Navigating Your Moral Compass for Self-Promotion and Corporate Branding

Elizabeth Pittelkow Kittner CFO and Managing Director, Leelyn Smith LLC
Exploring Ethics in Business & Finance Today

As we live in a digital era, personal and corporate branding are essential for staying competitive and building a strong professional reputation. How should ethics help you develop and maintain your brand? It comes down to striking a balance.

SELF-PROMOTION

Self-promotion is helpful for forming your own brand, expanding your opportunities for career advancement, and increasing your network of contacts. It involves highlighting your skills, experiences, and accomplishments to give others a sense of who you are and how you can help them be successful in their goals.

When self-promoting, consider these best practices:

1. Be honest and authentic. These traits are two of the most crucial components to self-promotion. To shape an effective brand, determine which skills, qualities, knowledge, and experiences make you unique and enable you to help others. Decide what you would like to achieve professionally and how you would like to be perceived when approaching how to brand yourself.

2. Ensure the information you provide is consistent. One way to build a trustworthy brand is to be reliable with your message and the topics you promote. For example, if you like content that supports adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and automation into accounting work, then share content consistent with this message. If you share or create content that is counter to your regular content and do not convincingly explain your deviation, you may lose your credibility with your audience. Additionally, your communication style and content should be recognizable to those who know you. Ask for feedback from those you trust regarding how to better reflect who you are online and in person.

3. Exercise humility. While you want to showcase who you are, your wording and tone could come off as boastful. One tip is to review the adjectives you use to describe yourself and your accomplishments. As an example, you could say you effectively led a team; the adjective “effectively” may be perceived as an opinion word. Instead of using “effectively” on its own, think about how you can highlight your successes as a leader with supporting examples, such as how you reduced turnover, onboarded additional team members, and prioritized professional development.

4. Recognize the successes of others on your team. If you are excited about completing a joint project, thank and celebrate the people who helped contribute to the achievement. This acknowledgment will augment your personal integrity and encourage a supportive work environment for your team and organization. When you encourage people who are doing well, it helps build relationships and spread positivity.

CORPORATE BRANDING

It is important to promote your organization to inspire stakeholders, attract customers, and recruit and retain team members. Stakeholders are looking for effective branding to be able to increase customer consumption, loyalty, and awareness. Customers may consider how honest an organization is about their offerings and think about how socially responsible and ethical its professional practices are for creating products and services. Team members are looking for an organization with a noble mission, a well-defined vision, and meaningful values.

With this framework in mind, consider these best practices for corporate branding:

1. Follow truthful, ethical advertising practices. Just like in self-promotion, it may seem appealing to use adjectives about products and services that may not be as truthful. We can see several instances in the marketplace that illustrate this type of deception. One is around excessive packaging (i.e., product packaging that is larger than what is provided inside) or shrinkflation (i.e., a reduced product in the same-sized packaging). Another approach similar to shrinkflation is called non-functional slack-fill, which involves inserting an intentional empty space in the middle of a package that serves no functional purpose, like product preservation. Additionally, there is greenwashing, which involves claiming products are environmentally friendly when they are harmful to the environment to produce.

Companies may also be tempted to overstate their expertise in services. For example, an accounting firm may advertise they can perform a certain type of audit (e.g. benefit plan, A-133, etc.) while not having the training or knowledge to be able to perform it well. Likewise, someone could be advertising a CPA credential even if they never had one or have let their license lapse.

While there are many other examples of deception in the marketplace, some of which are tolerated more than others by consumers, it is important to consider the ethics of these approaches and consider the short-term gains of these methods compared to the potential long-term reputational risks.

2. Avoid criticizing competitors. It may be tempting for organizations to tear down competitors to make their organization look better. This practice, known as attack advertising, could result in ethical, legal, and reputational risks. Companies should strive to constructively contribute to the communities they serve and enhance their own brands based on their own merits instead of criticizing others.

3. Be consistent with your organization’s mission. An ethical corporate branding strategy is one that develops a compelling voice that reflects what your organization does, why it does it, and how it helps others. When these messages are regularly promoted across content, the organization will better attract and maintain its target audiences. Consider using search engine optimization to help with consistency of messaging and identifying key words and phrases that are most likely to resonate with your company’s target audiences.

4. Find advocates for your organization. Endorsements in the form of case studies, quotes, and content sharing go a long way to fostering credibility for your organizational brand. Advocates who incorporate storytelling can connect with your audience on an emotional level, making your brand more memorable and relatable.

TYING YOUR INDIVIDUAL BRAND TO YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL BRAND

It is helpful to you and your organization if your professional brand and the brand of your organization are similar, especially if you are a leader of your organization. While they do not need to be identical, they should promote similar values and avoid contradicting each other. Interlinking your professional brand with your organizational brand may allow you to personalize the content of your organization to be able to provide examples of how you specifically live organizational values.

Overall, while promoting your professional and company brand, it is important to maintain a strong moral compass in how you approach the world with who you are, who you aspire to be, and who you would like to serve. When you balance self-promotion and corporate branding with sound ethics, you will foster trust and authenticity for yourself and your organization.

Related Content:

• The Swing to Corporations Expressing Social Stances: When determining whether to address social and political matters, corporate boards and leaders must consider the needs of all stakeholders—and have a clear process in place—before taking a stand.
• Do Your Values Align With Pay Transparency? Amidst a growing push for pay transparency, both employers and employees must consider the impact on their workplaces—and their values.