A few days ago, I asked this question on Facebook, and within one hour, opinions poured in from all over the world. Along with the opinions came several questions and requests that I should shed more light on the topic, therefore I decided to express some of my views on the matter from an image and branding perspective. Please feel free to comment on this post after you finish reading it, I am persuaded that your contributions would further shed more light on the topic. Enjoy!
Lets cut through the protocol and make the point, I presume we all know what a face is and what a name is, that is literally speaking. However, for the purpose of this post, I would like us to consider some other meanings these two words might have.
It is interesting to know that the two can be linked to the identity of a thing, place, or a person, so lets take it deeper.
What is a face? Beyond just being a medium of identity, a face in the context of this article could termed as popularity, visibility, however, when it comes to building a brand
Some people may chose a face, I dare say that it does not take much to have a face, for example, creating some hype about yourself through the instrumentality of the media, grant interviews on radio, write articles or have them written for you, show up in the news , be controversial, ride on sensationalism, etc. What this does is to draw public attention to you, and once that is done, its consequents most times is that people expect more from you, their expectations of you becomes very high, and God help you! If you are all about the hype and you are not worth your onions in terms of meeting such expectations. This is the side effect, particularly when all you are after is to be famous. I know of people who used to be the rave of the moment”, and that was simply what they were, now that the moment has gone, they are nowhere to be found in the scheme of things when it comes to the profession, vocation, industry they belong to. When you are just a known face, take it from me, you are you are performing below capacity, because there is a huge vacuum. A face is not enough to complete the cycle.
What is a Name? Simply put a name is a “Reputation”, by way of definition; a reputation is the opinion that people have about what somebody or something is like based on what has happened in the past. Building a name is not as easy as having a face, it take careful planning, consistency at doing something well overtime. A Good name is like wine, if gets better with time, if the bearer obeys the law of consistency.