So lately I’ve been very interested in self-discovery and building my own brand. Who am I? Who do I want to portray myself as? Are those always the same person?
I stumbled into a very interesting conversation between Forty Agency and Heather Herr of Experience Studio regarding archetypes and branding and how those build an entire brand experience and increase customer loyalty. I won’t go into those details here, that may be another blog post some other time. However during this presentation, a book was mentioned, The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Margret Mark and Carol Pearson, that really raised my interest in what this archetypes bit fit into who I am and how I would build my own legacy.
Well, my very own hardbound copy arrived in the mail today, and I’ve spent the better portion of my night starting to read more into it. Very interesting stuff, and as I discover things I’ll be sure to mention them here. So far it’s mostly regarding these 12 archetypes that appear throughout history in stories and stereotypes and how aligning your brand with one of those 12 will consistently help your brand be easily recognized and create value within customers. By using these default stories we can engage our customer quicker, allowing the experience to become easier and can increase loyalty within a brand’s customers.
So far, I’ve been doing quite a bit of passive branding, through my own blog, through local networking and through twitter etc. But due to my interest in continuing to go to conferences and what have you, I’d like to get a real feeling for what I want to be perceived as and how to do that properly. I’d like to really get behind a design style, branding, colors, and paraphernalia (biz cards, stickers, fun stuff).
However, there is a catch in this, right now my name is pretty much my brand, and while it’s great that it’s unique (According to google I’m the only April Holle in the world!) The catch is I might be getting married soon, and if that happens then my name changes, all my effort is then thwarted. Not only am I changing names, I’m changing to April Jones. Do you have any idea how many of those there are? So if you have any ideas on how to gracefully transition this, please chime in!
If you have any personal experience in self branding, please feel free to comment, because advice and experience is never a bad thing to have. 
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