Personal Branding: Stand Out and Succeed

Overview

In Personal Branding: Stand Out and Succeed, you’ll explore how the branding strategies used by top-brands can inform your own personal brand, one that’s authentically you. Define what a brand is, and explore the overlap between branded products and personal branding in this 4-week course. You’ll reflect on your core values, and translate them into an elevator pitch, brand imagery, and brand story. Taught by world-class faculty from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, this course provides a foundational understanding of how to create and refine your brand to help you achieve your personal and professional goals, regardless of where you are in your career.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to Brands

Your instructors, Cheri Alexander and Marcus Collins, introduce themselves and share with you an overview of the course. During this introductory week, you will be exposed to essential concepts related to branding. These include understanding the definition and historical context of brand, exploring brand effects, and gaining insights into the frameworks that can be employed for brand analysis. To fully comprehend personal branding, the instructors will initially build your knowledge around product branding to give you a baseline understanding of key branding concepts.

Week 2: People as Brands

In Week 2, Cheri and Marcus delve into how we can relate product brands to personal brands. To better understand how great brands have clear values and authenticity, you will explore a series of mini case studies of people who have left an impact on the world. You will then practice analyzing personal brands with the RED Framework, which you learned about at the end of Week 1 of the course. By going through the process of brand analysis, you will start identifying key traits that constitute a strong and authentic brand.

Week 3: You as a Brand

In Week 3, you will be guided through two reflection activities (a Core Values Sort and a Reflected Best Self analysis). In the Core Values Sort, you will discover which of your values are most important to you and incorporate those values into your own personal brand. In the Reflected Best Self analysis, you will reach out to those close to you and gain insights into how they perceive you when you are at your best. By hearing the perspectives of others, you will pinpoint characteristics that you have that are foundational to your authentic brand. Note that this module may take longer than a week to complete.

Week 4: Reinventing & Retuning

In Week 4, we will bring all of the concepts that you have learned throughout the course in two final activities: designing your brand logo and creating your brand story. Now that you have an understanding of your core values and characteristics from Week 3, you will be able to design a visual representation of your personal brand and craft a brand story about what makes you stand out from a crowd.