It used to be that only the famous had a “personal brand.” I’m a huge fan of Andy Warhol, for example, and one of the tenets of his art was that the “brand” of the person and the person him/herself aren’t the same thing.  For example, one of his most famous paintings is “Double Elvis,” which you can see today at MOMA in New York City. I won’t take credit for this idea, but I heard it somewhere in the ether (so it must be true). The point of the painting – or at least one take-away – is that there’s the “Brand” of Elvis, the Elvis we all know from TV, movies, and music, and then there is (somewhere) the “real” Elvis. Not to mention there’s the “brand” of a cowboy (like we see on TV or movies in Westerns) and then there were real live cowboys. “Double Elvis” asks us to question whether we truly know Elvis at all, or just know the brand-projection of Elvis that was “created” by Hollywood and record labels. Elvis is nothing if not a brand – a brand so famous he lives on even after death. Continue reading →