In a recent CIM member-exclusive webinar, speaker coach and former creative director Ruben Milne urged marketers to apply the same brand-building discipline to themselves as they do to the organisations they represent.

Marketers are often experts at shaping how brands are perceived, yet many neglect their own professional reputation. That was the central message from Ruben Milne in CIM’s webinar, Creating a personal brand that advances your career, where he encouraged attendees to think of personal branding not as self-promotion, but as a practical way to build trust, credibility and career momentum.

Milne returned throughout the session to a simple definition of personal brand; what people say about you when you are not in the room. For him, the value of a strong personal brand lies in closing the gap between how you want to be perceived and how others actually experience you. When those two align, he argued, professionals are more likely to earn trust, influence decisions and be given the work they are best placed to do.

To help attendees articulate their strengths, Milne used a series of practical prompts, from choosing an animal that best reflected their character to identifying their personal ‘superpower’. These exercises were designed to help marketers distil their strongest qualities into a concise brand statement. Milne shared his own example, describing himself as a ‘passionate creative collaborator’, and suggested that having a clear statement like this can act as a useful anchor for career decisions and professional behaviour.

A major theme of the webinar was that marketers already possess the skills needed to shape their own brand. Milne encouraged attendees to review every professional touchpoint through that lens, from LinkedIn profiles and Google search results to emails, out-of-office messages and in-person meetings. His point was straightforward; if marketers know how to build trust and consistency for brands, they can and should do the same for themselves.

Importantly, Milne stressed that personal branding is not about becoming someone else. Instead, he framed it as being a first-rate version of yourself more consistently. That includes knowing when to adapt. In one of the session’s strongest leadership messages, he spoke about ‘skillful authenticity’, staying true to who you are while flexing your style to suit the moment, whether that means stepping forward, stepping back, or making more space for others to shine.

The Q&A reinforced several of the webinar’s most useful insights. Milne suggested that work and home ‘brands’ are rarely as different as people think, and that the strongest personal brands are rooted in the best version of who you are now, rather than an entirely aspirational future self. He also advised that when a strategy fails, credibility is protected through honesty, reflection and clear communication. For those uncomfortable with self-promotion, his recommendation was to start small and focus on visibility that adds value, rather than visibility for its own sake.

For Marketing Doris readers, the message is especially timely - personal brand is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a career asset. As Milne made clear, the marketers who stand out will not necessarily be those shouting the loudest, but those who are most consistent, credible and clear about the value they bring.