[NEW INSIGHT] Personal branding – what it is and what it isn't
Personal branding for CEOs isn't just about being visible. It’s the subtle power of presence, the impressions you leave, and the influence you wield, often without saying a word.
How a CEO is perceived can quietly shape conversations, open doors, and affect outcomes in ways most people never notice. In a world where every move is watched, the way you present yourself has never mattered more.
This article shows how to build your CEO brand the right way, and why it’s fundamentally different from how personal branding works for everyone else.
There are many reasons why an individual might want to build a personal brand, but in the corporate world, not every motivation will benefit a CEO. Not if you want to earn genuine trust and credibility.
For instance, an algorithm might reward LinkedIn content full of polished selfies, generic motivational quotes, and vague proclamations about "hustle", but your stakeholders won’t.
Why? The moment your content feels performative, it stops building trust and starts eroding it. Followers decline, journalists ignore, and customers and clients look elsewhere.
Real CEO branding, by contrast, focuses on content that demonstrates your leadership, advocates for change, and portrays you authentically. And it requires you to walk a fine line between transparency and professionalism to protect a reputation that takes years to build but seconds to destroy.
Still unsure about why personal branding for CEOs is important? Ask yourself this:
Who is more followed on LinkedIn: Microsoft or Bill Gates?
Who features in more headlines: Amazon or Jeff Bezos?
Who has more video views: Tesla or Elon Musk?
Who often impacts stocks: Meta or Mark Zuckerberg?
The answer to all of the above is the CEO. And that might come as a surprise. But that's the reality in the modern day, where CEOs often have more influence than the companies they lead.
On one hand, this influence comes through years of successful leadership and innovation.
But on the other, these CEOs are benefitting greatly from their personal branding efforts, across social media, media, multimedia, and in-person events.
Essentially, they have found a fine balance between their internal and external responsibilities, which are now equally important due to the rise of mass media, the speed news spreads, and the demands of modern day consumers.
Of course, 20 years ago, you wouldn't need to be this visible. Your company could release statements whenever it wanted, and people would accept that information. But do that now, and your company will struggle to stay profitable, simply because stakeholders demand CEO visibility.
The best thing you can do when building your CEO brand?
Don’t model yourself around someone you look up to, act like someone you’re not, and make statements you think are popular to please anyone. Because they won’t.
To be successful as a CEO, you need to have your own personality, and a background story that humanises you and shows growth, with clear beliefs and aspirations.
Your personality helps you stand apart from your peers and distinguish yourself, helping you unlock more opportunities for you and your company.
Your background story injects life into your work and personal branding, making it more interesting for people to engage with.
Your beliefs and aspirations give audiences a clear understanding of what drives you and what you stand for, so they're far more likely to trust, follow, and support you.
The moment you come across as insincere is when people lose interest, or worse, you receive backlash. So, it’s certainly a trait you don’t want to start with.
Aim to build and nurture relationships, like you would in real life, and that also means being humble. Some executives aren’t, and it's often their downfall.
If an authentic personality is your fuel, CEO thought leadership is the tool that will really transform your brand.
It’s essentially all about sharing unique insights with stakeholders, preferably only you have, to educate, influence, and impress either clients you’re trying to win over, employees you'd like to retain, investors you need for funding, or regulators you want to appease. Perhaps, all.
The problem? Many people misunderstand what thought leadership actually is. They rush the process and end up producing low-value content that does little to help them.
And this is becoming more serious: 70% of respondents in the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer said that business leaders, government officials, and journalists “deliberately mislead” the public. Usually, to serve themselves when thought leadership should provide genuine value to stakeholders.
To make matters worse, you also have the likes of influencers, self-promoters, and under-experienced professionals, who don’t have the experience, original thinking, strategy, confidence, or right motivations to become a thought leader, only adding to the noise.
Here's why the above traits matter:
Experience: Gives you the credibility, and ability, to discuss various topics. If you’re a tech expert you might comment on the AI boom, while a banker could discuss rumours of an impending US recession.
Original thinking: Helps you produce out-of-the-box ideas, predictions, and hot-takes that move prominent narratives forward. This can shock, inspire, problem-solve, and raise awareness of various things.
Strategy: Grounds your thought leadership campaigns, ensuring that your content is timely, targeted, and executed across the right channels, including media, social media, multimedia, and events.
Confidence: Breeds creativity and encourages you to take healthy risks that puts your face out there and establishes fresh connections.
The right motivations: Ensures that you’re producing content not just for vanity’s sake or to boost sales. This is nearly always obvious to others and taints your work.
What this means? You have to work twice as hard to cut through the noise, whether you’re a CEO, COO, or another member of the C-Suite.
This is why most executives now work with specialised CEO branding agencies.
Agencies, like us, work with pan-sector executives every day. We ghostwrite so you can focus on other priorities, lead strategy meetings to refine messaging, and operate across an intersection of media, social media, and multimedia so your voice is heard in the right places, at the right time.
Those who lack the right credentials simply aren’t considered as potential clients.
Personal branding for CEOs is often about them wanting to disconnect from the guise of their company, reveal the inner workings of the corporate curtain, and address other issues they care about, whether that’s equal rights or ESG.
But what’s really important is that you don’t allow your personal branding efforts to stray too far from what your business is trying to achieve or what it expects from you.
