate that gut instinct to a team member, you’ll have a hard time getting buy-in. If your marketing is failing, you have to be able to look at the document and ask: What would it look like if everything wasn’t working?

Defining your audience, your mission, and your values is an act of altruism. It stops your message from feeling like a bullhorn in a crowded room, and instead makes you feel like that friend who says, “Hey, check this out.”

The Special Case of the Personal Brand

A personal brand is different from a company brand, and it comes with a few unique challenges:

1. You Have a Resume: Unlike a corporation that can pivot quickly and never mention an old scandal, you carry a personal resume. Whether you’re an actor who gets typecast or someone who made a misstep a decade ago—your history affects your present.
2. You Can’t Sound Corporate: Open LinkedIn right now. How many posts sound super dumb and corporate, even though they’re from a person? Too many. A human being can sound formal, but the second you sound like an entity, you become boring and annoying. A personal brand must sound human, engaging, and personal.
3. You Own the Change: A fascinating example of personal brand power is when Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. He did this to escape a corporate battle with his record label, which owned the rights to his given name. What was initially seen as an oddity became a stroke of 5,000 IQ marketing genius. He took ownership of his brand in a way the corporation couldn’t stop, only increasing his popularity and proving the power of the individual.

The Power of Your Authentic Future Self

When you start to develop your personal brand, remember that your personal mission is the ultimate trickle-down effect. Who do you want to reach? What do you want to accomplish?

You don’t need to put your current flaws into your brand. In fact, doing the work to create your personal brand is the easiest way to start changing who you are as a person.

Your authentic future self can be someone different than your authentic self of today. If you want to be a more grateful person, for instance, make gratefulness part of your active, visible pursuit. You put yourself in the practice of gratefulness instead of rumination.

Whether you’re developing a corporate brand profile or a personal one, the simple act of defining, writing down, and communicating your core elements is what makes your brand powerful. It’s what allows you to beat the machine, one authentic relationship at a time.

​​Ready to create the map for your entire brand strategy? Contact Black Raven AFC for a Marketing Roadmap consultation and define your authentic future self.