Personalising branding: quick impact, high risks

The powerful viral effect created by sharing real stories, authentic experiences, and personal style fosters emotional connections. (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - The journey of brand development has long been a cornerstone for business survival.

However, a significant trend in recent years is the growing emphasis on personal branding, with business owners increasingly shifting their focus from building the organisation's brand to cultivating their own individual brand.

On many social media platforms, it is easy to come across CEOs livestreaming sales, sharing business knowledge, building their own communities and connecting with consumers through their personal reputation, expertise and individuality.

Not only is it flexible, but the cost is also significantly lower. Small businesses with limited budgets for communication can have a founder become an extremely effective 'face of the brand' with just a smartphone and social media.

The powerful viral effect created by sharing real stories, authentic experiences and personal style fosters emotional connections. This is the foundation for trust and purchasing behaviour.

Although this is a trend, 'personalising a business brand' also carries its own risks.

Tang Thuong Phat, CEO of United Fortune Investment JSC and a branding expert, warned that a personal brand could be very effective in the early stages, but if not professionalised and if the roles were not clearly separated, it would face difficulties in scaling, transferring, or attracting investment in the long run.

If a founder got caught in a scandal or left the market, the business would almost lose its brand value, he said.

Focusing entirely on the individual could weaken the organisation’s capabilities, resulting in a lack of a solid internal management system, which could make operation and sustainable development difficult, he added.

Many small businesses operated like a 'personalised organisation', which meant business operations, financial transactions, human resources management, and customer relations, all went through the personal name of the leader, said lawyer Pham Ngoc Minh, CEO of Everest Law Firm.

This simplified many procedures but also led to a lack of financial transparency, difficulty in auditing, and challenges in attracting investment due to the absence of a clear company structure, said Minh.

It became hard to separate personal assets from company assets if there was a dispute or bankruptcy, added the lawyer.

"Furthermore, tying the entire business operation to a personal name can easily lead to violations of business registration, tax and consumer protection laws," he said.

"Especially in fields like cosmetics, food, or financial services, if the brand is not legally registered but only exists on social media under the seller’s name, it will have no legal value when an incident occurs.

"Not to mention, a strong personal brand means high media influence. However, not everyone has the capability or awareness to use this 'soft power' responsibly."

He added that many exploited their personal brand to exaggerate products, bypassed advertising laws or used misleading tactics without internal control mechanisms.

The lack of internal oversight and critique, which is a hallmark of a corporate system, could easily turn the leader into a 'one-man media show', which could backfire.

Instead of seeing the personal brand as a 'lifeline', some businesses have learned to harmonise both elements: building a personal brand as a door and the business brand as a solid house to 'welcome' customers.

Thanks to this dual strategy, many businesses have been able to leverage the 'quick access speed' of a personal brand while maintaining the sustainability, transparency and legacy of an organisational brand.

To clearly position the brand in the market and develop a sustainable strategy, many experts recommend that businesses need clear positioning objectives. Personal branding serves as a tool to spread messages, but it cannot replace the full role of the corporate brand.

Instead of choosing between 'personal' or 'corporate', it is time for leaders to learn how to develop both paths simultaneously, enabling quick adaptability while also progressing steadily and securely in their growth journey, say experts./.

VNA