Riding for the Brand

The history of the west is full of colourful characters with stories and lessons to lend to our modern business experience. Cow hands adopted an unwritten code of ethics that included the idea that once you sign on, you were expected to ride for the brand. Cowboy poet Red Steagall summed it up best, “Son, a man’s brand is his own special mark that says this is mine, leave it alone. You hire out to a man, ride for his brand and protect it like it was your own.”

In the early days of the King Ranch, drought ravaged South Texas and Northern Mexico, which spurred Captain Richard King to offer the residents of the town of Cruillas a proposition: if they would sign on to work his new ranch under his brand, he would provide them with food, shelter, and income. These expert horsemen became known as Los Kineños, King’s people, and became legends in the taming of the American West. Many of their descendants still live and work at the King Ranch to this day.

In the corporate world, branding has come to mean a number of things, in many cases used merely as the buzzword de-jour by neophyte marketers to impress their peers. I often find the phrase “brand” to be used in place of and synonymous with the word reputation. But as surely as there is a corporate brand, there is also a personal brand, and when you sign up to represent a company, the corporate and personal brand need to complement each other.

Understanding and adopting your employer's brand is important for representatives that embody the corporeal version of the company. Employees carry with them the company story and what it represents. Customers select a brand because they believe that story. The company brand also needs to be congruous with the personal brand, any incongruity between the personal and corporate identity stand out to the customer as being insincere. Both personal and company brand need to be cultivated and managed to preserve and build their respective reputations.

Brand and reputation are not new constructs of the modern technological society. French diplomat and philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in 1835 that social capital defined American life and relationships. He noted that when democracy replaced monarchy, one’s personal reputation was central to the operation of democratic institutions.

Employers need to be careful when hiring employees, who come not only with tangible skills and knowledge, but with personal brands that have been informed by their history. Sometimes an employee's reputation carries with it a wealth or deficit of social capital that can be spent by and built upon on behalf of the employer. It is in both employee and employer’s interest to find complementary brands that work together to forward each party.

Employees need to develop for themselves a personal brand that is both congruous with their company but also portable. Ultimately, as a professional, you will likely find yourself employed by several companies during your professional career, and the marketability of your personal brand is a personal asset you need to tend to.