After fifteen years of experience working with brands, boosting their branding and enhancing their digital authority on digital platforms, I concluded it was the right time to create a personal brand.
As the best thing in life is to lead by example, with my brand, R8C, I can apply the lessons learned during my professional life to my candidacy. There is no better way to demonstrate one's professional skills with real and concrete facts than by applying them to oneself.
Before studying my brand, consider some basic brand identity concepts.
Definition of Branding
Branding can be defined as those actions aimed at creating, positioning and determining the strengths of an image, a product, a company or a person. Branding arises, within marketing strategies, to provide brands with tools to make themselves known and influence the public in purchasing decisions through recognition or identification with the values they have established.
There are mainly three types of branding, and although we will define them briefly, I will focus later on personal branding, which I have created to apply for jobs.
Corporate: This is the most common. It refers to the world of the company and the product.
Personal: The one that refers to a person and the values that identify them.
Human resources: refers to the connection between the employee and the company, as employees should be considered brand ambassadors. This would include, for example, the behaviour of employees on social networks.
Why create a personal brand?
To differentiate yourself from other candidates.
To give visibility to a story of success and professional experience.
Because we are a product, and we want our product to be bought.
Because it adds professionalism and seniority to the candidacy.
It is essential that the brand does not generate controversy and that it is not connected to any cultural element that distorts its function or misleads its intentionality. The personal brand has to bring exclusivity, and we cannot be pigeonholed into any existing group or trend, as it could close doors for us.
R8C brand analysis
The use of colour as a sign of corporate identity
Black and white have been chosen as the primary colours. They are neutral, complementary colours that do not generate controversy and are widely used by the technology sector, with which I am very familiar.
In addition, other secondary colours have been taken into account, which will be used to highlight the key messages of the sections of the website: such as green, red and blue.
The story behind the brand
R8C are the initials of my name: Raúl Benito Casto. In the B, I visualised infinity, a potent symbol in mathematics, philosophy and astronomy. Infinity is recognisable by all cultures and evokes the future, eternal reality and timelessness, which ultimately means being a little better each time in what we do and what we are.
The infinity symbol is an image of permanence: Our actions remain, so we must ensure they are of quality and high value.
Sonority. When saying the brand name in English, it has musicality, "ar-eight-ci".
Simplicity: it is easy to remember because they are three common letters.
Visual style book
All brands must have a visual and literary style book, which must be respected for homogeneity and for the potential public to recognise us.
To use the logo in digital channels and communication platforms, it is also convenient to have several versions and sizes of the logo:
Corporate email, signature
Personalised website
Communications, articles.
Favicon
Letters and stationery
Bonus: Brand and web domain registration
Web address needs to be easy to remember. They should have a simple URL allowing you to share them at events, for example, at a startup seminar or on a podcast.
Attention span is minimal, and interaction is likely to be complex with a long or complicated domain. We are looking for agility.
R8C.ch is easy to type and allows the visitor to focus on another, more productive terrain, like the quality of your content.