i’m rebranding as someone with no brand
how “branding” is simultaneously necessary, insidious, and paradoxical
I saw someone on TikTok the other day say: “I want to be the type of person who always has freshly cut flowers in their home.” I first thought of how nice it is to have fresh flowers in the house – pink peonies on the kitchen island will always remind me of my grandma – and then I realized this person said they didn’t want to have the flowers, they said they wanted to be the type of person who would.
Why do we want to be the type of person who has flowers instead of wanting to enjoy the flowers?
We must purchase the bouquet of flowers and display the bouquet of flowers and create content with the bouquet of flowers and post the content of the bouquet of flowers to appear as though we are the type of person who organically keeps their home full of nice bouquets of flowers in order to attract the status of the type of person who is so effortlessly chic and put together that they can play harder than they work and enjoy lovely Saturdays at the farmer’s market casually picking up a new bouquet of flowers for the week without giving it a second thought.
I am so exhausted.
And here’s the catch – wanting to appear as though we are that type of person immediately negates our ability to be that person.
The person we want to be would never obsess over the idea of having fresh flowers every week. They would never meticulously arrange the stems in a purposely haphazard manner near the windowsill with the best afternoon light and post a photo on their story waiting for a cool art friend to see and comment on how gorgeous tulips are this time of year. So how do we become that person? The short answer is that we can’t, and, spoiler alert, the long answer is that we shouldn’t even try.
The subject of branding, and the question of whether or not branding exists or is important, has been a hot topic of debate on Twitter this past week. Veteran tech journalist Taylor Lorenz was under fire for comments she made about the importance of having a brand as a journalist – the crew on the offensive being mainly journalists with a more old-school approach to the job, namely NYT’s Maggie Haberman.
I was in journalism school not that long ago, and I can say from firsthand experience that j-schools now prioritize branding as a major part of the curriculum. In many classes we were required to actively work on our online “brands” for a grade. Among other things, I was assigned to create an official Facebook page for myself (MacKinley Jade Lutes-Adlhoch, the Journalist). I recently came across it again. It had 5 likes and zero posts. I deleted it.
Digital branding for journalists and others with public-facing jobs is essential. That shouldn’t be up for debate. Your brand as a public-facing professional helps maintain a level of trust between you and your audience, it can bring in real business opportunities from other brands you’ve aligned yourself with, and it allows your audience to feel connected to you. But what feels legitimately insidious to me is the way “branding” has seeped into everyday life.
A massive shift in popular language has young people obsessing over their personal “brands.” Our personal “brand” doesn’t serve to maintain audience trust, because the online audience for most people is just their friends and family.
“Branding” – what the word has come to mean in the modern digital lexicon, as it relates to everyday people and not companies – isn’t about showing online who you are in real life, it’s about carefully curating an appearance.
It’s not about enjoying the flowers, it’s about being the type of person who would.
Large corporations put millions of dollars behind curating a perfect “brand.” There are teams of people behind every advertisement, commercial, and product launch you see on the street or floating around on the internet. The advertising industry is expected to be worth $1 trillion within the next few years – an ungodly and unimaginable amount of money spent on trying to get you to buy something you probably don’t need. “Branding” is an essential part of the global economy, but you are not a product to be launched. We cannot conflate the curation of our personal digital personas with the endless time and resources spent by companies for profit.
In an internet era where seemingly everyone and their mom wants to be an influencer (literally), we’re incessantly encouraged on social media to develop a “brand” to grow an audience. Whereas actual brands use marketing to grow their customer base, the line between “person” and “business” has never been more blurred amid the popularity of social media influencing as a relatively common job or side hustle.
The seamless reapplication of the word “brand” from businesses to everyday people, particularly young impressionable people online, marks an upsetting cultural acceptance of the idea that real life and social media are one and the same.
The way young people talk about their “personal brands” is reflective of how companies speak of product branding. What a lot of people on TikTok or Instagram claim to be “their brand” is just a laundry list of items and ideas at the peak of the trend cycle.
Tying our self-worth and identity to a dress, a candle, a color – trends that are quickly replaced and recycled – only ensures that we will always feel lost and always feel the need to purchase or claim a new brand. This obsession over “branding,” “rebranding,” and being “on brand” only serves the overlords of capitalism to make us consume more and feel shittier about ourselves.
This isn’t to say you aren’t allowed to enjoy those things. In fact, it’s perfectly normal for people who know you to associate you with things you like. When I think of Robert Pattinson and mini M&Ms, I think of my friend Cece. When I hear Taylor Swift playing in the grocery store, I text my friend Kyley. But what you like and what your friends associate you with do not make you who you are.
This casual use of marketing language in our everyday personal lives only serves to perpetuate the elimination of boundaries between work and daily life. It’s important to note that those boundaries have already been chipped away so much over the course of the pandemic as millions of workers shifted to fully remote online work.
I, for one, would spend all day working online and all evening interacting with friends and family online and then suddenly it’s 11pm and my eyes burn and someone on TikTok has me wondering whether quarantine is the perfect time to “rebrand” myself. But if I’m worried about whether my personal Instagram post to my personal friends and family is “on brand” or not, then when the fuck do I get a break?
A few material items or bits of pop culture will never be able to capture your depth and complexity. Reducing yourself to a “brand” doesn’t do you justice.
I conceded long ago that I won’t ever be the type of person to keep fresh flowers in my home at all times. But that’s ok. I’ll always have something chocolate in the house, for emergencies. I’ll always have a well-stocked bathroom cabinet pharmacy, and it’ll always be open to you if you’re not feeling well in my home. And I’ll always have a plethora of pillows and throw blankets and soft warm lighting so watching our favorite show is extra cozy.
Maybe those are all things you could argue are part of my “brand.” But I’m not a brand. I’m not a business. I’m a human being. And if I deleted all of my social media tomorrow and my “brand” was scrubbed from the internet, my personality, interests, and values would not be any different. I’d still just be a person. You would too.