{ Developing a Personal Brand }

If you’ve stumbled across this post in your search to develop a personal brand as part of furthering your career or job search, I apologize. This is not that kind of personal brand. Instead, we’re talking about developing a personal crafting brand. And I’m not talking about a logo here. Most people hear “brand” and assume that means “logo”. Incorrect. This is about consistency with the look, the feel—you know, the brand image—of what you share with friends & family. To have this make a little more sense, I shall first back up a step.

Doc and I have been together for what’s coming up on five years now. For about four of those years, we’ve had a brand. Through my marketing work and my own companies, it has become engrained in me that maintaining a consistent brand is key to solid brand recognition. At first, branding seemed like a pain to me. As part of a new branding kick-off with my FT job a few years ago, for example, we were given an 87-page book of branding guidelines. At times, I wondered if we were even allowed to breathe through our nostrils instead of our mouths while working on a branded piece, as it just seemed like a book of insane strictness. And, actually, it really was. It was overkill. But, what I took from it was that while branding can be taken to the extreme, it can also be a helpful simplification tool if done correctly. Having almost all of the decisions made in advance frees you up to focus upon the message of whatever project it is you’re working on. You know what fonts you’re going to use, what placement to work within, what colors can be included, etc., so that’s not a concern.

In that same spirit, about four years ago I combined that concept with the more simplified version of a style sheet (something heavily covered in a lot of my comm classes back in college…that’s right, college finally did pay off for me) and I used it to come up with an idea when it came to gift wrap.

What I found was that I was buying a lot of rolls of wrapping paper, different colors of tissue paper and ribbons, random gift bags, etc., and then I’d end up with a lot of leftover stuff that may or may not get used again at some point if a similar occasion came up for a person with a similar taste. So, I decided to break it down to a more simple plan. I had to slowly introduce the concept of a personal brand to Doc, who did not take too well to it at first and thought I was 100% insane. (It’s quite the opposite now; more on that in a second.)

I thought about how I wanted our friends to feel when getting a gift from us, about what style matches our personalities, and about what is universal for everything from birthdays to Christmas to housewarmings to career success celebrations. At roughly the same time, I was falling in love with kraft paper. And that’s when it hit me—the only gift wrap we need is kraft paper & from there, we can embellish it…within our brand guidelines, of course!  So, with that as the base, I set out to determine what else we could consistently use for all of the aforementioned types of events. It started with old fashioned striped twine in a variety of colors (think: old mercantile store style), then grew to include ribbons, silhouette stamps in white ink, and a few more fun designs here and there. It’s worked perfectly. In fact, it’s now to the point that when someone is opening gifts, they immediately know which one is from us, as there’s now that brand recognition, so to speak.

And it’s made my life a lot simpler in the process. I only have to store the one roll of wrapping paper.It’s fantastic! Plus, it’s also inexpensive—last time we needed to buy more, we just got a roll of it from Lowe’s Home Improvement. They offer it as a floor protector; little do they know, it works great to wrap gifts, too!

Oh, and as far as Doc is concerned—he absolutely loves the brand now! Just this past weekend, I had him along with me while I picked up some supplies at the craft store. I normally do not take him with me, as he ruins all the fun (i.e., “Do you really need that?”, “Don’t you already have ten of those?”, “Where are you going to store that?”, “Are you done yet?”), but on that particular day he was alongside me. I picked up a package of patterned gift bags that were a great price & a fantastic pattern. For gift bags, I now typically only buy solid-color kraft colored ones or white ones, then add decoration from there. So, when I picked the patterned ones up and had them in my hand, he said that I couldn’t get them because…and this made me so proud when he said it…they were not on-brand & that would not work for him.

It’s actually not the first time he’s had to keep me in check, but I’m very proud of the brand monster I’ve created. It’s fantastic!

So, as we head into this gift-giving season, think about using this as an opportunity to create your own personal brand. It may not be that you use it for all of your gifts—maybe it’s just something you come up with to use when wrapping crafts you make yourself. But, have some fun with it and create a look and feel that is totally you! You’ll be surprised at how much easier it makes life when it comes to wrapping—and at how much people enjoy seeing something that comes branded from you!

Here are several examples of ways in which we’ve used our brand: