We hear a lot about online influencers and personal brands these days. As a brand thinker, I’m a little sceptical about whether these personal brands are good. Unless you’re scrupulously honest, the brand, oops, of course, I mean person, simply becomes a construct. A facsimile of someone designed to highlight the heroic and park the problematic. It offers a polished facade with no apparent flaws. A title with no story. A standard of perfection that the rest of us can aspire to but never reach.

I want what she’s got!

Influencer brands are carefully curated to make us want stuff. By the way, anyone else noticed that we no longer just design or make things; curating them implies much more finesse and we live in a time when more is … er … more, so curating it is. Anyway, influencers seemingly live the dream—they inhabit perfect lifestyles, surrounded by perfect people, played out in a series of perfect locations. Sounds a bit like Barbie’s world and its inhabitants in the recent movie, come to think of it.

If the influencer is flawless, the implication is that by walking a mile in their shoes, you can be just like them. By following their wellness regime, you too will be rampagingly healthy and desirable. Going to the places they go or at least recommend, you’ll be too cool for school … like them. Forking out on all the stuff they’re peddling on behalf of consumer brands who milk FOMO for all it’s worth, you’ll be the envy of everyone in your orbit.

Absent better options, we find our heroes wherever and however we can. Where’s the harm?

But who am I to judge? It were ever thus. Absent a better option, why shouldn’t my new deity be an online influencer flogging over-priced skincare or exotic travel? Spirituality even. What’s the big difference between that and a medieval priest peddling indulgences? In any case, being a follower makes me feel like I am part of something bigger and that I matter. A like on my post worshipping at the (TikTok or Insta) shrine of the demi-goddess I’m following puts me on top of the moon. Who am I hurting?

But, going for perpetual perfection is paralysingly pointless. We all know that no one is. Even Barbie figured that out in the movie. On the surface, there’s a compelling and colourful story. But when you scratch the surface, the story lacks depth and nuance. The facade cracks faster than you can say “Lululemon”. Worse, by wanting what they’ve got, you risk trashing or trivialising what you have—your precious individuality and identity.

Seeing yourself through a branding lens

I recently published a new book—Never Succumb to Beige & Other Tiips for a Colourful Life. It has attracted a lot of publicity, which is cool, not least in converting to the number of books sold. But there was another, wholly unexpected benefit. The interviewers loved the title, and the questions they asked me were playfully provocative and opened up some interesting discussions. This process made me think long and hard about what I value and believe in at this stage in my life. What genuinely matters to me and how I want to present to the world.

A recurring theme from the interviews was how one does it. Stay visible, that is. After much navel-gazing, I figured I could best answer that question by swopping my ostrich feathered, bling-encrusted personal hat of many colours for my slightly less ostentatious professional hat as a brand development specialist. Think about the questions in terms of my brand.

Personal brands are not just something for the young and trendy

The most successful brands know what they’re about and who they’re for. However flippant my opening paragraphs, I like the idea of thinking about who we are through a brand lens. It’s a helpful framework to define and review our evolving selves, particularly as we age. People are as multi-faceted as the eyes of a dragonfly and just as complicated, so we need to tap into deep self-awareness to see through to our essence.

I always thought the complications would diminish with age. Instead, they seem to multiply by the day, perhaps due to experience hammering home the fact that instead of the arrogant assumption that we know what we don’t know, we finally get that we don’t know what we don’t know. There’s a gap the breadth of the Milky Way between those two sets of understanding.

Writing your story and controlling the narrative

All good brands have defining stories. These change and evolve as the brand matures and their operating environment changes. Quite by accident, I came across a great way to define my story. The concept of Never Succumb to Beige started as a challenge about what I would call my autobiography at a dinner party one night. It was a fun evening. At the time, I think I went for something a bit lame like Frankie’s Follies (my friends at that time all knew me as Frankie and seemed to see me as a cross between Virginia Woolf and Barbarella so this was really pandering to their perceptions rather than mine).

Over the years, I’ve come up with a range of options, at least one of which will feature as a chapter title in my next book, so I won’t do a spoiler alert here. But I stuck with Never Succumb to Beige, which I used as the title of my blog and now the book, because it captures my philosophy of being true to yourself and who you are. This philosophy hasn’t fundamentally changed since. Never succumbing to beige has become the central theme of my brand. It’s my pole star that helps me safely navigate life’s jagged reefs. My guiding light that shines a light on the path I should follow.

