Don't Let Anyone Else Define "The Brand Called You"

How many numbers define you?

One day this past week I decided to find out how many numbers define me (with inspiration from Andy Rooney).

“Big government” defines me with nine: a Social Security number. Add the driver’s license number and the total is 19.

Then tack on 41 digits for bank accounts. For retail membership cards, add 71 digits; credit cards, 97 digits. Toss in hotel and airline loyalty memberships, 86 digits.

In other words, to a combination of 22 governments and companies, I am essentially 314 digits, and any real meaning behind these numbers is as elusive as an on-time arrival on United Airlines.

So marketing has become more personal, huh?

Thanks to technology, I receive ads for Chicago radio station Q101 even when I am at school 700 miles away.

I receive a “welcome to the neighborhood” packet from distant advertisers when I moved to a dorm next door, and I receive unrelenting credit card solicitations “custom-tailored” to Mr. Adrian Jones.

In short, I am invited to make myself another number, since my present 314 are so inadequate.

Combine the numeralization of people with sophisticated brand promotion and one could easily end up branded better than a steer going to market.

Not that anyone minds being branded, even if we do buy designer clothes from the 75 percent off bin at the outlet mall, since it’s the brand that we idolize, not high-quality sweatshop stitching.

The haughty horsey single-handedly increases the cost of Ralph’s shirts at least a few bucks over otherwise-normal shirts. Would we really pay that much extra for a shirt without the half-inch tall equine of egotism?

Of course not. And there’s nothing wrong with paying a few bucks extra for an ego-fix — unless we allow marketers to destroy our individuality by numbering us in order to simultaneously fill the vacuum with their own brand. Put another way, the possibility exists that people, treated as nothing more than numbers in a computer profile, become accustomed to identifying themselves vicariously via someone else’s brand.

Exhorting people simply to avoid branding would set new records in naïveté and hypocrisy, since I, too, am quite guilty of allowing myself to be branded.

Rather, we must nurture what business writer Tom Peters famously dubbed “The Brand Called You” (Fast Company, August 1997).

In an age when everything is branded, we ought at least to be able to seek and become our own individual brand, and we ought not to have to sell anyone on our individual brand.

The Brand Called You is composed of more than business skills and contacts, as Peters asserts. Rather, The Brand Called You encompasses both your outer self (the clothes you wear, your haircut, even your piercings) but also your inner self (honor, charity and purpose in life).

In the inclusion of these much more important and unique inner qualities, The Brand Called You is far superior to any corporate brand.

Consider how these brands advertise the sizzle, not the steak.

Weyerhauser sells branded forest products; it advertises environmental responsibility.

Freddie Mac sells branded housing securities; it advertises improved home ownership.

United sells canceled flights; it advertises help for Olympic athletes.

Don’t assume I oppose corporate citizenship. It’s great Weyerhauser really doesn’t want to tear down the trees it uses to make its brand of lumber; it’s great that Freddie Mac wants to improve home ownership in peddling its brand of bonds; and it’s great that United will give free flights to Olympic athletes. Maybe the pole-vaulters can squeeze in extra practice in the terminal while waiting for their delayed flight.

Either way, you’re still buying nothing but brands of boards, bonds and boredom (unless you enjoy waiting for delayed flights).

On the other hand, your own brand — The Brand Called You — really can have as its core mission, say, helping others.

A corporate brand cannot exist to improve the world. If the corporation were really a good citizen for good citizenship’s sake, its brand(s) wouldn’t have to advertise the fact. With only the rarest of exceptions, corporate citizenship becomes just another piece of the packaging and the marketing designed to sell Brand X. There’s no such thing as “brand citizenship.”

By contrast, the Brand Called You is never for sale because its value is intrinsic: You exist to serve a greater purpose in life, a purpose much greater than to sell shirts. Don’t ever become someone else’s brand, and don’t ever seek to advertise having become 314 digits. Become your own brand, The Brand Called You.

Reader-Columnist Adrian Jones of Valparaiso is a senior finance and real estate dual-concentration at the University of Pennsylvania.