A few years ago the concept of personal branding would have seemed silly. Sure there were people who could get away with it–the Donald Trumps and Bill Gates of the world. But that was only because they had worked hard to build a business in a traditional way that gained them notoriety.
Nowadays it seems like everyone is talking about personal brands–and everyone is trying to build one.
As a recent article by Tom Peters in Fast Company puts it:
You’re branded, branded, branded, branded.
It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.
It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.
Peters is probably right. But as pastors and Christians, the concept of personal branding brings up some prickly problems. Here’s just one question I’ve thought of lately:
Would Paul have participated in self-branding? Did Jesus self-brand?
I’ll argue the answer is unequivocally no. Both continually pointed to God the Father and sought to give him glory. Paul, after all, wrote this to the Corinthians:
1And I, when I came to you, brothers,a did not come proclaiming to you the testimonyb of God with lofty speech or wisdom.2For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (I Corinthians 2:1-5).
The biblical admonition is to find your identity in Jesus and to count yourself as nothing. I’m guilty of falling into the trap of the personal brand (after all, my blog is named after me…). Are you? How do we reconcile the world’s continue pressure to self-brand with the Bible’s teachings? Or do we at all?