You Are Not a Brand. You HAVE a Personal Brand - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

You Are Not a Brand. You HAVE a Personal Brand Some people take it too far. They take the personal out of personal branding, and refer to themselves as a brand. They think of themselves â€" and ruthlessly market themselves â€" as a product. And they speak and write about Brand Them incessantly. Along with referring to themselves in the third person, being a brand somehow gives them license to shamelessly self-promote their product . . .  that is, themselves. They feel that having a brand automatically makes them an expert at something. This tiresome self-promotion shows that they don’t really understand what personal branding is all about. I think they help give authentic branding a bad name. The Onion hilariously spoofed this phenomenon in the news report, I Am A Brand, Pathetic Man Says: Sad, pathetic local web developer and blogger Phillip Cathin, 34, told reporters today that he sees himself as a brand. I am my own product, the little worm said while staring at a laptop and depressingly shuffling between his Twitter,