It’s not a pose. I love living in a rainbow of glorious and colourful attitude that allow me be seen and counted. It’s important to me to stand and deliver in how I present, what I say and write, how I am with others, and what I bring to the world. I’d like to matter … in a good way. That doesn’t mean I aspire to perfection. Far from it, but I do aspire to perfect the qualities that make me unique and set me apart from everyone else. After all, if I don’t control the narrative and tell my story my way, in this online era, Google and the other apps will do it for me. Who wants that? It’s also a vision of who I can be as I get older and allows room for life-long curiosity and adventure.

Leave the cloak of invisibility on a hook by your door

I’m saddened by how many people I’ve encountered who feel invisible, marginalised or useless as they grow older. They tell me it’s inevitable—I fundamentally don’t believe that it has to be. We don’t need to allow society’s judgement to push us into the railway siding of invisibility. If we don’t give ourselves licence to stay on the main line, no one else will. 

Perhaps that’s easy for me to say. I was born with a sunny, outgoing nature and insane corkscrew hair—I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the latter throughout my life. Still, it has the merit of giving me a head start in the non-invisibility games. Likely, it also played a part in developing a deep-rooted commitment to my individuality and sense of self.

Despite this, I’ve worked hard to fight feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. I’ve also faced down that lurking menace known as Imposter Sydrome on more occasions than I can count. My brand, my recidivist disinclination to be anything other than wholly and colourfully myself, helps me feel the fear, do it anyway and bounce back when the going gets tough.

Strike the pose, there’s nothing to it

My last post was about being scammed — Scammed, Slammed and Hung Out to Dry — written solidarity with all the many others who’ve experienced this morally bankrupt contemporary blight. Not succumbing to beige clearly has little to do with colour and lots to do with attitude. How you deal with setbacks like this, which rock you to your core. I’ve had to dig deep to cauterise the wound it left. The scars are still vivid, but they get paler by the day and I certainly won’t get fooled again. It would be easy at such times to retreat inwards. Having a strong brand like m non-beige one, gives us the confidence, mandate even, to move forward without losing ourselves.

I’d love to inspire people heading towards their older years to believe that invisibility isn’t a given. To blaze a trail for younger women that shows ageing isn’t a long, lonely, greying road to oblivion. In modern parlance, I’d like to be an influencer. But not one that postures at caring whilst peddling endless products, destinations or wellness miracles for affiliate brands’ marketing programmes. I want to use whatever influence I can muster to find joy and commonality in our shared and, at times, very bizarre humanity. To lighten the mood and bring people together.

Successful brands are built on insight not wishful thinking

It’s said that personal branding begins the moment you discover yourself. Knowing what you’re about and who you’re for requires deep self-understanding. Defining and living by a set of firmly held values. Making a promise about what you bring to the world and sticking to that. It raises self-awareness and honesty above self-interest and greed. For your brand to succeed means being consistently you wherever you are, whoever you’re with or whatever you’re doing and holding yourself to the highest standards. Not giving yourself a pass when it’s inconvenient or difficult.

Successful brands are not flim-flam.They don’t get blown about in the wind like so much tumbleweed in a Western ghost town. At the end of the day, whatever our brand, we’re actually still people, with all the frailties and idiosyncrasies that entails. Even the best brands get it wrong sometimes, but the ones that last, don’t go down in a fiery bonfire of blamestorming and bruised egos. Their managers recognise what’s happened and find a better way. On a personal level, when we lapse or stuff up, our inner brand manager should cut us some slack and understand that there are times when we just step out of character, flare up in the moment about something stupid. Ultimately we are people not brands. Seeing ourselves through a branding lens just helps us be the best we can be.

Be yourself — everybody else is already taken

So said the peerless Oscar Wild who know a thing or two about being an influencer and icon. As American actor Graham Brown (Malcolm X, The Muppets Take Manhattan) said, “Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: we are what we chose to be”. We might as well choose to be something special and gloriously original.

I don’t know about you but, given my “druthers”, I wouldn’t choose to be a Barbie Girl living in the Barbie World, however superficially enticing it appears. Life in plastic is only fantastic if you’re a doll.