Branding a Brand vs. Branding a Person

I have immense interest in integrated marketing communications for athletes and celebrities. Obviously, that is a dream that I will strive for my whole life. It seems nearly impossible to land that dream job. Anyways, all throughout my buyer behavior, promotional strategy, and campaign planning & management classes, I have been forced to focus on marketing for a brand. So, how can I use this information to learn how to market for a person? Do I treat the person as a brand? Do I go through the steps of the creative brief thinking of the person as a brand?

I stumbled upon an article from 2011 on BournCreative. Essentially, it is all about the differences between marketing for a business, a person, and a brand. So, does this insist they are not all the same thing? Do you market differently among them? The answer is yes. Branding for a product versus a person differs greatly. Essentially, for both, you do have to discover those inner layers to find out with the brand or person is all about, but they way it is marketed is completely different. Jennifer Bourn says, "When branding a thing, the brand is built around a single product or a program. With this approach, the visual design, the message, and the marketing all revolve around the branded item. The focus is on how the consumer interacts with it, how it benefits them, and how they feel about it." This all makes sense. Those few sentences describe what I have been learning for the past 11 weeks in my campaign planning and management course.

However, for branding a person, things are a bit different. Bourn says, "When branding a person, the brand is built around the charisma, talent, and expertise of a single person. This person is the celebrity face of the brand." This differs greatly from a product because branding a person means they have their own voice. It is easier to discover what lies in that inner layer. The voice is their voice, the marketing and the message comes from them and the visual brand uses their photo and likeness. With this approach, the brand completely revolves around the celebrity or expert, and the team or employees in place exist to support them.

I find it interesting how marketers and publicists position celebrities and athletes. For example, Taylor Swift has built an empire by positioning and marketing herself as the independent female figure of the millennials' time. Or how Justin Bieber's team has repositioned his reputation from bad boy to mature and responsible adult. I feel as though I can apply what I have learned in my marketing classes to understand how celebrities and athletes are presented to the public. There are so many similarities when comparing products and people, but how to position them differs.