♫ “You got that long hair, slicked back, white t-shirt.
And I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt,
♬ ……. ♫
We never go out of style.” ♬
And so the song goes by Taylor Swift.
Style - that first impression you give someone when they first meet you. Whether you are a creative or indie business, style is an important component of the branding of yourself or business in the marketplace. Style is one of those factors that connects your image to its market. Your image is part of your packaging: you as the product, you as the brand. Your style is often multifaceted and can vary over the years, and can also vary depending on what ‘tribe’ you wish to brand yourself to. As a creative you may have several styles or just one favourite.
This article takes a look at how you can discover your style and then use it to reappropriate in your marketing campaigns as part of your personal branding identity.
First, we will look at developing your style sphere, then your style pillars, followed by your style pyramid persona, that is, three words that can best describe your style. If you can imagine the fashionista journos who describe designer’s runway collections, then it is quite similar. On that note your clothing is often the first port of call when assessing your style. Check what you are wearing, how you are wearing it, and what variety of clothing do you have in your wardrobe to fit x, y and z occasions.
It is easier to first define your style by your dress appearance, once you have that you can then decide further your overall style. E.g. your style may be Bohemian, Classic, Sacred. Your clothing style is not going to reflect sacred attire (unless of course you’re going to be a bishop!), but your work may reflect a sacred or spiritual element to it, which becomes part of your overall style.
Below is a table of words for you to read. Think about what words resonate with you? What image are you wishing to project? If you don’t like lists then print off and cut out and assemble on the next diagrams.
STYLE ATTRIBUTES LIST

* Some words are intentionally misspelt because of their style, while others have a French spelling, again because of their style.
Another way you may like to look at this is to see who influences you, and what their style is?
The first stage is to tick as many as you like and then whittle this down to ten. These ten are going to be your Style Sphere.
Style Sphere
So let’s look deeper into what style means in this context. Your style is your image but it is much more, it is how you say, do, express, appear or perform the distinctive features of YOU. With that in mind, your style has its own sphere of influence. Sphere of influence is a term to describe how you relate to your immediate surroundings and how you affect those within that environment. It's your context. That influence consists of your connections, networks and contacts. You influence others by your own beliefs, attitudes and values often reflected in your style. It is these “influences” which will affect and have impact on those around you.
Unpacking this concept further is to look at your Style Sphere. Here the sphere is ways your style can influence others. You have selected ten and these descriptive words become like keys, unlocking doors that are closed. A style creates a certain ‘tribe’ or group you reflect and belong to. Each of these ten words can be left as single words and combined or mixed together to create new words (or neologisms) indicating sub-tribes. These tribes or sub-tribes can be classified as your customer group(s), target market or community you belong with or aspire to belong to.
How to use your Style Sphere
With these ten words (your style sphere) think about ways of how you can reflect them into your everyday life.
Professional Development Ideas –
  1. Use the words to develop a relevant psychographic profile of your customer segments. e.g.
    Hobbies
    Books
    Movies
    Websites
    Lifestyle
    Television Shows
    Magazines
  2. Use some of your words to help write your career objective in a CV or a mission statement for your business.
  3. Use some of these words to describe a project or assignment you may be working on.
  4. Analyse each word. Check the thesaurus to get a larger scope of understanding its meaning.
  5. Research more into your style. For example (taking two extreme styles), if you have used the word ‘glamour’ (or ‘aggressive’) in your style, and that does not fit in with your professional life, then how else can you use it as an appropriate avenue for yourself?
  6. Do certain style words suggest further streams of revenue? Taking the above examples you may wish to develop a lingerie line based on your style of glamour; or create a choreographed or staged performance based on aggressive actions.
Personal Development Ideas –
  1. Deliberately select a word for the next ten days from your list and consciously think how it affects you and your behaviour with other people.
From ten please continue to pare down to six.
Your Style Pillars
Pillars are used to support a building, and they can also act as a trophy or memorial. Pillar as a metaphor is a symbol of stability, security and support. You are creating two support structures based on your style. The use of paired pillars is representative of the witness of each pillar to one another. Paired pillars (actually or symbolically) guide your choices and decisions when relating to your personal branding. Your style words at this level will start to support each other, although they may be quite juxtaposed.
