Entrepreneurial brand building is an area of study in its infancy. The nature of entrepreneurship which typically implies serious limitations on the availability of resources suggests that entrepreneurs need to take an unconventional approach to brand building.
When an entrepreneur brands his or her product, business or concept, inadvertently the entrepreneur himself often becomes associated with that brand.
Basically the decision is to determine which company relies most on you personally for its brand recognition.
When it comes to building a powerhouse brand, the little guys have a huge advantage over the big guys because small businesses and entrepreneurs do not suffer from organizational inertia and usually the vision of the founder of the company is closely linked to the essence of the brand and embedded in the organization.
Entrepreneurs have a chance to build entire businesses based on a powerful brand promise while large companies tend to drift away from the original promise that made them compelling and then they foolishly spend millions to try to “re-brand” which may or may not be possible.
Entrepreneurial branding is about being: hands-on, holistic (looking at and trying various branding techniques, not just one), taking responsibility for lots of things, being really open-minded, understanding the overall business you work in as well as affiliated businesses, and so on. Of course, most branding jobs would require these skills / attitudes / approaches, and, yet, certainly, the bigger the organization you work in, the more you have to work on other things i.e being an expert in your job role, focusing on thorough success in your job role, and so on … the focus being on ‘your job role’ in the sense that the scope to do other things isn’t so great (compared to a smaller organization) and you will be judged more on ‘your job role’ than what you do outside it.
In today’s world where advertising is becoming so much more complicated, where digital and traditional advertising are merging, and so on, it is even more important than ever for people looking for jobs in this industry to have this entrepreneurial branding approach.