Personal Branding and Celebrity Branding Branding is the use of a distinct design, symbol, term or name as an identity to set a product apart from the rest. An individual's personal brand represents what they stand for, and what others seek them out for because of their actions, abilities and values. Personal branding, therefore, involves influencing the perceptions that others hold about you, whereas positive personal branding involves creating opportunities out of such perceptions. Product branding, on the other hand, is about giving identity to a product, rather than to an individual's values and abilities. Moreover, unlike product branding, whose goal is to make a product famous within the target market, personal branding seeks to wield influence in one's profession because influence not only creates wealth, but also changes minds. A third significant difference between the two is that a product brand has to be created and it is therefore possible to have an unbranded product in the market. The same is, however, not the...

A name is the simplest example of a personal brand.
Celebrity branding is, more or less, a form of personal branding, in which case a celebrity uses their societal stature, popularity, and personality to voice and certify a brand. The successful collaboration between Michael Jordan (the best basketball player of all time) and Nike offers a perfect example of celebrity branding. As has been mentioned elsewhere in this text, everyone, celebrity or not, possesses a personal brand - but not everyone has a celebrity brand. Owing to this fact, people use a celebrity's personal brand to market either themselves or their products. This gives rise to the second distinguishing factor; celebrity branding is driven by the pursuance of fame, rather than influence, which explains why it is mainly used for product marketing.

The one thing that is common to the three…