Your Style Pillar is the style words you feel most at ease in, and where you are not too much out of your comfort zone. These styles support you in your working environment. They can undergird the decisions you make. When you arranged your style words you gave thought to the foundation of the pillars. This is the understructure or underpinning of your pillars. The style words at the foundation level are supportive to your tribe, customer group, target market or community you are aligning yourself with.
How to use your Style Pillars
Professional Development Ideas –
  1. Apply the style pillars to something such as an idea, a principle or fact that provides support for something. Particularly look at your foundation styles on each pillar. For instance if it was ‘eco-friendly’ followed by ‘smart’ and ‘sassy’, then your product/services’ underlying your USP (unique selling point) would be its eco-friendliness featuring in all other style areas. For example, the packaging of a washing detergent as biodegradable could feature smart and sassy dressed individuals.
  2. To help guide you in the purpose of your vision, go through each of your six words and determine how they will fit in or relate to the project you are working on. [You may wish to only use your persona pyramid style for doing this.]
Personal Development Ideas –
  1. Use the stability factor of your style to reflect constancy of character or purpose in your goals. This will help you stand and endure and not go off track; nor be unduly influenced by others and then taking on ‘their’ ideas that never really match your own. This can often result in you losing your vision (career, idea, assignment, project or whatever you are calling it).
  2. Use the security factor of your style to be free from perceived danger or threat; and/or for protecting yourself (that is your vision). It could be
a certain niche market where your style pillar provides a secure base to operate from because of its business model; or your vision is so targeted and specialised that it allows little entry for other competitors or players.
  3. Use the support factor of your style by understanding how it will help you sustain or withstand pressure, strain, demands, threats, and so forth for maintaining the ‘weight’ that may come upon you (your vision – career, project or lifestyle choice).
 Now pare further from your six down to just three. This is your tripartite style statement.
The pyramid has long been an emblem or symbol of enigmatic mystery. This appeals to peoples’ intellect as well as their emotion. The strongest appeals are to the emotions rather than to the mind. Your Style Persona Pyramid is a composite of appeals to the mind as well as the heart, focusing your vision, project, service or work on one area above the other depending on your specific tribe, community or target group.
How to use your Style Persona PyramidProfessional Development Ideas –
  1. Slant your conversations/presentations according to your tripartite style statement (your style persona pyramid) – look at the tribes’ interest or desire. What are their needs? What are their wants? What do they desire? Appeal to their emotion. Focus on relationship rather than transaction.
  2. Personalise any marketing collateral with your style in mind, after all you are now the brand! Your marketing collateral can be anything from your CV, portfolio, online presence (e.g. LinkedIn profile, website, blog, Facebook Page, etc), to your covering letters and press kit. All need to be integrated into a unified look (image) – that of your personal brand.
  3. Use your Style Persona Pyramid in all your presentations, planning and delivery to unify the content and ensure the integrity of your purpose or vision.
  4. By using your Style Persona Pyramid you will ensure that your first visual impression to your prospective employer, market, clients, community or tribe is favourable.
  5. Use your style to become an expert in those three areas. Be so well informed in your areas of expertise that ‘they’ will want to listen to you. Be an authority in your field. Learn everything you can about your ‘tribe’, their psychographics – their likes, dislikes. Be the go to person to discuss trends and new developments in your field. Visualise your pyramid acting like a beacon within its spatial field, with your light being multi-directional.
Personal Development Ideas –
  1. Start cultivating contacts and relationships within your Style Persona Pyramid. Be involved in a community forum, one of the best forms of online social media marketing tools and relationship building platforms.
Finally
Your style can change when you move into different groups, it can also change when you develop in new areas, or when life choices cause major changes. Learn to accommodate the changes. You may find doing the exercise in one year’s time maybe quite different from doing it now, time does change people’s tastes and preferences.
Build a strong positive reputation of brand YOU – your Style Persona Pyramid. Reputation will include your dependability, integrity, sincerity, respect
 and consideration of others. These qualities are vital in all relationships whether professional or personal.
Your beacon now beckons
Our final metaphor is the lighthouse. Once you are appropriating what you have discovered about your style, you start to move into your vision. Here you need to be prepared not only for smooth sailing but also tumultuous waves ahead. The lighthouse represents the shedding of your light (brand YOU) onto the waters to signal to others how to connect to you and also where danger may be. Ensure your team/community/ tribe do not go off course or worse get shipwrecked. After all brand YOU is about gathering together "your" tribe, and staying true to your vision – not someone else's.
The brand moves beyond yourself and with some people it becomes larger than life.