“What’s your favorite brand?” she asked across the computer screen, half-way through the interview. I had spent days preparing hypothetical questions with answers that sounded so polished, so professional, that I should’ve been auditioning for a movie, not interviewing for my next job. It never occurred to me, however, that I should have something to say about brands. I froze inside but tried to keep my poker face. After all, I am a marketer — I’ve been working in brand building for over a decade and, surely, I should have a favorite brand. Yet, when I repeated the question to myself, I couldn’t find a favorite. My mind wandered in the memory banks for iconic advertising campaigns, a recollection of the best ads I’d seen, a famous tagline — something that my interviewer would deem as a decent answer.
Where’s the beef?, I thought. Nah, I wasn’t even born when the famous Wendy’s commercial ran in the 80s. The badass woman smashing the big (brother) screen and revealing the new generation of computers with Apple’s Macintosh? No, this was also an 80s commercial and I only knew it because it was a case study when I was at uni. The Open Happiness campaign from Coke? Of course! Except… I’m not a regular soda drinker, and while I love the advertising, I wouldn’t consider Coke to be my favorite brand.
Apple’s iPod/iTunes commercials are certainly a good answer… I pictured the famous human silhouettes dancing around bright-colored screens while listening to popular hits with their corded headphones. That is so 2000-and-late, Silvia! Have you not been watching any TV in the last ten years? God, oh God, did I even watch the top ten TV spots of the Super Bowl on YouTube this year? I know I used to watch the game “for the commercials,” but that hasn’t happened since I broke up with my ex.
My brain kept trying to come up with something cohesive and honest to say, but I also kept thinking that branding isn’t defined by clever commercials or unique logos anymore. We spend little time watching TV and the advertising we consume has shifted to our phone screens. This means we’re mostly watching ads on Social Media, which are sometimes produced entirely by influencers; most of the them putting their own personal brand ahead of the products they’re promoting.
“Farm Rio,” I responded to my interviewer. “Have you heard of this brand?” The answer came rushing out of my mouth, so as to finally give her what she was looking for. Farm Rio is a Brazilian clothing brand, known for its bold prints, bright colors, and commitment to sustainability. I own a few pieces, which I bought on promotion during Black Friday or another discount holiday over the years. The price points are high, but so is the quality. The packaging is creative, the clothes are stylish and created with care. The marketing emails have catchy subject lines, which make me click every time. In all, I feel better about myself when buying from this company… and someone always compliments me when I’m wearing the pieces.
“Product quality and customer experience: that is what makes a brand.” I told my interviewer as a closing statement. I thought (way after the interview) about Target, the role the retailer plays in our culture. It’s the “happy place.” It’s where women 25-44 go to instead of therapy. I thought of Spotify, with their curated playlists; their Wrapped report at the end of every year, making listeners feel unique, as if they have the best taste in music. I thought about Skims, and how the Kardashians “revolutionized” shapewear. I also thought about the controversies that Pepsi, Burger King*, Balenciaga, and Bud Light faced in recent years. How short-sightedness, poor decisions, and disingenuous performative attempts at winning consumers cost them severe criticism, loss of loyal customers and a few million dollars.
*The Burger King ad released on International Women’s Day 2021 was criticized by the social media mob as misogynist and out of touch. The campaign was first released on Twitter with a single Tweet: “Women belong in the kitchen.” A second tweet explained the company’s plan to support women in the restaurant industry through a scholarship program for its female employees. However, people were impulsive, reactionary and did not care to read beyond the headline/ first Tweet. While it is true that there was poor execution and probably a lack of thorough understanding of how Twitter works, I personally thought this was a clever and edgy ad, better executed in print, and aligned to Burger King’s DNA.
Cool ads, pretty packaging and PR stunts aren’t enough, though. As the examples above show, gimmicks and inauthentic branding don’t make the strong and long-lasting connection that marketers intend with their audiences. We choose brands based on what they stand for, if they give back to the community, whether they’re committed to sustainable practices. Most of us stick to brands or products, nowadays, based on how we feel while buying, receiving, and using the product. If it’s a great experience, we may tell others about it… if it’s a really shitty one, you know we’re telling the world.
I reflected further after my interview: what makes one’s personal brand? Certainly people have always strived to develop their unique look and tone (and in this generation, their aesthetic). How we appear in specific settings like the workplace, the gym, or our dating profiles, is important to us. How people perceive us, or how we perceive ourselves, can take vast amounts of mental space. We are constantly building our brand, whether we’re conscious about it or not.
In the age of social media, most of us have thought about (or worried about) how our personal brand is coming across in our feed. What we share is artificially curated to highlight the good parts of our lives. Am I aspirational enough? Does my outfit match my aesthetic? Are my posts really showing how much I care for the social justice topic du jour? In our pursuit to build the best version of ourselves to thrive in today’s society, some of us have morphed into a sort of archetype. Instead of really connecting with ourselves to find out the extent of our being, what we desire our human experience to be, and what that means when connecting with others, some of us have fallen into the trap of performative living. That is, curating how we live, how we respond to current events, how we parent, how we work, and how we think.
It seems there is little room for nuance these days. Instead of developing a personality and an authentic human experience, we’re teaching our children to think inside their limited, single-colored boxes, where opinions and thoughts can never deviate from its original version. The hand-held screen in front of us seems to be sucking all the variety of our thoughts, all the shades of our persona, all the possibilities of the self. Tribalism, identity politics, wokism, DEI, social media trends, the conversation about gender, what’s happening in the Middle East, diet trends, fitness culture, the impossibility of dating, feminism, the double standards of gender that come from both sexes, motherhood, consumerism, cancel culture, AI…
Most of us have opinions about at least a couple of those subjects, and yet, it seems like our default setting goes off and we’re back to painting within the lines, careful not blend subjects, opinions, audiences. I’m not just talking about our personal brand on the screen, although that’s where people live mostly these days.
Am I a writer or a marketer? What am I when I’m doing neither? Who am I to the world in times of personal crisis? How do I feel about world events and am I safe sharing my opinions? Do I have to have an opinion about everything and feel compelled to expose my thoughts to people that barely know me IRL?Will a single thought spoken out loud brand me as a such and such forever? If the experience makes the brand these days, could we apply the same logic to people? Could we agree that our essence goes beyond the superficiality of a 10-second Tik Tok video? If our feeds are intentionally following a singular aesthetic, or catering to a specific audience, are we limiting ourselves to being the content that we create and curate? Can we tell the difference?
Is it a worthwhile pursuit to find a tagline for your personal brand? Essence statement or too limiting? I’ll hijack and aspire to an old Coke slogan; “It’s the real thing.” 😬