Branding is not just about businesses or products — it’s about people. In today’s digital age, shaped by constant content and online visibility, personal branding has become essential to professional success.
Allison Kluger, an award-winning media expert and co-author of Brand Up 2.0, emphasizes that branding is more important than ever due to the pressure to remain “outward facing” in a world saturated with judgment and noise. The book, written with Stacey Ross Cohen and Kudzi Chikumbu, builds on the principles introduced in Cohen’s earlier book, Brand Up, which was aimed at high school students. In contrast, Brand Up 2.0 focuses on recent graduates and early-career professionals, though its insights are valuable for anyone seeking to pivot or elevate their career.
Kluger graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a dual major in English and Communications from the Annenberg School for Communication. She currently runs her own media consulting business, Allison Kluger Media Consulting, and lectures at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she teaches strategic communication.
At the heart of Brand Up 2.0 is a call to take control of your narrative.
“We have to represent our values and our beliefs and our consistent behavior by the things that we say and the things we do,” says Kluger. “That doesn’t mean that everybody needs to be on social media. But… we are saturated with content. We are saturated with people’s opinions. We are saturated with people’s judgment of us. So, if we don’t control our narrative and present the way we need to, we’ll either be neutral or invisible.”
While this pressure can feel overwhelming, especially for young people still navigating their identities, Kluger reframes it as an empowering opportunity. With the right tools, personal branding becomes a means of empowerment, not just a strategy for survival.
Kluger’s insights align with growing academic evidence that personal branding isn’t just a buzzword, but a measurable factor in professional success.
A 2019 study published in Frontiers in Psychology titled Get Noticed to Get Ahead found that personal branding behaviors lead to greater career satisfaction, fully mediated by perceived employability. In short, people who actively shape and communicate their personal brand feel more empowered and are seen as more employable.
This applies across the board. In another study by the European Research Studies Journal, over 93% of surveyed managers said personal branding had a “significant” or “very significant” influence on achieving professional success. The research emphasizes that in a competitive market, those who clearly articulate their unique value proposition and present themselves with confidence are better positioned to advance.
These findings back Kluger’s central thesis in Brand Up 2.0: that in today’s content-saturated world, personal branding is no longer optional, but essential.
Tapping Into Your Origin Story
Defining your personal brand starts with your “origin story” — the moment you committed to a career path or life mission. Kluger emphasizes that this sort of storytelling can help explain your purpose and forge stronger connections.
For her, her professional spark came from a childhood love of the movies.
“I was a movie buff. My mom used to take me to the movies in the middle because she was an immediate gratification person. I’d have to walk in quietly, sit through the second half, and figure out what was going on as I watched,” she recalls.
“Then, when the film ended, there would be a five-minute intermission—because that’s how it was in those days—before the movie started again. I’d stay and watch the first half, finally seeing if my guesses were right or wrong. That experience shaped my approach to storytelling, communication, and synthesizing complex ideas. It deepened my love for dialogue, expression, visuals — all of it,” she says.
Her childhood memory illustrates the power of storytelling in building a brand with authenticity and passion.
“For me to care, for me to understand your brand, your personal purpose in life, I have to understand the why behind your actions and your words. And that is a lot of what branding is,” says Kluger.
“If someone can’t talk about your story succinctly and concisely, then, you can’t get opportunities.”
This principle applies even in large organizations. Leaders often spend more time telling the story of the strategy than creating the strategy itself. In global companies, where communication crosses regions and cultures, articulating the “why” consistently is key to inspiring teams and gaining buy-in.
Gathering Feedback
Another tool in personal branding is asking for outside perspectives. Kluger suggests talking to peers, colleagues, mentors, and even family members to better understand how others perceive you.
“People tell you who you are, but we don’t always want to listen,” she says. “Our own perception of ourselves many times is very skewed.”
She experienced this firsthand when a creative writing teacher told her she had complex ideas but wrote like People Magazine—feedback she initially took as an insult.
Over time, she came to see it differently. The ability to simplify complex ideas became a hallmark of her television career, where clear, accessible storytelling is everything.
Mastering Executive Presence
Executive presence isn’t just for the C-suite. Kluger argues that everyone—regardless of their title—should consider how they present themselves: their appearance, communication style, and ability to maintain composure and confidence.
She breaks executive presence into three elements: appearance, communication, and gravitas.
The first, appearance, sends an instant message.
“Whether it’s an internship, your first job, leading a meeting, or giving a keynote, people take a thin sliver of you in,” she says. “They look at your age, your gender, your ethnic background, your eye contact, your bearing, your appearance, and your communication skill.”
Of those, Kluger points out that four—eye contact, bearing, appearance, and communication—are within your control.
“If I show up really casual or underdressed for something,” she adds, “I might look younger, less powerful, or like I don’t care as much—even if that’s not true.”
Next is communication. It’s about more than just speaking clearly:
“Are you present? Are you an active listener? Do you speak clearly? Do you enunciate your words? Do you synthesize for people, so they understand what your actual message is?”
Kluger also stresses the need for direction and clarity:
“Do you know how to give takeaways and action items, so people can actually do what they’re supposed to do?” she says. “As a leader, someone with executive presence, you’re doing a lot of the front loading and work for your audience.”
The third element is gravitas—the quiet confidence that signals capability and calm.
“It’s that inexplicable feeling that you’re in charge,” she says. “You think of elegant, poised, in control. What’s under the water? Little paddle feet. Gravitas is not showing the feet—because we all have the feet—but it’s giving the impression that you have everything under control.”
It’s worth noting that Gravitas doesn’t imply pretending to have all the answers. She explains that it’s not about having all the solutions. If someone approaches with a question, one can acknowledge not having the answer, but recognize the value of the question and offer to direct the person to someone who can help.
“It’s not posturing or posing,” Kluger adds. “It’s saying I can figure this out and I can take care of it—because that’s what people look to for a leader. And that’s really important for young people and people of any age in their brand—to give off the feeling of confidence that I can catch you, and you’re safe.”
Adapting Branding to Different Work Environments
So, does branding change depending on where you work? Kluger, who has worked with venture capitalists, start-ups, corporate leaders, and Stanford students, says the context may shift, but the fundamentals don’t.
“It always starts with: why should we care? Why do you care? What’s the benefit? What is differentiated about what you’re offering here than everything else? And so you better know what the competitive landscape is,” she says.
In start-up culture, scrappiness and versatility are prized. Branding is about showcasing creativity, energy, and the ability to solve problems on the fly. In more traditional corporate environments, polish and professionalism may take precedence. But across the board, two things matter most: differentiation and clarity.
Kluger’s message is clear: personal branding is about showing up with authenticity, confidence, and a clear sense of purpose. Whether you’re launching a start-up, entering the corporate world, or making a career pivot, how you tell your story—and how you present it—can make all the difference.
forbes.com
