Brandividuals

A brandividual is a person that represents a company online through their own personal name. For example, Matt Cutts has built a brand for his own name. Anyone involved in web knows his name, you don’t have to say “you know, the guy from Google” to explain who he is. His Twitter account is #mattcutts, not #GoogleEngineer. David Armano of Critical Mass coined the term brandividual and in an AdAge article states:

“For some, the idea is scary — the melding of our personalities with the companies and brands we work for. Call it whatever you want; I believe we’ll see more of it.”

I think he’s right, it’s only going to become more common as social media plays a larger role in marketing. I see it in my own world working with Big White & Silver Star Ski Resorts. I started our Facebook groups a few years ago, and they’ve become a significant part of our web strategy. When there was a couple hundred members (and most were my personal friends anyways) sending mass messages from my personal account didn’t warrant a second thought. Now however, with our Facebook groups collectively sitting at over 5,300 people, when I send out a mass message my inbox is inundated with messages. I didn’t consider this as “building my brand”, so I created Facebook accounts for our resort mascotts (The Loose Moose & The Silver Fox) and now send the messages from those accounts.

It does make things a little more complicated when there’s turnaround within a company, but I also think it makes a company look more transparent and more friendly if they put a face and a name behind the communication.