Sunday, January 25, 2015

Branding YOU

At my internship we are launching a new social media campaign and trying to establish brand identity through technology and social media. As an intern, it was my job to research successful social media campaigns in regards to branding. As I was researching, I came across an interesting article that was titled "Personal Branding 101." The first sentence began explaining that it is effective to conduct a personal SWOT analysis. This intrigued me and made me think about how we are so concerned, especially in our last semester of college about finding a job. Along with paying off my school loans, the one thing that I am most afraid of when graduating from college is finding a job in my field. I have learned so much at Duquesne, and now I want to put it to use in a real world setting. It scares me to look around at how many other people have the same ambitions that I do, and who are graduating with the same degree. 

In advertising, we spend so much time focussing on branding and promoting our client. This article really gave me insight on branding myself. Advertising is more applicable to our everyday lives than just what we do for our classes or our future employer. Advertising ourselves in a positive way could be the reason that we reach our goals in life or get the jobs that we want. The first step was defining goals and aspirations. I saw that as how a client would define to an agency what they want the campaign to cover, and what they want the end result of the campaign to be. The most important thing I got out of this article was assess yourself. I feel as though we are always so caught up in the next thing that we are supposed to be doing, and we are always on the go. This article emphasized the importance of knowing where you stand, and how you can get to your goals. We all want jobs in a field related to advertising, but it is crazy how much advertising can relate to us as people as well. 

2 comments:

  1. I definitely agree that personal advertising is very important especially as people are about to graduate and face the competition of the real world. Assessing ourselves can be a valuable tool to understand what our strengths and weaknesses are so we can work on ourselves and see what we need to do to achieve our goals.

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  2. The phrase, “self-branding” or “personal branding” is a concept which has never sat well with me. And, yet the term has spread throughout modern society. But why? How has this one term reconstructed our societal standards? Personal branding has empowered everything and everyone to construct an image or trademark. The problem with this idea is that when people become “brands,” they stop being people and become one of three things: vessels for cultural models, characters in a narrative, or products. Check out this article by Olivier Blanchard, R.I.P. Personal Branding. It reflects many of the same sediments that the other (or people like me) share in regards to personal branding. Not everyone is in love with automatic social media post, and extravagant/ eloquent photos of grand adventures that these brands market to the world on a daily basis. Enough with all the talking and posting; where are the good all fashion doers?

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