As a trend, creating visibility in a career or at a workplace is often prioritized before developing competence.

It is like aggressive marketing even before developing a good product.

Why limit ourselves to work space boundaries?

Look at Instagram brands that have solid performance marketing in place. Thousands of followers if not millions, solid branding but questionable offerings.

On the other side, awesome products with great gross margins have poor brand presence. Recently on Shark Tank I was amazed to see a confectionary brand with crores of revenues and just 5000 followers on Instagram. They wanted help in marketing.

Conventionally a superior product always came first. Nike was a pure distribution and a word of mouth business in the 70s. Only in the mid nineties Nike evolved into a marketing organization. Apple Inc has a similar story. Superior product first, superior marketing later. It was common sense. Good products and features could be easily marketed.

Then why are people marketing themselves (or their products) on priority even before focusing on building competence?

I feel it is obvious. Everyone does whatever comes easy to them. Had Nike been incorporated in the 2000s, it would have been a marketing company by default. Case in point, Under Armor.

Digital marketing comes easy.

But does this logic apply to people as individual brands?

Would you market yourself first even before building a competence and offering that is superior?

#marketing#branding#selfbranding#career#products