Branding is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in pageantry.
Branding, branding, branding. You need to know your personal brand. You need to build your brand. You need to make sure everything is “on brand”.
Okay.
But what does any of that actually mean?
I started thinking about this after a coaching session with one of my clients where we’d spent close enough to two hours talking about branding in relation to a business she was launching.
At the end of the session, I asked if there was one question she still had, what would it be?
She thought for a moment and said:
“What is branding?”
Not going to lie, my immediate thought was, oh my God, we’ve just spent two hours talking about this.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was actually a very good question.
Because knowing the definition of something is largely useless if it doesn’t affect what you actually do.
And I think that’s where pageantry gets branding wrong.
Your brand is not your Canva branding kit. It’s not your fonts. It’s not whether your colour is hot pink. It’s not even your platform, although your platform may form part of it.
When it comes to pageantry, I think branding is much simpler (and much more useful) than that.
It’s structured, detailed self-awareness.
What do you stand for?
What won’t you put up with?
What do you believe?
What do you value?
What do you love?
What can’t you stand?
Where are you going with your life?
And, importantly, are you actually living according to any of it?
Because once you know the answers to those questions, they should affect everything else: what you post, what you talk about, how you answer questions, the opportunities you say yes to, the opportunities you say no to, and even whether competing in another pageant makes sense for you at all.
One other thought from this week’s video that I think is worth sitting with: if you’re trying to define your brand, be careful choosing things that nobody would ever choose the opposite of.
“Hardworking” sounds great.
But who is deliberately branding themselves as lazy?
If everyone says exactly the same thing, it probably isn’t doing much to differentiate you.
Anyway, that’s enough branding, branding, branding for one article.
Watch the video. Despite being filmed in a car park with increasingly questionable lighting, I think it’s a useful one.
And, as always, let me know what you think.
Adrian.
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