The Branding of Sarah Palin

I talk a good deal about authenticity in the branding seminars and workshops that I teach. I believe that it is a critical component of any brand–individual or organizational. Why? Because the original finish always comes through, just like the lovely old pine bureau I painted about a year ago. I slicked it up with a rather, ahem, eye-catching shade of Benjamin Moore’s Deep Carnation, better known to the rest of us as bright, bright pink. It was fun, for awhile, but slowly the pink started to chip and the old, original blue milk paint asserted its rights of primogenitor.

Just like Sarah Palin. (OK, I’ve held off this long writing about her. I can’t help myself now). While I care deeply where she stands on the issues, that’s not where I’m going with this. She is a prime example of how many people confuse image with brand, mistaking one for the other. Forget for the moment (if you can) how insulting it is to all women that “pick a woman/ any woman” will appease our us, get us to quit our nagging about representation at the highest levels of American government. I don’t care whether she is really a hockey Mom or a head of a Fortune 500 company — didn’t we stop trying to one-up each other about that back in the eighties?

What I do care about is the degree to which Palin is being created right before our very eyes, morphed into an image of what the Republicans think women want. This is a doomed strategy and I hope, regardless of one’s personal political beliefs, that all those who are jubilant that one of their own has finally gotten her day, will wake-up and smell the perfume.

This, unfortunately, is also the way many people see the process of individual branding–as putting a new coat of shiny paint on that lovely old bureau, hoping it won’t chip off. Instead, I encourage people (and companies for that matter) to brand themselves from the inside out. Rolph yourself. Go deep and find out what really matters, what you stand for, what you’ve accomplished and what you’re really good at. You’ll find that your brand was there all along– and so are your customers, your employers, and all those willing to invest in whatever it is that you are authentically selling.

As for Palin, just check-out the before and after in The New York Daily News.

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