Personal branding as a risk: 3 golden rules when values no longer align

For years, Elon Musk was globally regarded by friend and foe alike as an innovative genius, a strong personal brand and an entrepreneur who dared to develop what others did not have the courage to even dream about. As the great helmsman and investor behind concepts like PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and OpenAI, he changed several industries and even the world like no other businessman within the same short period of time. Not only did it make him the richest man on earth, he could perfectly have ended up in the history books based on that impressive record.

But that was beyond the eccentric and unpredictable personality of Elon Musk. After acquiring Twitter and rebranding it as the controversial platform X, the seemingly infallible entrepreneur also ventured into politics. Obviously, he is not the first businessman to decide at some point in his career to turn his ideas into concrete vision and legislative policy, but Musk chose not to pursue a mandate and mainly hitched his chariot to the equally controversial president Donald Trump. Faster than anyone (possibly including Elon himself) could have anticipated, a somewhat eccentric entrepreneur evolved into a thoroughbred Bond villain, translating his own business interests into a far-right ideological agenda.

Musk’s somewhat bizarre choices, from turning a popular social media platform into an open sewer to delivering what looks very much like a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, raised many an eyebrow. To some, it looks like the man needs to be tacitly protected from himself. To others, he has crossed a crucial point of no return. So the consequences for Musk’s personal brand as well as the brands he represents as CEO can be detrimental. After all, it is not only his own image that is taking a beating after he assumed his newly acquired role as Trump’s ‘First Buddy’, especially since he also started to gallant extreme right political parties in countries such as Germany and the UK.

Observers are noticing a negative impact for a consumer brand like Tesla, now that a veritable movement of Musk avoiders is emerging who no longer proudly take to the roads in their shiny electric car. Many companies that relied on Tesla for years to ecologize their fleets are now openly proclaiming that they are cutting the brand out of employee offerings. Some owners who – by necessity or otherwise – still parade around in a Tesla decorate their cars with a sticker that reads ‘I bought this car before Musk went crazy’. From a symbol of a green future for mobility to a paragon of oligarchy and autocracy – things can change. And boy, did they change fast.

The question remains as to what a brand like Tesla can do to disconnect itself from that of a rogue leading man so intensely entangled with the product, vision, organisation, culture and values it stands for since the start of its success story. From a brand strategy standpoint, it makes one reflect on the point at which a personal brand is too intertwined with the corporate brand to be perceived separately by external audiences.

When my colleagues and I advise clients, we will not hesitate to highlight the undeniable added value of a strong personal brand of a CEO or other prominent figure within a company. When he or she becomes a thought leader based on an authentic and substantiated vision and is able to inspire people inside and outside an organisation, the benefits for the brand he or she represents are huge. Not only does a visionary and likeable personal brand create additional attention to and trust in a brand, the synergy between the two makes a brand purpose tangible to every stakeholder. The leader as the trusted face of an organisation; it is an ideal way to build relationships and make maximum use of the so-called halo effect, where the positive values of one brand radiate to another.

At the same time, deciding to push an organisation’s CEO forward as a kind of amiable evangelist also comes with a risk that should not be underestimated. Stories like Elon Musk’s show how fragile the symbiosis is, and how quickly public opinion can turn. When the personal values of the personal brand are no longer consistent with the carefully developed and communicated values of the corporate brand, the potential for damage is high. After all, negative associations with the person who literally and figuratively constitutes the mug of an organisation radiate onto that organisation without exception.

We see time and again how pernicious the consequences are. When high-profile banker and self-made man Jeroen Piqueur was compromised, it meant the end of his Optima Bank in 2016. We saw the same phenomenon when Lance Armstrong – top cyclist, cancer survivor, seven-time winner of the Tour De France and face of the Lance Armstrong Foundation which works to help cancer patients, was discredited in 2012 over years of surreptitious doping use. Not only were loyal fans disappointed, the impact on the charity organisation that bore his name was huge when sales of the (then wildly popular) yellow wristbands came to a halt and Nike terminated the lucrative merchandising contract.

That it does not always have to involve fraud to blow up the symbiosis between personal and corporate brand is proven by the more recent commotion surrounding rapper Kanye West, also known as ‘Ye’ and the former consort of influencer phenomenon Kim Kardashian. West is one of the most successful artists in his genre, with 160 million albums sold and 24 Grammy Awards to his name, but at the same time he is chronicled as mentally unstable and highly controversial. After his failed bid to become US president in 2020 on the basis of seamingly bizarre views and statements, it was mainly a series of anti-Semitic claims that would wreck his personal brand. Brands like Adidas and Balenciaga, with whom the rapper had been running very successful and lucrative partnerships, were forced to opt out of their contracts with the unhinged artist in the autumn of 2022. Adidas in particular was left with a lot of unsold stock of the previously popular Yeezy trainers and booked a hefty loss in its accounts in the following years.

So the question arises: how do you strengthen your organisation using personal brands, without risking too much should the CEO or other high-profile figures become discredited? To safeguard your brand from the negative impact that out of grace personal brands bring, keep these 3 pieces of golden advice in mind:

1 – Don’t be overly dependent on a personal brand

The most obvious strategy is to avoid having too much prominence linked to a single individual. While it pays to invest in the personal brand of the highest ranking manager, it is even more powerful to install a brand culture that encourages the development of a solid and visible personal brand for employees in all parts of the business.

For example, several companies employ business developers, spokespersons or evangelists who, just by virtue of a strong individual brand, contribute collectively to the success of the corporate brand they represent. Less accessible or public profiles can also play a role in the interaction between personal brands and corporate brand by sharing expertise or cultivating thought leadership and innovation. This way, the organisation’s brand is not dependent on a single individual.

2 – Personal brands follow corporate brands,
not the other way around

In addition, it is also crucial to develop a sufficiently strong positioning for the organisation’s brand – apart from using personal brands as complementary assets in line with the brand’s values. An organisation’s narrative needs to be strengthened by a CEO or public spokesperson who not only endorses the brand values, but also translates them concretely into actions and policies. The converse scenario inherently poses a risk, as it puts a brand in a vulnerable position when the protagonist in question leaves, becomes discredited or retires.

In any case, a brand purpose should speak for itself, and should be recognisable and stimulating enough to inspire – independently of a person who personifies it in day-to-day reality.

3 – Dare to distance yourself when values no longer align

In a final scenario, it is a matter of practising damage control and being capable, as an organisation, of firmly distancing oneself from a discredited leader – regardless of how strong his or her personal brand may be. It may be more judicious to distance oneself in no uncertain terms from an individual who is known as the face of a brand than to cling frenetically to a symbiosis that arouses doubt or even aversion among relevant audiences.

In general, being prepared to say goodbye in time to people who no longer represent a brand’s values is a painful but often the sensible longer-term decision. It is therefore appropriate to determine a procedure for this scenario in advance and communicate it transparently to everyone who represents a brand in practice, from CEO to junior employee.