Fulfilling Millennials Craving for Personal Branding

As Millennials (Gen Y) more and more becomes the dominant generation, personal branding would be elevated into a whole new height. It would not be just for the use of public figures, or aspiring public figures, neither for people wanting to get a job. Personal branding would be some sort of basic need which brands should accommodate for the common Millennials. A generation that many have called wanting to be the center of attention, glorify being under the lime light, or the main star in the “hit show” that is his/her personal life.

In the last 5 years, we at LM Brand Strategist have done and encountered many requests to engage in personal branding projects for various public figures in various sectors. The main ingredient is quite simple that is being genuine or being yourself. An ingredient that most brand consultants we believe would agree. In a more practical level, that ingredient of being genuine can be divided into three areas. First, one’s track record. Second, one’s idea or vision. Third, one’s personalities. Also in a technical level, how would those three areas can be conveyed through the way one talk, act, dress, etc? All being combined and communicated to achieve that desired positioning in the minds of target audience (yes even personal branding need target audience) of “A specific topic = A Person”. For example ask yourself who does the term “Consultant” remind you of? Or the term “Mechanic”? The name of the person that pops out in your head when hearing those terms mean that person, intentional or not, has done a pretty good personal branding with you as the target audience.

Now imagine that all Millennials in the world doing the same thing all at once. It is not impossible as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path, etc have become the dream channels for them to conduct their personal branding. Either through food picture, selfie, text, songs listened, and other social media posting that are intended, whether they want to admit it or not, to emphasize their “everyday celebrity” status. From an FGD which we, LM Brand Strategist, did for one of our clients, we see Millennials demand for personal recognition is much apparent. We believe the term “Me Generation” which is being used by many is valid when describing the Gen Y in comparison with Gen X.

Nothing wrong with wanting to become the star of your own life show. For brands this means if not anticipated then companies would find themselves trapped trying to get attention from people who want the attention directed at them and not the brands. Thus most likely resulting in disengagement of communication.

When engaging Millennials, the underlying question for brands might not be as simple as how can you be unique in their minds, but at the same time how can you make them unique and stand out from the rest?

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Path, Instagram, etc might have accidentally achieve iconic status amongst Millennials as those platforms allowing them to channel their stardom impulse to their “adoring fans”. Apple as well with their distinctive product design enabling Millennials to be different in their everyday life encounter with PC people. While several premium brands might have answered such question with feature of personalization or through “scarcity due to price and availability” concept, meaning the more scarce the better, allowing Millennials to be unique among their peers as they would be the only one or only few that use a certain product/brand. However not all Millennials are going to be the upper class. Most would likely be middle class for most of their lives.

Thus lies the challenge for the everyday brands (using the term loosely) of helping Millennials solving not only their everyday problems but as well as fulfilling their craving for personal branding. One possible solution which brands can utilize is by implementing content crowdsourcing. In a nutshell, crowdsourcing means a collaboration act between an institution with various external individuals, mostly done through online, either involving financial compensation or for free. Think Wikipedia as a solid example of crowdsourcing. GE, a corporate brand, have utilized crowdsourcing in one of its business initiatives, Ecomagination Challenge, where they encourage people to submit great ideas on sustainability (http://invent.ge/1v2uMKJ). A more consumer example of the use of crowdsourcing is Toyota’s Wakudoki campaign which allow people to submit their own version of the Wakudoki dance (http://bit.ly/WWOclm) for a chance to go to Tokyo, allowing them to be the stars of the campaign.

As brands keep up with such trends, we should all pay attention on how area of personal branding would evolve and perhaps become a necessity in most branding or marketing efforts.