I’m Not a Brand: A creative’s pushback

“Think about your author brand,” someone in the publishing industry once said to me. And I didn’t know what this meant.

Did I need a logo? Core values? A customer service hotline?

With more prodding, the publishing industry expert further explained that it needed to be very clear what I wrote about. As a nonfiction writer, I needed my expertise to be front and center—on social media, in articles I write, within talks I give.

“Think about your speaker brand,” someone in the keynote speaking industry recently said to me.

Did I need a website? Mouse pads with my name printed on them? Should I sponsor a table at a chamber luncheon?

With more prodding, the speaking industry expert further explained that it needed to be very clear what I spoke about. As a keynote speaker, I need to make sure that my speaking topic was so deeply clear on social media, in articles that I write, and—for the love of God—on the damn stage.

In both industries, it benefits me to pick a lane and stay in it. Go hard and deep into one vein. Beat the drum over and over with what your brand is. For the past decade I’ve written dozens of articles, two books, and given hundreds of talks on negotiating for what you want by knowing your worth. I’ve consistently, and relentlessly, beaten that drum. For a decade I listened to the industry experts when they said, “Build your brand and don’t you dare veer from it.”

But then.

I wrote a novel.

Two actually.

And one of them comes out in three months.

As a result, I’ve been asked by some if this means I’m “shifting gears” or “pivoting” or if I am “considering this a rebrand.”

There’s that concept again. This idea that I’m a brand.

Look, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that writing is an art and publishing is a business. Just like creating a talk is an art and getting paid to deliver it is a business. I get it. I promise I do. I’ve learned more about the business side of publishing and keynoting than any Ivy League MBA. But here’s my counter argument to anyone who tells a creative (or anyone who makes money from their craft) that they must think of themselves as a brand.

The Brand Binary

This past weekend my family (my parents, my sister, and my niece) came together to celebrate my youngest child’s 11th birthday. During that gathering, my niece told us about her recent college tours. Specifically, she’s toured two state schools that happen to have a rivalry that cuts so deep it has sliced through my family and left a scar: they all went to one school; I went to the other (and have also worked there over a decade).

Talk about branding—these two schools have it in spades. All you have to do is see the logo, or even a hint of their colors, and cheers or boos erupt. Hell, you can even just say the rallying cry from either school and knives will be pulled. So I am quite skeptical my niece went on the tour without already being swayed by the brand’s power over (most of) my family.

That is branding. Getting you to align with one side or the other. Microsoft or Apple. Nike or Adidas. Starbucks or Dunkin. On and on and on. It’s either/or with branding. Pick a side; vilify the other.

Now imagine saddling that to a person.

Pitting creatives against each other. Amy or Tina. Fallon or Kimmel. Taylor Swift or any man in a comment section.

Brands want you to choose them and no one else. But creatives, musicians, even athletes, want you to sign up for their craft, their industry, which includes everyone else playing in it.

If you like Taylor Swift, that only helps every other woman in pop music. If you like an artist’s paintings, you are more likely to go to art shows and find even more artists you like.

Brands are synonymous with competition.

Humans, and their creative pursuits, are a conduit for generosity.

The Quickest Path to the Dollar

Branding provides quick access. We can easily identify something by its logo alone. Many can activate their salivary glands just by seeing the Golden Arches. That’s all branding is—efficiency for consumption.

To encourage a writer, or artist, or musician, or athlete to be a brand is so their fans can find and align with them quickly.

About a decade ago, Tropicana changed its logo and lost an estimated $30 million dollars in revenue because of it. The quickest path to OJ was interrupted.

Which is why—and this is a tangent—I often wonder how insurance companies get any business. They send their customers on the weirdest journeys with their choices in mascots. I’ve so easily associated Geico with the gecko that, when I see their ad, I’m more likely to contemplate if I want to get my kids a pet reptile than wonder if I’m paying too much for auto insurance. Aflac chose a duck as its brand, I guess because the name sounds like a quack? It’s fun to say, sure, but I’ve never once visited their website. And what’s with Liberty Mutual? Their logo is the Statue of Liberty but their mascot is an emu? A flightless bird that runs away from home—and its unsupportive parents—to sell insurance? My best guess is that the company shortened Liberty Mutual to a phonetic “lee-moo” and that kinda sounds like “emu”? Regardless, I spend more time trying to understand these leaps than I do listening to the list of services they offer.

