Self-branding And the Creative Workforce
Self-branding is a robust identity supported a transparent perception regarding what the designer or boss stands for, what sets the designer and the boss and the additional value the designer or the boss brings to employment or state of affairs. Creative workforce represents the power of creative workers, who are called inspiration experts and can be used to extract creative skills. In the article “Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of Social Media Influencers (2017)” by Susie Khamis, Lawrence Ang, Raymond Welling illustrate however and why the thought of self-branding has become thus rife. The authors imbue the conception of self-branding and to explore how the ‘celebrities’ of self-branding indicate at a marketing media connection distinct. In the article “Having it All” on Social Media: Entrepreneurial Femininity and Self-Branding Among Fashion Bloggers (2015)”, Brooke Erin Duffy and Emily Hund explores how the fashion bloggers show the perfect of “having it all” through 3 reticulated tropes: the density of enthusiastic work, staging the glam life, and punctiliously curated social sharing. These are the key elements they use in order to illustrate and encourage the expressive style, autonomy and self-discovery of women. In the article “Self-Branding on Social Media: An Analysis of Style Bloggers on Instagram (2017)”, Rendan Liu and Ayoung Suh illustrate that social media is able to provide various chances for female to determine their branded-selves and permit them to promote themselves in lines the rise of awareness of women’s rights in society. This literature review shows that, people who own self brand company is a creative workforce, it is able to provoke economy so that to generate employment opportunities for society. Also, the emergence of self-brand has changed people’s consumption concept. Then, women draw their own social status consciousness from these creative workforce and to be encouraged to express themselves.
Self brand and creative workforce are always interact and mutually beneficial with each other. Self brand refers to the unique, definite, distinct and easily perceptible information conveyed by eternal image and internal self-cultivation of an individual. It shows power to cause the change of group consumption perception or consumption pattern. It has characteristics of integrity, long- term and stability. ‘Creative workers regularly considered whether their skillset aligned with the demands of a particular platform, that is, whether they perceived themselves as being able to effectively use emerging platforms to accomplish specific branding goals.’ (Scolere, L., Pruchniewska, U. & Duffy, B.E. 2018, p.6). Most of self brands are found by celebrities, who has unique taste, as they are able to use their social influence to maximise the quantities sold. In another word, ‘self-branding makes most sense if celebrities can lend their names profitably to major brands.’ (Khamis, Welling & Ang 2017, p. 193). The blogger is one of the creative workforce in media landscape, they gain profit by being spokesman or establish their own brand as they are influential enough. In order to maximize the number of their products to meet the needs of the market, bloggers uses the star effect to carry out extensive publicity. They share candid pictures of their lives, apparently lease their guard down and presenting themselves as “genuine” in ways in which temper the glamour lifestyles mentioned higher than. They make their regards their words as their products. This requires creativity, talent, large amount of vocabulary and psychological insight into the readers. Through the insight into the reader’s mind, bloggers produce articles that the readers like to read. It creates a connection and generates resonance among the bloggers and the audiences so that to increase their influence. “Specific abilities and skills, such as those required to navigate particular platforms, are hitched to workers’ sense of professional identity.” (Leah Scolere, Urszula Pruchniewska & Brooke Erin Duffy 2018, pp.7) The most significant thanks to proactively management bloggers’ career development and the way the market perceives the bloggers. As more and more people follow their steps, it is undeniable that self brand owners have become a mainstream and creative profession. In this way, they not only promote the products but to promote themselves as a celebrity. Once more and more fans keep paying attention on celebrities, the quantity of user of the social platforms increases. At the same time, there is an increased employment in social app companies as they need more workers to control the system and providing employment opportunities for technological personnel.
Moreover, self brands change people’s old consumption views. Self-branding not only refers to a company or an organization of an individual, but also refers to one’s taste, morality and appearance. It also refers to a person’s unique impression in other people’s minds, which can bring premium and value-added intangible assets to the owner. Entrepreneurs use star effect to overturn our old consumption concepts, which acts an impact of our daily lifestyle. ‘With technological barriers crumbling and its increasing ubiquity, the Web has become the perfect platform for personal branding.’ (Labrecque et al. 2011, p. 38). Celebrities as a consumer object, they can entertain the public, guide consumption, and at the same time have the positive energy of communication. Nowadays, stars are a benchmark. Their requirements for their own image should not only meet the commercial requirements of stars themselves, but also meet the expectations of the public. Celebrities are becoming more and more the object of gossip. As a result, many films, TV dramas and variety shows on the market attempt to popularize the stars and lead the mass consumption. People may imitate their behaviour, dress, and construct themselves through imitation. Among the stars, nothing is more direct and outward than their clothes and belongings. With the emergence of star effect, we can see that stars play a role in guiding demonstration to a certain extent. Page claims, there is ‘particular emphasis on the construction of identity as a product to be consumed by others, and on interaction which treats the audience as an aggregated fan base to be developed and maintained in order to achieve social or economic benefit’ (Page 2012, p. 182). This shows that people are not only consumers of consumer goods but also consumers of stars. Many celebrity endorsed products, the public regardless of their own circumstances choose to buy. With the diversification of media forms, star endorsement products appearing in front of the public are also increasingly updated. Even some people think that they are more confident when they use the brand of celebrity endorsement. They believe that they like the brand of celebrity endorsement and recommend it to relatives and friends. To a certain extent, this has led to industrial development. When choosing celebrity endorsement, businessmen also tend to be celebrities with high popularity in the entertainment circle, which is more convincing. Consumers shift their love for stars to products endorsed by stars. Even if consumers do not choose to buy, they do not have a negative attitude towards products. This is how celebrities’ self-branding of themselves come into our daily lives and how to shape our consumption ideas.
The performance and dissemination of women’s image in social media has been closely linked with women’s existence and living conditions. This shows the tendency of ancient and commercial feminine roles, further because the stereotypic perspective of analysis that encompasses a great impact on women’s worth expression and self-development. People nowadays still have stereotypes that female has maternal instinct, wife instinct and daughter instinct instinct. ‘Postfeminism emphasizes autonomy, independence, and self-expression of girls and young women that are deeply rooted in the consumer marketplace.’ (Suh, Liu 2017. pp.14) The recent rise of social media has coincided with revived emphases on female style and visibility that exist at intervals client areas. Female fashion/beauty bloggers has “three interrelated tropes: the destiny of passionate work, staging the glam life, and carefully curated social sharing. (Duffy and Hund 2015, p. 1).” Women nowadays are willing to show their strengths on the Internet to raise people’s awareness of women. They create their own online channels or blogs (which represent self-branding) contribute knowledge or humour to the audiences. For example, ordinary housewives upload their cooking videos or makeup videos online in order to share knowledge to the public, then they become Youtubers or Bloggers. Housewives are no longer socially out of touch, they rediscover their worth in society and probably study hard on their interests. Social media has provided an important platform for the dissemination of women’s awareness, enabling women’s new voice power to be improved unprecedentedly, allowing women’s rights bloggers to have access to disseminate women’s knowledge, and finally eliminating gender bias by focusing on the creation of flower language discussions through women’s rights.
Overall, with the development of the society, self branding is everywhere in our daily lives and it has reciprocity with creative workforce in media industry. Self-branding not solely give new employment opportunities for social platform corporations however conjointly giving the possibility for feminine to demonstrates their values and abilities to others. It is also a useful tool that bringing celebrities more profits while at the same time raise their popularity while promoting their self bands.
