Dan Schawbel of Personal Branding Magazine asked me to write a brief article on personal branding and how it might relate to K-12 education. I found it interesting that he would be interested in a K-12 perspective so I felt like it was an opportunity to further bridge the gap between education and the rest of the world. While the business world calls it “personal branding” the term “digital citizenship” or “digital footprint” is the synomous term in education. The idea of students developing their “brand” or identity is a burgeoning concept in education.I’ve been following Dan’s blog and shared items in his reader for about the past 2 months. It’s interesting to notice where we do and don’t overlap on the idea of personal branding or digital footprint.
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Well, I’ll put in my two cents here, just off the face of it, without reading any of Dan’s blog at all.
I hate the term and the idea behind it. I’m old enough to remember when brands were just brands and not the holy grail for all organizations to set about aligning their identity to, but sometime in the mid 90s the word started oozing into nearly every discourse.
I feel like Patrick MacGoohan in The Prisoner “I am not a brand!”. He said “number” but the idea is the same.
Identity is a powerful concept, but “brand” is tedious advertising-speak; my advice to anyone who cares what their legacy will be
is to avoid being reduced to such a vapid and transient description.
It’s a word so over-used it just can’t last much longer and retain any meaning at all, and its roots are in the most reviled trade there is – marketing, which, as almost anyone who has done it will tell you, is simply about being paid to tell untruths about a product or organization.
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Evan, I can see how the term can quickly shift from something of establishing a portfolio, footprint or whatever term is used in education to something that reminds us of sleazy business folk. I’m not sure how you draw the line or if this is mostly about semantics or if there are real differences.
You raise a great point. I guess from my perspective it is about managing an identity that already exists via google.
I’d be interested in hearing more about how you distinguish the terms in terms of practical applications.
Personally, I think the idea of personal branding is valuable and completely pertinent. This is really the idea behind my idea hive logo that I have been sticking on everything my students make online. A brand or a logo gives the kids something “good” and positive to belong to. I had fridge magnets made which I handed out to parents at open house and buttons which I give out the kids. While Tribes from Seth Godin is still sitting on my table at home, I still have to read it. But I suspect that his ideas will also tie into the idea of branding and forming communities.
I’ve already changed my opinion on this since I first saw it yesterday. My initial opinion was to take the the “brand” idea as purely a marketing concept with all the negatives that can go with that (misrepresentation of facts or playing loose with the facts for example), but I see now how it could be a bit like being for your school … we are the “Grizzlies” – “Go Grizzlies” and being proud of representing your school, your team, your class, etc. and doing the best you can for your school (community). This just happens to be a personal brand or like Clarence’s example above a class brand. Something to rally around. I’m looking at an archive of online projects that have come from students in my classroom over the years and it would be valuable, as I look back, to have a logo or branding that students could reference no matter what year they were here. Now they can say they were in Mr. Crosby’s class but unless my name is known that doesn’t mean much to others … doesn’t exhibit the community … but if I worked on things in the “BLANK” brand, that shows the community of learners I come from. Like saying I worked on a project with DREAMWORKS instead of saying you worked with a specific named person there (like Spielberg). That still gives reference to a community that does quality work … I can be proud of that association. HMMM, I’ll have to give this some more thought.
Brian
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Brian,
So is this just semantics or do we really have to distinguish what possible role “personal branding” may play in schools?