Personal Branding Podcast

Not long ago, I was on a long drive. My phone battery was running dangerously low, and I had forgotten my car charger. The previous night, I hadn’t charged the phone fully either, so I was running out of power fast. Along the way, I spotted a shop that looked promising, a bright, well-arranged phone accessories store. From outside, you could see neat displays of chargers, cables, headphones, and other gadgets. I pulled over, walked in, and asked for a charger. The shopkeeper confidently presented a range of options. He assured me that all were “good quality,” and encouraged me to test one. As I looked around the shop more carefully, something caught my eye. Almost everything in that store was an imitation. Ninety-nine percent of the products carried names that looked familiar but were not quite right. A “NOKRI” instead of Nokia. “Samsong” instead of Samsung. A tiny tweak in spelling, logo, or packaging, but the clear intention was to imitate trusted brands. The young