Do you know your personal "brand'?

[shootingstar]

Don't really know how to express this other than to say that to me, products have brands; living creatures are much richer and multi-layered than the word "brand" conveys. For some reason thinking of a person as a brand is as off-putting to me as treating corporations as people is.

+1 Precisely the point. Yes, I agree everyone else here, that "brand" is just semantics, another word, for a person's personae or voice.
Crankin, I care up to a certain point, how people perceive me at work. And yes, the older one gets the more challenging it is, that one is not perceived negatively:

a) as being a technophobe (my career is on information management so I do need to keep current on some technology (meaning using some of it) and also the bigger issues -legal issues on electronic info., sextexting, malware, digital literacy divide between haves and have-notes). Does not using facebook, twitter put me in the negative, career zone? I'm not going to worry about...I blog, done other stuff reflected in my resume and am already out "there" for people.

b) not caring about my health --this is all a matter of perspective. And in a way, very unfair, for others who are in the same age bracket as I, but are struggling to lose weight/get healthier. BUT I am noticing quite a number of senior managers in their mid 30's and up, where I work, have consciously taken up some form of exercise --they look more fit / are fit... it's the "new" rising career star look I guess..at least for the organization that I work for. Well, cycling is part of it and one of the new "golfing" biz networking activities.

The one thing I've noticed in myself as I grow older and am still working, is trying to say less/be less negative. So thatI am not "branded" as sour grapes or cynical. I do wish I didn't know certain things, underlying common work politics that happens often in most organizations.

At this point in my life, I'm more comfortable with myself than I was compared to 15 years ago. Do I care about my blog "voice"? There is a reason why I don't rant much on my blog: I want to leave the very best of me digitally on blogosphere. And if the blog doesn't attract ton of blog traffic because I'm not controversial in my writing, "voice", I don't care.

I have worked for several very contrasting organizations, meaning very contrasting work cultures. What helped me a lot was knowing the work that I was doing was of value to the clients, even though I didn't always share some of the broad corporate culture/values or some people who were just difficult to deal with. On the surface, I probably appear more conformist but certainly I don't feel it. And cycling to work, everywhere, does add to that ...only because cycling still is only less than 3% of North America's regular transportation choice in most areas.