Hello My Name is.…:Marketing the Brand of YOU

In writ­ing there is always talk about how to mar­ket and brand your­self. How to imprint your­self and what you do into the minds and hearts of the masses. Many have done this suc­cess­fully.

All the prod­ucts that we use we can asso­ciate with a slo­gan or logo of some kind. One exam­ple is Secret deodor­ant. Just the name reminds me of their slo­gan:

Do you think some woman was putting it on one day and was moved to say, “Wow! This deodor­ant is strong enough for a man, but made for a woman!”? No. Most women don’t aspire to hav­ing BO that can only reduced by indus­trial strength chem­i­cals made for men. The mak­ers of Secret told us this about their prod­uct. Of course we believed it.

So how do we brand our­selves? Are you one of those peo­ple who –when paid a com­plaint– try to talk the giver out of it?

Example:

Nice guy: You look so pretty today.

YOU: Thank you, but I’m not that pretty. I mean my hair wouldn’t curl and I for­got to put on Secret this morn­ing”.

I am guilty of this. These are exam­ples of the improper brand­ing of YOU. We sell our­selves short. Some of us are afraid to say out loud what we know we are capa­ble of. Instead we label or brand our­selves in a way that won’t lead to us dis­ap­point­ing oth­ers. Making state­ments like, “You wouldn’t say that if you really knew me.” These words stick in peo­ples minds.

So from today on let’s stop this. I’ll take the first step:

Hello, my name is Toya
I’m a great mother
I’m a good writer
I care about peo­ple and ani­mals

How would you brand your­self?

Thanks for read­ing,