Otherwise, you risk distracting from corporate campaigns, alienating stakeholders, or upsetting other board members within your firm. In the worst case, irresponsible actions can push your firm into a crisis, with you at the centre of it. Usually, this is tough to reverse.
Recent examples of this happening, though extreme, include:
Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX): Once seen as a 'trustworthy altruist', his personal brand collapsed after FTX’s financial misconduct came to light, eroding stakeholder trust and deepening the crisis.
Elon Musk (Tesla/X): His unfiltered public commentary repeatedly triggers backlash, causing reputational and financial risk for the companies he leads.
Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola): His public dismissal of non-binary pronouns sparked major criticism, alienating stakeholders and causing reputational damage to Ola.
Chip Wilson (Lululemon): His controversial comments on women and social issues forced the company to distance itself from him to protect the brand.
Other CEOs make relatively tame statements in comparison that can still be poorly received, often due to short-sighted, impulsivity rather than malice. If they had stopped and read the room, a backlash would have been avoided. And you need exactly the same awareness.
Better still, you should consult a comms team. As they will tell you, you don’t always need to lend your voice to every discussion. Sometimes it’s better to stay quiet.
Picture this: Your CEO branding is starting to pay off.
Online coverage about you is abundant.
The multimedia content you’ve shared has humanised you.
Your LinkedIn followers are rising daily and engagement is high.
Website traffic for your firm has increased.
The outcomes of crucial meetings have notably improved.
You can feel the impact.
Because things are going well for you, you start to take your foot off the pedal. You stop posting or engaging with the media as often.
But sooner or later, you start to notice the rankings of your content fall. A little later, they no longer appear for a search of your name. You don’t have as much visibility, meaning that journalists can’t discover you nor can potential investors on the hunt for their next big project.
Your influence, once growing week after week, has significantly stagnated.
Why? You weren’t consistent with your CEO branding efforts. And that’s possibly one of the most damaging, often silent, mistakes you can make.
And if we're to yet again differentiate personal branding for CEOs, compared to bog standard personal branding anyone might attempt, this is often one of the biggest differences: the stakes are far higher.
For most people, inconsistent posting simply means a dip in likes. For a CEO, it can ultimately reduce the commercial impact you worked so hard to build. The difference can be millions in cash.
So, don't make this simple mistake. Stay consistent.
George Orwell once said: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. He said this almost a century ago. Fast forward to today, and it couldn’t be more true.
We live in a world of multiple mediums, constant messaging, miscommunication, misinformation, attention seeking lies, skeptics, and cancel-culture. As an established entrepreneur, it can, at times, be a cruel place to survive in.
However, CEOs aren’t like celebrities who need PR teams designing bizarre stunts to keep them relevant in ultra competitive industries. Instead, CEOs just need to share timely, expert insights that are most importantly true.
They often dominate various channels, dictate narratives, squash misinformation, and most importantly, lead multinational businesses, with hosts of data and real-world experience. So, there’s no reason for them to ever lie. Unless, of course, they face a crisis.
But responsible or not, even then, truth is key. And the faster it comes, the better. Audiences expect mistakes to be made eventually, they're human and understandable, whereas bad actors are never forgotten.
There are many other common pitfalls that prevent CEOs from reaping the full benefits of personal branding. But if there were a few that are most prominent, these are it:
Trying to please everyone: As a CEO, you need to make bold decisions and communicate them with confidence. Trying to please everyone only causes audiences to question your strategic direction and leadership. So, don't fear criticism, it’s natural, often healthy, and can’t be avoided.
Responding to criticism poorly: When you do receive criticism, you need to respond in the right way. Don’t ignore it, respect everyone’s counter-views, and question whether an argument is worthwhile. It rarely is, unless we’re talking about an in-person podcast, roundtable, or live event panel, where you will need to defend yourself on the spot. But this where media training becomes valuable.
Over-sharing the spotlight: While it’s good to have a team of individuals within your company specialise across different topics for greater visibility, over-sharing the spotlight can yet again cause audiences to question your leadership and allow important issues to be understated. Communicate the most important messages yourself and choose your public speakers carefully.
Over-delegating your voice: Similarly to the above, over-delegating your voice to your comms team also risks messaging that lacks bite, weakening your influence, and resulting in content that doesn’t sound like you at all. This is why you should set aside sufficient time to work closely with your comms team and leverage video content, where necessary, to make important statements.
Using jargon-heavy, corporate tone: The best way to bore audiences? This is probably it. If you’re an expert, your title will show it, you don’t need any word salads. Keep things simple and more people will understand and appreciate your work, unless you’re contributing to an academic paper.
Some of these might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many CEOs repeatedly make the same mistakes, questioning why their personal branding won't pay off.
If you’re still unsure why personal branding for CEOs is crucial in 2026, look around you. The world and the industries that govern it are undergoing unprecedented change.
AI is transforming how people work and live.
Political power is constantly shifting.
ESG has become central to corporate strategy.
Trust in brands is at an all-time low.
And that’s just the beginning.
If there’s no credible voice to calm anxieties and guide stakeholders through uncertainty, where will your company’s reputation be in the years to come?
Building your CEO brand isn’t a choice. What’s more important is how you do it.
Review your positioning now, identify gaps, and consider partnering with specialists who know how to cut through the noise, the right way.
Because in the end, your reputation is your most valuable asset. Protect it, nurture it, and let it become the advantage that sets you apart, today, in 2026, and beyond.