Name Brand
In the field of Communications, one’s personal brand is their bread and butter. A successful brand, a ‘name brand’ if you will, is not just something that can help you get a leg up on your competition, it’s a requirement. A successful brand literally demonstrates success in the communications field. Someone who communicates their brand effectively to an employer has already demonstrated that they possess the skills to be successful in the industry.
In order to land a job in this field, I will have to demonstrate that I have the necessary practical skills that would apply to a company’s needs with specific, but not pigeon-holed, experiences and skills. If I am looking to work for a company where my job is to maintain their brand, the best way I can show them my ability to do that is through communicating my own brand effectively.
I need to show that I am unique in the ways are beneficial to my potential employer’s productivity. Ilana Gershon explains this in Down and Out in the New Economy by saying, “being unique on the job market is not always a good thing, and why you are unique isn’t always going to get you a job. You have to be unique in the right way…” (Gershon, 41).
In my field, your brand should be thought of as your first PR campaign. Gershon said to have a successful brand, you must create a “coherent self across a range of different media in order to give potential employers a sense that their internet search has turned up a reliably authentic self” (Gershon, 46).
And Gershon isn’t the only one saying this; articles written by thebalance.com, Forbes.com, and quicksprout.com as well as Lindsey Pollak in her book Getting from College to Career are all saying the same thing. Coherence and consistency are major keys to successful personal branding. In her book, Pollak shows how important the maintenance of your brand is by saying “you can…control what image you yourself send out into cyberspace” (Pollak, 38) and “the last step to shining online is staying diligent about your online presence” (Pollak, 42). Being diligent about keeping a professional and composed image on the internet is an important key to successful self-branding.
For me, I aspire for my brand to be an authentic and accurate reflection of me. I have valuable experience in working with large and small groups, teaching and leading teams of my peers, doing philanthropic work, having an attentive and analytical eye towards detail, and in staying determined while overcoming adversity. I have all of these skills because following my passions has taught them to me.
I have an attentive and analytical eye towards detail because of the 6 rigorous summers I endured as a member of the Bluecoats Drum & Bugle Corps, rehearsing for 12 hours a day, every day for 12 weeks each summer. My summers have taught me how to stay determined and composed through even the most stressful and adverse situations.
I have a passion for marching music and the pageantry arts, which is, along with my experience in Drum Corps International, what allowed me to become the Assistant Director of a high school marching band and a 2nd & 3rd place finalist in the Drum Corps International World Championships. I have a deep-seeded philanthropic instinct, which has been instilled in me through 17 years of volunteering with and coaching athletes of Special Olympics Maryland.
All of my experiences in my life have allowed me to cultivate marketable skills in my field, so for me, I like to think that I am my brand. Who I am and what I do is my best tool for branding myself.
Determined, composed, analytical, and philanthropic. That is my name brand.