(International Library of Sociology) Celia Lury - Brands_ The Logos of the Global Economy-Routledge (2004)

not. The company believes that this is a way of ensuring that employees
have the appropriate Pret attitude. And while the alignment of
employees with a brand usually happens more indirectly than in the
case of Pret A Manger, the management of brands increasingly has
implications for who gets hired or not, who gets promoted or not, and
thus who prospers or not.
However, while the dynamism of the market may provide a basis for
product or service innovation, what is acknowledged to be innovative or
creative in any particular company is not necessarily immediately
apparent as such. Not all difference or change will be perceived as
innovative. Whether and how change is recognised, named, owned and
exploited is typically a matter of contestation. It both reflects and
reinforces divisions within and between occupations. In very general
terms, Castells (2000) argues that there is a division of labour into two
categories within the global economy. The first category includes what
he calls self-programmable labour—that is, labour which is equipped
with the ability to retrain itself, and adapt to new tasks, new processes
and new sources of information, as technology, demand and
management speed up their rate of exchange. Similarly, in relation more
specifically to the culture industry, a number of writers (du Gay, 1996;
Lash and Urry, 1994; McRobbie, 1998, 1999; Nixon, 2003) have
argued that one of the key workplace assets in the so-called talent- or
design-intensive economy is the ability to claim that a job is creative or
innovative.4
A striking example of this is to be found in the management literature
that explicitly advises white-collar employees to present themselves as
brands (socalled personal branding). Consider how Tom Peters
describes the project of
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becoming ‘brand you’ in The Brand You 50: Fifty Ways to Transform
Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction,
Commitment, and Passion! (1999). He outlines a number of exercises
for those wishing to turn themselves into brands: make a personal brand
equity evaluation; develop a oneeighth (or one-quarter) page Yellow
Pages ad for brand you/me and co.; create an eight-word personal
positioning statement; and devise a bumper sticker that describes your
essence. As the back cover makes clear, Peters believes the choice to
take up this opportunity is driven by the need for survival in a changing
labour market.
In today’s wired world, you’re distinct…or extinct. Survive, thrive,
triumph by becoming Brand You!