Branding: A Different Perspective
Do you consider your creative endeavors your life's work and not just a hobby? Do you want to be remembered for the profound work you create? Do you feel your lack of a cohesive brand is holding you back from the success you should be experiencing? For years I was in the same boat. But I recently had an experience that shattered the cloud of confusion I had about branding. I want to share this change in perspective because it can help creative people like us finally make our mark!
For as long as I can remember, I've never been one to put myself in a box. When social media experienced its big boom with the advent of Instagram, I initially enjoyed it very much. This joy may have been because, at the moment, I was employed and, honestly, complacent. Instagram helped me break up the monotony of my life with the creation and consumption of pretty pictures. I desired to work for myself but was far from it due to a lack of resources. However, Social media, website builders, and smartphone apps giving computer software a run for its money gave me the tools to make working for myself possible. So, I gave it a go!
At this time, the fun started getting sucked out of my social media experiences. Instead of enjoying the content in my feed and creating content by simply documenting my life, I began to get bogged down by the need to operate as a brand. For much longer than I'd like to admit, I worked on finding some umbrella term under which I could work. I searched my brain to find the common thread in all my curiosities. But alas, I needed help to pinpoint what I could call my brand.
I'll be honest. I only explored the subject in eye-catching social media posts and a few topical blog posts. Regardless, I needed more than what I read to crack open the shell of branding enough to understand it or to entice me to explore it further.
This lack of clarity around branding prevented me from growing an audience online. If I did catch someone's attention, I often lost it because I was "all over the place." This isn't a case against being all over the place, as I find that phrase insulting. However, a sense of cohesiveness will help you retain an audience as you may have already picked up on.
So, how did I gain some perspective on this thing known as branding?
Recently, after launching an event that wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be, I was given advice that made me cringe. Someone with a stake in the event's success said, "work on building your brand." I have an aversion to this advice for two reasons. First, we live in an age where businesses work to be more human in their online interactions to not sound robotic. At the same time, messages about branding bombard creatives online. “You can be your own brand,” they tell us in what seems like neverending posts from the branding brigade!
The second reason I wanted to run away from this advice is that it has kept me stuck for almost a decade. To succeed in the online space, I searched my brain to figure out "my brand" but found it challenging to commit to something. I'm not a superficial person by any means, and for the longest time, branding seemed surface-level and robotic. But a lack of perspective kept me from seeing what a brand truly is and how a person can have one without losing their humanity. Stubbornness also kept me from defining my brand, as I was a self-proclaimed "multifaceted person" who did not want to be put in a box.
Recently, however, I was scrolling through Pinterest when I came upon a branding pin. These are abundant on Pinterest, so it's nothing extraordinary. As with most pins on this visual search engine, it was very nicely designed, so it caught my eye. I didn't expect much. I've clicked on these pins throughout the years, and nothing has struck a chord. However, it was pretty, and I was decompressing after a long day at work, so I clicked on it. I don't remember what I learned from the pin itself because something else caught my eye.
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world”
"The limits of my language are the limits of my world" is something I see reflected back to me so often. It's a phrase coined by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Although he may have been referring to words within a single language, being bilingual definitely gives you an advantage. Here's how!
In tiny print, the platform informed me that another user had pinned this image to a board titled "marca." I was confused for a moment because I was very much on an English language site, and my mind didn't understand with "marca" meant. My Spanish-speaking brain soon kicked in, and it was then that I recognized this word. "Marca" is the Spanish word for "brand." Marca also has another meaning--it means "mark."
This was my "aha" moment.
I'm not a superficial person by any means. The thought of selling myself or my work is paralyzing. I want to have meaningful connections with people rather than reducing myself to an icon. All it took was learning that the word brand has another meaning for me to feel like I could finally build one without feeling like a sellout.
If your brand also refers to your mark, why not focus on that?
I shifted my perspective from "how can I package myself and sell it to the world?" to "what mark do I want to leave on the world?" The former focuses very much on the exchange of money. In contrast, the latter doesn't mention money and is more about one's impact on the world. This is a crucial distinction because, to start out, you may not be making money. You'll need to focus on what you want others to experience when interacting with your work rather than how much money you can extract from getting eyeballs on it.
This is a significant shift because you start to operate from a place of authenticity, and you'll create work that stems from a yearning to leave a piece of yourself behind.
So, stop focusing on logos, taglines, color palettes, and the superficial aspects of a brand. Instead, focus on your "mark." Set upon your branding journey by defining what part of you you'd like to leave behind in those who come in contact with your work. Operate from that mind frame, and see what that does for your "brand!"
