Personal brands
Personal brands are a new type of brands which now sometimes already exist as archetypes, and will be further developed over the years to come. Personal brands work on needs levels like health, money, travel, living, or children. Within that area they know everything there is to get (and that worldwide!), and furthermore they know everything of us as an individual. This way personal brands will anticipate our actions, advise us, and help us in transactions. We will select 10-20 of these brands. Exactly one for every need. These brands will be like friends to us, who in the long run will always be with us.
Personal brands help us select products, services and experiences, offered by transaction brands. They hand us information on a silver platter. And then they really help to make a purchase. So that they can later ask us how we liked something. And from these experiences they can learn, so they can make better recommendations to others. To strangers, but especially to (friends of) friends, as personal brands are in the consumer’s network of friends. This is shown in the figure below.
These brands have themselves represented by ‘personal brands’: visual characters we will start a spoken dialogue with. In the long run (in 20-30 years) these characters will look like real people (hence the term ‘personal brand’). On TV, on the mobile phone, or on any other possible display they will appear on demand. This is all going step by step, and those steps I follow in the tab day to day, in the category personal brands.
Although personal brands handle most questions automatically through the personal brand agents, there are real specialists at work at this new type of (network) companies. People whose heart is in the domain for which they work, like living, health, or travel. People who know an awful lot of their area, and continuously feed the brand agents. This type of companies uses IT as technology, like other companies use older technology like conveyor belts. As most questions are handled automatically, we seldom get to talk to the specialists in person. Only if we really have an impossible question, we will get live contact. And in that case they will be very willing to help us: for them that is the real challenge. It is the passion which they live for.
Companies carrying personal brands by default think long-term. They stay with the consumer for life. The longer you have been together, the better the advice, the more you feel you are being helped. This in sharp contrast to the short-term thinking of most of today’s companies: every product needs to be paid for immediately. In the earlier days, the church has proved that there are other successful business models: your whole life you get everything for free, and at the end you donate all your money to the church. A beautiful long-term model! Personal brands almost by default can’t be quoted on the stock exchange. Giving accountability every three months is in sharp contrast to the long term interests of the clients (or members). The interest of personal brands, and in most cases ownership as well, is for 100% in the hands or their members, and certainly not in the hands of shareholders. For personal brands, long term interests are what it is all about.
Personal brands can already be seen as archetypes. Every year new steps are taken. In this first decade of this century they will still have a very functional focus, for example by comparing products and services, or listing jobs or recipes: at the moment, it is most important to have completeness in the category. At the moment, that is what offers most added value to the consumer. After that, complete domains will be claimed, there will be more competition between personal brands, and only then the emotional ties of these kinds of brands with the consumer will really get attention. The consumer already was (functionally) happy, but now also gets emotional ties with the brand as a friend who really understands you. The positive feelings with a personal brands get stronger, stronger, and stronger. So strong, that you don’t even consider a competitor’s brand. You don’t just dig your friends, do you? Thus personal brands will become the strongest brands of the 21st century!
