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Brand vs personality — what works best?
“Because all of the best business owners and marketers have incredible personal brands. If I want to be successful, I need one too.”
This is a snippet of a conversation I had with someone a while back.
And, honestly, they’re not wrong.
Personal brands are powerful. Some of the biggest brands are led (or were grown) by personalities.
- Elon Musk @ Tesla / SpaceX
- Jeff Bezos @ Amazon
- Mark Zuckerberg @ Facebook
If these folk jumped ship and set up a new venture tomorrow, they’d get instant traction and decent revenue off the bat.
Here’s the thing though…
What comes first — the personality, or the brand?
Does the brand grow because of the personality, or does the personality grow because of the brand.
The research I’m doing on this month’s Growth Study seems to indicate a change of which leads the other’s growth.
- Early stage businesses lean on the brand and a personality then grows from the brand.
- Later stage brands leverage that personality to further propel growth.
One of the interesting experiments I’ve come across in this month’s study into Ahrefs is how this can positively impact advertising.
in short, what accounts are you going to get the best ROI from.
