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Marketization and the Recasting of the Professional Self

The Rhetoric and Ethics of Personal Branding

Katie Sullivan

George Cheney

University of Utah

Within the personal branding movement, people and their careers are marketed as brands complete with promises of performance, specialized designs, and tag lines for success. Because personal branding offers such a startlingly overt invitation to self-commodification, the phenomenon invites a careful and searching analysis. This essay begins by examining parallel developments in contemporary communication and employment climates and exploring how personal branding arises as (perhaps) an extreme form of a market-appropriate response. The contours of the personal branding movement are then traced, emphasizing the rhetorical tactics with which it responds to increasingly complex communication and employment environments. Next, personal branding is examined with a critical eye to both its effects on individuals and the power relations it instantiates on the basis of social categories such as gender, age, race, and class. Finally, the article concludes by reflecting on the broader ethical implications of personal branding as a communication strategy.

Key Words: personal branding • popular management discourse • organizational rhetoric • identity • professional ethics

Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 3, 307-343 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0893318904270744


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