TOW # 18 "Personal Brand Is In Your Strengths" (Article)

What is your brand? This is the question Erin Arvedlund, writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer tackles in her article, “Personal Brand Is In Your Strengths,” where she addresses the relationship between brand and passion. In this article Arvedlund uses clear “directions” for her readers to develop their brand, and insightful expert testimony in order to achieve a greater purpose that by expressing how anyone can be successful if they stick to their strengths.

How do you find your brand? This question is what Arvedlund uses her clear directions to answer within her article. Without understanding what a brand is or what your personal brand is, there is really no point to this article. Therefore, first Arvedlund defines “your brand.” “Your brand emanates from your most authentic self… it is in your natural strengths,” Arvedlund defines personal brand as such, and then moves on to teaching her readers how to discover their own. She uses expert testimony from Lisa Penn, a managing director at SEI Private Banking, to clearly explain this part, “Think when the time flew by... when people were telling me ‘I was doing a great job.’ That’s when you were using a strength.” Arvedlund defines a persons brand as their strengths, and by doing so in this article she allows her readers to understand her argument and hopefully believe it.

Meg Hagele is the poster woman for this article, both in the words and also in the photograph at the center of the page. She represents how finding your brand and honing it can lead you to your success. Arvedlund writes how confidence and enthusiasm are her brand and her passion is coffee, calling it the “Barista Brand.” The author notes every step Meg took, from creating her own coffee blend, to sending out newsletters and talking across a bar to spread the word of her new coffee shop, in order to show how Meg’s confidence and enthusiasm, her brand, made her successful. Arvedlund uses Meg’s personal experience of starting her own business, by doing what she is good at, to show that anyone can make a living doing what he or she loves and anyone can be successful doing so.

I do not believe that Erin Arvedlund achieves her purpose in this article. I believe she needs to include more evidence if she wants her argument to be considered.