Explaining working in the branding industry.

Talking about your job, without losing sanity.

Does your heartbeat crank up when the topic of conversation is about work and then it’s your turn? Do you usually avoid talking about what is it that you do at the branding studio you can’t stop clicking and posting about on your Instagram?

It is usually us millennials who work in creative fields like branding who have to break it to the parents, friends, and cousins about what do you do at work. “I work in branding” is not an answer that they would be satisfied with.

Sure, you can elaborate on your job at the branding studio. I am a content strategist. I cannot expect them to understand that. So I usually tell them, copywriter. It usually works.

But I have been asked if that meant I write those WhatsApp forwards they keep on getting.

Not in a sarcastic way.

I then decide that I do not want to hide under job titles and generalize my work by quoting my industry. I now want to become the torchbearer of educating people about branding- and not for business reasons. Major regret. But it did amount to a better understanding of what I do, and what branding is.

Charity begins at home and so did I. We had guests visiting home and all of us were having dinner when this distant uncle of mine, asks my father if I joined his business. Before he could give me a disappointing sigh, I cut in the conversation and told my uncle, I have a job, I work as a content strategist at a branding studio in Ahmedabad. He takes two more bites of my mom’s amazing Handva and asks, “branding as in advertising, right?” I shook my head and shared with him the contents of the earliest blog we published at Slangbusters. He listened throughout, very carefully. We wash our hands and move to the drawing-room where I thought they would finally graduate to talking about politics.

Now, I got everyone interested in the concept of branding. All for a different reason, but interested. My father lent his ears to know about the career prospect of the industry, how well will I do financially if I continue working. The uncle got interested to get some form of approval for his business ideas, and my mother wondered why do people pay for this.

It was only my mother who actually understood the concept, how it was about research, strategy, identity, culture, the substance behind the symbol, and much more apart from the logo.

My strategy was clear, I do not get frustrated by any type of questions, they all come from an ideology where the only way to do business is to deal with some form of tangible product or goods. For them, the service industry was just a residue of trading. I understood that and with some empathy, I tried to answer everything that came my way. Numerous pieces I wrote for Slangbusters helped me a lot to put things into perspective with analogies and explain them better.

Voila! I was Slangbusting branding for them, I was trying to explain better and all of this made me realize how strong the Slangbusters vision is, it made its way to a household conversation. Slangbusters is a philosophy.

The only way to explain to people about your work is to explain. There is no short cut. Start by answering questions. Because otherwise, the probability is, they will be assuming that you are writing the WhatsApp forwards that they get in bulk.

You know, I’m just putting it that way.