The History of Personal Branding

The personal branding is as old as humanity, as human beings always had the desire to highlight their abilities and achievements. Personal branding focuses on “self-packaging,” where success is defined by individuals’ inner sets of skills, motivations, and interests and it is about both self-promotion and authentic self-expression.

A lot of people believe Tom Peters first coined personal branding in his 1997 article “The Brand Called You” which presents branding yourself in the “Age of the Individual.”

However, its actual form was first introduced in 1937 in the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, in his book chapter 6 Hill wrote “It should be encouraging to know that practically all the great fortunes began in the form of compensation for personal services, or from the sale of Ideas.

Later in 1981 in the book “The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout, chapter 23 its written” You can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance your own career. Key principle: Don’t try to do everything yourself. Find a horse to ride“.

The rise of the internet has taken personal branding to a new level of importance. The growth of the virtual world has built the need of maintaining online identities because this online identity has the power to affect the real world.