Brands are there to provide the quickest path to the dollar. Sell those hamburgers! Sell that orange juice! Sell that insurance (if you aren’t currently down a rabbit hole of claims that Flo from Progressive is actually quite the bitch in real life)!

And so, it makes sense that industries push writers (or artists, or musicians, or athletes) to the quickest sale of their book, art, music, or sports ball match.

But the reality is, the shortest path to the sell undercuts the craft. The Golden Arches provide the quickest meal you’ll ever get, but it sure as hell isn’t the best one.

Working in a craft requires slowness. Deliberation. Intentionality. Meticulousness. The push into “building a brand” invariably accelerates the work. Narrows it. Condenses it. Packages it.

Essentially, it makes the audience (or consumer) the most important variable. In any form of art, we don’t want the audience to be super relevant. This isn’t to say they are irrelevant, but if you start by making something—anything—you think the audience wants, that isn’t art. That’s the home décor line at Hobby Lobby.

Sure, I want to sell books. And book keynotes. I can’t begin to quantify the amount of time I’ve spent trying to do both. But to push myself as a brand prioritizes the consumption, not the craft.

A brand is needed because its audience’s brain wanders.

The creatives exist because their audience’s brain craves.

The Need a Brand Doesn’t Get to Have

You’ll find no bigger Jim Carrey fan than I, and I’d die on the hill that his serious roles were his best. That’s right. The funny guy with the rubber face who was in three blockbuster comedies in 1994 alone really impressed me most in The Truman Show. Sure, I loved when he talked out of his butt, but who knew he had such range? That only made me like him more.

But man, were we hard on Jordan when he switched to baseball, and Garth when he posed as Chris Gaines, or Madonna when she appeared in movies. We instinctively push people into brand-like identities because we want the efficiency of knowing what category they fit into. What we are willing to accept. What we are comfortable allowing our mind to witness.

For a few years, I was unnecessarily annoyed at Courtney Cox for starting a line of home fragrances and cleaning products. I thought she had enough money with residual checks to last a lifetime (and pay for endless others’ lifetimes), so I didn’t understand why she needed to do this.

A few months back, while finishing up my own edits on my debut novel, I changed my mind. Courtney doesn’t need the money—but there is a need. There is something else in that work she craves. Perhaps the business side of it; perhaps the creative side of it; perhaps her home just really smells bad.

While I don’t have Friends money, I also don’t need to write a book for the money (which is fortunate because there is no money to be had in books). But I still very much needed to write this book.

Courtney needed to try out starting a business. Jordan needed to try a different sport. Garth, a different genre. Madonna, a different medium.

I’m happy to root for a brand when it tries something new (McDonald’s breakfast all day). But the need to do that was rooted in chasing the dollar, not chasing a dream. Anytime a brand sees the need to branch out, it’s a financial grab, like Amazon moving from books to literally everything else (including healthcare).

Tropicana’s need to try out a different logo was instantly abandoned because of the rate at which they were losing money. If an artist does this, it’s self-abandonment. And that costs them so much more than sales.  

And that’s how we know we aren’t brands. Our needs aren’t (entirely) tied to the consumer dollar. It’s tied to an interest, a curiosity, an all-consuming fire in the belly.

If I can get a fan (or even two) to buy into the idea of me and all my capacity, maybe they will follow me into all the territories I have an intense desire to try. And I'll light the path with my belly fire.

Now, to be fair, I do recognize that to do my craft requires business practices. I have a website, and fonts, and a logo, and brand colors (with hex codes!). I go so far as to use these colors and fonts on everything from my stage clothes to my slide deck. My publisher even took my “branding” into consideration when designing my novel’s cover.

But does that make me a brand?

God no.

Because I’m not interested in being categorized by only one thing (I write fiction now!). I’m not interested in a dollar’s quickest path to me (though please buy my books!). And I have needs that are more visceral, more emotional, and certainly more human, than a brand will ever be entitled to.

But beyond that, the moment I start thinking of myself as a brand is the moment I’m treated like a commodity.

And my worth is not for sale.

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