Thinkers 50: Future Thinkers: New Thinking on Leadership, Strategy and Innovation for the 21st Century

CHAPTER 8

One and Only

In the 1990s Tom Peters was the first to champion the idea of brand you. In an increasingly competitive employment marketplace, Peters argued, people needed to develop and communicate their own brands.

At the time (August 1997) Peters’s article “The Brand Called You” made the cover of Fast Company. The entire idea of brand you seemed to appeal to a self-confident elite of West Coast whiz kids. Now the idea is mainstream. It is expected that people will market themselves in one way or another to be promoted or get a job in the first place.

But how? If you are the brand, what are the implications? Among those most helpfully making sense of the practicalities of personal branding is Dorie Clark, an adjunct professor of business ...