Have you ever attended a brand workshop where you were told that brands are like people? Yet, whilst most businesses are deliberate about building their organisational or product brands, entrepreneurs and executives fall short in building their personal brands.
In 2025, this is a non-negotiable. Personal branding has enormous benefits, one of which is that a founder’s strong personal brand can positively impact a business or its products. An entrepreneur with a powerful personal brand will likely also have a large social media following which could invariably create earned media opportunities, also known as publicity. Examples of such personalities are entrepreneur, author and speaker, Gary Vaynerchuk; CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk; and locally, we have the chairman of Heirs Holdings, Transcorp, United Bank for Africa and founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony O. Elumelu CFR.
So, how do you build a powerful personal brand? One approach is to apply similar principles and models used in building corporate and product brands. Let these 5Ps guide you.
Personality
As stated earlier, brands are often said to be like people so they have personality. Your journey to building a powerful personal brand should therefore begin with defining your personality.
Who are you as a brand? What motivates you? What are your values?
When you have clearly articulated your answers to these questions, apply Jennifer Aaker’s 5 Dimension Model to see where you fit. It’s a popular framework used in deriving a brand’s personality. Aaker’s five dimensions are: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. As with humans, more than one attribute would typically define you. Select the most prominent. Your brand personality would also impact your tone, so take note of this.
Purpose
This is your why? Why are you building a personal brand? What results should these personal brand-building efforts yield? For instance, your purpose could be to build your profile as a public policy expert if you intend to run for senate in the next election cycle. A clear purpose will influence the next set of Ps, that is; your positioning and promotion.
Positioning
In marketing, positioning is simply the space you want to occur in the mind of the consumer. It’s similar to personal branding. What position do you want to occupy in the mind of your audience? How do you want them to perceive you? As an expert, a philanthropist or activist?
Promotion
This is the ‘How’ and ‘Where’of building a powerful personal brand. How will you create awareness for your brand and where? Here, you would also consider messaging, communication channels, formats and frequency. Do you want to build your brand online and offline? What would be the best online channels to use? This would depend on your positioning. If you want to position yourself as an industry expert, do you want to create content or do you prefer speaking engagements? Identify what works best for you and you’ll be on your way.
Proprietary Asset
David Aaker proposes five elements for a brand to achieve brand equity. These elements are: brand awareness, associations, loyalty, perceived quality and proprietary assets. Not all personal brands will have proprietary assets but some do such as celebrities. Think about Cristiano Ronaldo and CR7 or Davido’s OBO. These are examples of proprietary assets. Do you have something associated with you brand? You could trademark it and make it a proprietary asset.
If you would like help with building your personal brand, reach out to us at hello@thebrandsparks.com
