Personal Branding: Auteurs and Authenticity

 

Personal branding is now instrumental in successfully navigating the job market. Branding used to be the exclusive domain of corporations and their attempts to highlight their product or service. Now that social media has made everyone more interconnected, individuals must also create their own brands, but now the products are themselves (Castrillon). Which means that people have to take the features of social media, which allow you to curate your life, and take it to the most extreme end. Every tweet is an extension of your core ideas, every photo part of a larger story. The result is a precarious balancing act between the needs for personal branding and the truth of your interiority.

There is always the danger of relying too much on branding as an end to itself. For a more exaggerated example of this, I always think of the character of Tom Haverford from Parks and Rec (played by Aziz Anzari). The character serves as a sort of parody of younger generations and their relationship to social media. Tom is vain and obsessed with maintaining his self image, which makes him savvy at social media, but often means he has nothing of substance to back it all up. This especially comes back to haunt him when he wants to achieve his actual dream of starting a business. On one occasion, he creates an exclusive club with amazing luxuries (it gives away free Apple products and allows you to play one on one games with NBA players) but has no actual way to generate revenue. There is only the illusion of success. 

It is easy to dismiss this as an older writing staff taking shots at millennial culture, but it does speak to a real danger; one that is exacerbated at the intersection between social media and job searching. In job searching, people already feel the need to exaggerate their positive qualities, downplay their negatives, or project confidence, but social media makes it especially easy to manipulate their self image. And people can sense this kind of deception when it goes too far. That’s why it is so important to have your personal brand be rooted in something real or concrete about yourself (Chan). 

When I think about the type of personal brands that stay with me, I oddly enough think about those eccentric artists that you sometimes find in the film world. I’m talking about filmmakers that not only fall under the label of auteur ( which means a filmmaker with a distinct artistic voice and consistent exploration of themes across their filmography) but also live out their distinct style in everyday life and publicity. I am talking about real bizarre artists such as David Lynch or John Waters. Lynch for example, is known for his dreamlike, abstract, and sometimes infuriating impenetrable stories such as Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, or Muholland Dr. While he keeps his personal life close to his chest, in interviews he is just as aloof as the movies he makes, often refusing to explain what a movie means so that audiences can decide for themselves. To promote the movie Inland Empire, he once set up an interview in the middle of downtown LA with a cow next to him (the cow had nothing to do with the movie, it was simply there because Lynch wanted it there). To many, it might seem like Lynch is outright rejecting the idea of building a brand, and there is some truth to that. So much of his art is exploring how people cover up their worst selves with a thin facade of civility and americana. You see this in Mulholland Dr, which explore the seedy underbelly of Hollywood and how it destroys young hopeful talent, or in Twin Peaks, which was about a murder mystery that slowly unraveled the secret and lies hidden in a picturesque Northwestern town. All Lynch is doing in these interviews is staying true to the themes he explores in his art.

Another example is director John Waters. A strange case if there ever was one, the Baltimore born filmmaker Waters rose to prominence (or infamy) in the 1970s after releasing a string of low budget (and low grossing) cult movies. Though features such as Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and Female Trouble did not make their money back, they did make a large cultural impression on American audiences (Albo). While low budget, the movies had a distinct style, filled with campy elements (in one movie, a giant lobster randomly attacks the main character and it is never addressed afterward), loudmouthed characters parading around in polyester, and a startling lack of good taste. This may have made Waters  the whipping boy of many a critic when his movies came out, but over time public perception has flipped on him from lowbrow storyteller to auteur (Albo). Part of the reason for that is how John Waters has stayed true and owned up to that style. He has an incredibly consistent public image. He’s worn the same pencil thin mustache since the ‘70s, and he often wears gaudy, expensive clothes that purposefully look like they were picked out at a thrift store when making a public appearance (Albo). Decades before the Internet, Waters was cultivating his own personal brand, and his distinct style earned him numerous guest spots, because his whole personality was so easily recognizable that just his mere appearance on a program would seemingly imbue it with his energy. Probably the most famous example of this was when he played himself on the season 8 episode of The Simpsons, “Homer’s Phobia,” and introduced a wider audience to the idea of camp. His personality has adapted well to the social media era, as scenes from his movies have spread across Tik Tok and been embraced by larger meme culture (Albo). 

Now that branding has evolved to become a form of personal storytelling, it makes sense that these types of auteurs would excel at making such statements. By looking at these artists as examples, we can learn how to appear as our best selves while maintaining that vital sense of authenticity.

Work Cited

Albo, Mike. “The Marvelous Mr. John Waters.” Town & Country, 20 Sept. 2021, www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a37460247/john-waters-cover-story-interview-2021/.

Castrillon, Caroline. “Why Personal Branding Is More Important Than Ever.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 13 Feb. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2019/02/12/why-personal-branding-is-more-important-than-ever/?sh=73523eee2408.

Chan, Goldie. “10 Golden Rules of Personal Branding.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 8 Nov. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2018/11/08/10-golden-rules-personal-branding/?sh=1bbb232c58a7.