2022-03-11
I passed a car belonging to an advertising agency the other day. It said "Be Your Brand" on the side. This is a mantra I've heard since becoming a student back in 2007. It was probably popularized some time before that; my guess is that it rose from the era of the first sponsored bloggers. That is, the first influencers. People who sell their lifestyles and quite often uneducated opinions about matters of little or much importance.
I've been told by numerous recruiting agencies that I should "sell myself" (not in the sense of prostitution, supposedly). That my behaviour and outward image is a big marketing campaign for myself as the product. Either to gain employment in an employers job market, or to gain clients if I set out on my own. Essentially my life is a great big poster. Every aspect a part of my customer or employer relationship, meant to foster the idea of me as a quality person. Someone competent and charismatic to rely on.
Well... It just so happens that I've stuck to my nerdy hobbies and niche interests, and stayed away from linkedin and twitter. I haven't started a big SEO optimized blog where I show my knowledge about things or voice opinions about trends to eventually make ad money. My greatest skill is that of being a generalist; you'll never see me lecturing about the internals of the linux kernel or showing off trendy javascript frameworks.
I guess I'm a pretty crap commodity according to the Be Your Brand philosophy. That's okay. I was never one of the cool kids anyway.
-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal