By Patxi Elizalde

I Absolutely Hate Personal Branding.

I love brands. I love the fact that every company, service, and product has a brand. And that every brand has a unique personality. Each brand is different, and is governed by a different set of rules. Because of this, each brand has its own place within society. Your ‘brand’ dictates your character, and what people remember you by. Your logo, your colors, your strapline, even your mission statement, are all part of your brand.

Okay, so brands are cool, and can tell us a lot about a specific company. But what is becoming clear to me now, as I look for work in this crazy, saturated, creative advertising world of London, is that in order to stand out, I (or we, in this case) need a brand. Which is a lot harder to create than it sounds.

Branding yourself is hard, as it forces you to put yourself out there. To focus on not only the best parts of yourself, but also your worst, so you can accurately pinpoint the qualities that need to shine brighter than the rest through your brand. But while this process of branding yourself can be tricky, it is ultimately a personal decision, completely up to you. There is no right and wrong. You know better than anyone else when you’ve found the brand you want to be represented by, because it is you who will be represented by it. Simple.

Now, that being said, branding yourself alongside another person is that much more difficult. Not only are you coming up with a brand to represent the thing you know better than anyone else (yourself), but you are adding another, completely different, and equally complicated mind, body, and personality to the mix. Now, the brand should not simply encompass you as a person, but the results of your combined brain power. Now that is difficult.

So amidst these ramblings is a slight call for help. Tom and I have been having fun with our most recent campaigns in our book because we finally feel our work is beginning to reflect our strange personalities. However, when the topic of branding comes up, we both freeze (sorry mum???). We know the kind of work we like to make, but how the hell do we put that into words? Unfortunately, our names together don’t mean “large lollipops,” although that would make things a lot easier (Tomtxi? Paxtom? Gibberish). And we don’t have a thing like spoons, or squids to hold at the forefront of our brand. What do we have? Death, rockstars, and cute mice.

Anyway, I feel this is one of those things that sort of just springs on you one day when you least expect it. We’ll continue to flesh out our brand, while portfolio day rapidly approaches (yikes). But hey, if you have any insight into who we really are that we haven’t noticed ourselves yet, or into how you found your brand, please hit me up.

Have a beautiful weekend.