The rise of the personal brand: what do brand experts think?

A personal brand is the reputation attached to your name: what you are known for, how you work and whether people trust you. Brand experts disagree about how much effort it deserves, but several of them make the same point. It cannot replace good work.

We think the rise is real. People now look for a person behind a business before they buy, hire or recommend. We also think it is easy to overdo. We do not offer personal branding ourselves, so near the end we explain where to look if you want it.

Is the personal brand a real thing?

The phrase borrows a word from products and logos, which is why some people dislike it. A reputation exists whether or not you manage it. Colleagues, clients and suppliers already have a view of you. The only question is how much you do to make that view accurate and easy to find.

Rohit Bhargava, a marketing writer, made this point in a 2010 blog post. Personal branding, he said, “has a branding problem” because people link it with self-promotion. In his view, “a good personal brand is all about reputation”.

Critics are fair to warn about the hollow version. Eric M. Ruiz took a harder line in a piece for Entrepreneur, republished by Fortune in 2014. Ruiz described “focusing on a personal brand” as the worst piece of advice he ever got. Ruiz’s point was that people early in their careers should do good work first and let a reputation follow.

Our reading is that both are right. A personal brand is real when it describes work people can see. It is empty when the image runs ahead of the evidence.

Where did the idea come from?

The modern idea of a personal brand is usually traced to the management writer Tom Peters. In 1997 Fast Company magazine published his article “The Brand Called You”, as Peters recalls on his own site. It came during a wave of corporate job cuts. Its argument was that every worker should think of themselves as the head of their own company, an idea that became known as “Me Inc.”

Not everyone agreed. In 2001, Art Kleiner argued in strategy+business that the idea would reward a few early adopters and frustrate the rest. As more people built brands, standing out would get harder. In Kleiner’s words, “for everybody else, the Brand Called You will be a ticket to obscurity”.

Why is the personal brand on the rise?

Nobody can prove a single cause, so what follows is our interpretation of several trends that point the same way.

• Work has moved towards individuals. Many professionals now work independently or in small firms, so their own name does the job an employer’s name once did.
• Platforms favour people. In one analysis of 11,107 employee posts on LinkedIn, a chief executive’s posts drew as much engagement as the company’s page, with 98% fewer followers. The agency behind it, DSMN8, sells this kind of service and studied one large organisation, so treat it as a pointer, not proof.
• There is money in it. The creator economy means the businesses and income built around people who make content online. Goldman Sachs Research put it at about $250 billion and said it could reach $480 billion by 2027.
• Trust is scarce. When anyone can publish polished content, a known person with a visible track record can feel safer to buy from than a faceless company. That is our view, not a measured finding.

What do the thought leaders say?

The experts sit on a spectrum, and it helps to see where each one stands.

• Tom Peters is the champion. Treat yourself as a brand and manage your reputation on purpose.
• Rohit Bhargava is a defender. Everyone has a personal brand, and it is about reputation, not vanity.
• Eric M. Ruiz and Art Kleiner are sceptics. A brand without a record is hollow, and a crowded field makes standing out harder.

Emma Grede, co-founder of Good American and a founding partner of SKIMS, speaks from the experience of being visible. Adweek’s description of her 2026 Social Media Week conversation says that becoming the face of a brand can amplify its impact, “but only if the foundation is strong”.

Grede’s 2026 book Start With Yourself also touches on visibility. In a Bustle interview about it, Grede argued that unwritten rules “condition women to avoid behaviors that create wealth, visibility, and leadership”. That interview is about ambition rather than personal branding as such. We include it because it shows the case for being seen, next to the case for having something solid to be seen for.

Where personal brands go wrong

The risks are practical. A business that depends on one face can be hard to sell, hard to delegate and fragile if that person is unavailable. Clients may assume the founder will do all the work. A public persona can also take time that would be better spent on the work people are paying for.

There is a legal side too. If you promote your own business through a personal account, the Advertising Standards Authority expects it to be clearly identifiable as advertising where that applies. Its guidance on brand-owned social media explains when.

Privacy matters as well. You can be well known for your expertise without sharing your family, your health or your home. Decide where the line sits before you start, not after.

What Brand Strategy UK thinks

We think the personal brand is real, but it comes after two more important things. The first is a clear idea of what your business stands for. The second is good work that proves it. A well-known founder in front of an unclear business simply makes the confusion more visible.

We do not do personal branding. We do not write profiles or posts for individuals, coach people on visibility or build a personal image. Our work is brand and marketing strategy for businesses, delivered in writing.

Where we can help is the step before. If you and your company have become hard to tell apart, brand positioning sets out what the business offers and why it is different. Brand strategy then turns that into decisions about audience, message and priorities, so a personal profile has something solid to point to.

If you want a personal branding expert

Look for someone who specialises in it. Our directory of independent consultants lists brand and marketing professionals who are based in the UK or want a presence here. You can search by specialism and contact them directly.

Please note how the directory works. We review each profile before publishing it, but we do not recommend, match or place anyone, and professional and featured listings are advertising. Ask for examples of their work and for clear written terms, as you would with any adviser.

Five questions to ask before you invest

1. Do people who have paid for your work already trust you?
2. Can you say in one sentence what you want to be known for?
3. Does that reputation point towards something someone can actually buy?
4. Could the business carry on if you stepped out of the picture for a while?
5. Can you keep up the activity at a pace that suits your life and your delivery?

If the answers are mostly yes, a personal brand can help people find you and understand your value. If they are mostly no, build the business foundation first. The attention will be worth more once there is something clear for it to land on.

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