Liam Arthur

Some thoughts on Branding

Branding has become our new religion. Too much? OK, agreed, but there are some similarities. We Identify ourselves through brands. We describe ourselves or who we think we are/would like to be by wearing, driving, drinking, eating and affiliating with brands that identify (or at least prescribe to) with our desired projection.
We appear to have become so comfortable with the idea of brand as identity that we have in many cases starting branding ourselves, mostly through online identities which seem to me to work on a business model of a projection or core values and objectives.
More so in the photography world in which much of my online presence resides. Constant updates of progress and success to keep hearts and minds certain not only of our existence, but our resounding success and popularity. To be quiet or struggling is the modern taboo.
As a photographer we are selling ourselves as well as our work. The constant self affirmations and political posting of otherwise insipid information is at fever pitch, twitter and Facebook are a battleground of self PR, an artillery of likes and favorites charged down by a brigade of re-tweets and re-posts.
I am there with a few tweet jabs (and blog post uppercuts) and can't complain much as my agent found me through twitter. In a marketing driven highly competitive industry such as ours anyone would be foolish to ignore the potential that the social media platforms offer, I just wonder if there is a flip side, a price to pay for allowing ourselves to become a product instead of a person. Do I have times when I lose sleep because I am struggling? Do I worry about what is around the corner? Of course, I don't believe anyone that works the way we do wouldn't. Would I ever voice it over social media? No way, what if a potential client thought that you were struggling? your stock would drop, shares in Liam Arthur would tumble and my brand would be hung drawn and quartered, spread to the far corners of the internet.
Anyway this is all conjecture as I am so busy turning down world-wide campaigns and polishing my awards that I barely have time to spare it much thought.

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