Building your professional brand in a prestigious job

Researchers from HEC Montreal and York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing which examines how people who reach ‘prestigious’ positions in high profile organizations can manage their professional brands to promote professional mobility.

The study, forthcoming in Journal of Marketing, is titled “Working: Managing Professional Brands in Prestigious Places” and is written by Marie-Agnès Parmentier and Eileen Fischer.

Job insecurity is pervasive. There are no guarantees of continued employment, even for those who are highly successful in their field. This research addresses two main questions: (1) for the people who manage their professional brands, what tensions are triggered while working in a prestigious position? and (2) which practices favor the alleviation of these tensions and the improvement of professional brand equity so as to promote professional mobility?

The research team analyzed interviews with creative directors who have held one or more prestigious positions at the best historical high fashion brands, including Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Gucci and Saint Laurent Paris. This context is well suited to research questions given the frequent turnover of creative directors, which has been characterized by the media as akin to a game of musical chairs.

The analysis shows that working in a prestigious position in contexts such as heritage fashion triggers two types of tensions for an individual who manages his professional brand: linked to resources and linked to identity. Resource-related tensions arise because prestige posts contribute both to resources and deplete fundamental resources for an individual’s professional brand. Identity-related tensions arise because prestige posts tend to both enhance a person’s professional brand identity and dilute that identity.

Researchers have identified several practices that can mitigate these tensions. One practice that is largely internally oriented is to “carry teams” to support professional branding. This means continually surrounding yourself with trusted people who can help the professional brand function consistently effectively over time and across all organizational settings. A second practice oriented both internally and externally is “out of conformation to commercial logic”. This means working to overcome the expectations related to commercial logics that are enhanced together with artistic logics in fields such as heritage fashion. A third mitigating practice is “selectively neglect local normative expectations”. Obviously, professional brands will be contractually obligated to behave in specific ways that reflect the institutionalized expectations of the organizations they work for. However, there are likely to be more unspoken expectations that they are aware of but choose to overlook in order to protect or promote their professional brand. A final mitigation practice involves “the materialization of the professional brand in the wider market”. This means creating and publicly circulating digital artifacts or materials that instantiate the individual’s professional brand, but which are not sponsored by the organization employing the individual.

Unlike previous personal branding studies, this research considers the perspective of professionals holding prestigious jobs in organizations embedded in highly institutionalized fields. Emphasize that external stakeholder assessments of the influence of an individual’s professional branding could offer that individual the next place or provide the resources to establish their own business. Parmentier explains that “The unique focus of this study leads to the emergence of hitherto neglected factors that can fuel, if not disloyalty towards an employer, at least some efforts to limit the extent to which the professional brand allows its identity. to merge with that of the organization. “

Fischer adds: “The document sends a clear message to people trying to manage their professional brands while in prestigious positions: strive to find a balance between the benefits of membership while maintaining their professional independence.” The document also invites organizations that employ professionals in prestigious positions to approach the relationship in a way that works to the mutual benefit of the employer and employee. Organizations may wish to view their relationships with key personnel in prestigious positions as similar to a co-branding alliance in which both sides of the alliance benefit, even if the alliance is not permanent.