It’s not a straightjacket

Creating a strategic definition to ensure a consistent image doesn’t mean you have to be dull and boring. In fact, you must avoid that. As humans we have multi-faceted personalities and it is perfectly normal for us to dial certain aspects or traits up or down, depending on where we are and what we are doing. It’s blatantly obvious that you don’t behave the same way in an important client meeting or in a job interview as you would on a night out with friends. It doesn’t mean that you are not staying true to who you are, you are simply enhancing some traits at certain times over others. Commercial brands do this too – they don’t talk to all their audiences in the same way.

You should review your personal brand from time to time – after all what drives us at 18 or 25 will be different at 30 or 40. This doesn’t mean ripping it all up and starting again and pretending to be a different person but it is useful to review your brand now and again to see where you think you should make changes. Ideally you might do this every 2 or 3 years, unless there is a specific event such as change in career that happens along the way, which might act as an incentive to review your WhyMe?.

Creating a strategic definition doesn’t mean being dull and boring