Women Candidates: 3 Things to Know About Branding Before You Get in the Race

You are already a brand – whether you like the idea of that or not – you are, and you can choose to ignore or embrace that idea.

If you choose to ignore it, get ready for others to write your story. They may say things that aren’t true about you, and claim to know your values – and there’s a chance they’ll get it wrong and twist it to your opponents’ advantage.

Politics can be a dirty game, and playing dirty doesn’t come naturally for most women. But we have an antidote to dirty politics: be yourself.

When you choose to embrace your own brand, you get to tell people what you believe in, what your intentions are, and how to talk about your candidacy to other people. You’ll be clear in your message and you’ll be able to generate a lot of impactful content to influence your race. You’ll have a better chance of representing yourself authentically if YOU control the narrative.

Sounds better than the alternative, right?

Here are three of our most impactful principles about branding to get you started:

The Three Cs of personal branding are clarity, consistency, and constancy. You are clear about who you are, you consistently tell the same story, and you constantly show up where your constituents will see your message. All three must be present for your brand to be operating efficiently.
Branding isn’t just skin deep. It isn’t just about pretty colors and taglines and logos – it’s firstly about the authentic impressions you project to people – and what they say about you when you’re not in the room. So, you have to do the work to uncover and document your brand before you can start executing it with logos and slogans.
Your brand isn’t a made-up idea: your brand is what is inside you and what makes you authentic. If you ask 10 potential voters to describe you, there should be some consistency in their answers. If you’re a generous person, and you exhibit this consistently, people should easily describe you this way. If they don’t, you’re either not really a generous person, or you’ve been hiding your authentic self for some reason. The #1 rule of branding? Be true to who you really are.