Personal Branding : How to develop and sustain a strong personal brand

Abstract: Branding of people is a relatively new concept within the branding area. This concept has grown rapidly and its importance is increasing. Our purpose of this thesis is to describe how a strong personal brand is developed and how it is sustained. We also want to highlight what factors that determine who will succeed to develop a strong personal brand and who will not and if the associations that other people have of you can be determined by the brand owner. We have chosen to do a qualitative method by conducting interviews with five wellknown Swedish persons that we argue have or are beginning to develop strong personal brands within different areas. The frame of reference consists of some concepts on traditional branding and models within the personal branding area. We found that the existing literature within personal branding was not sufficient to fulfil our purpose and therefore we have created a research model. The empirical findings are applied to the research model in the analysis. We argue that the base to develop a strong personal brand is to truly know who you are and what you stand for. When you have a clear understanding about who you are, it is important to be consistent in the messages that you communicate in order to avoid confusion among other people. To have a strong personal brand, you also need to be well-known among more people than just your family and friends. Personal branding is to a large extent about how other people perceive you and we argue that you can to some extent affect this image by being consistent and clear about who you are and what you stand for. People cannot see your thoughts, only your actions. All people have a personal brand but we believe that the process to develop your personal brand depends on what goals you have with it and what you want to accomplish. All people do not gain anything by having a strong personal brand but we believe that all people can use some parts of the concept in order to know who you are and what you stand for.