Philip Kotler, the Marketing Guru has rightly said that anything can be marketed including goods, services, events, experiences, places, properties, organization, information, ideas and the most important “Person - Human”. In short anything can be marketed. In the same context many brand management gurus have given their opinion that anything can be branded. Before understanding human brand, it is important to understand what brand means?

"Brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design which is intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.”(Keller K., 2008).

From above definition it must be clear that simply creating a name doesn’t constitute brand. Brand doesn’t lies on paper it lies in the minds of customers / people. Same way if the name of a human being lies in the minds of individuals with certain attributes /associations/ deeds, we can say that human brand is developed. We can have many examples of human being branded from Indian scenario. The moment you see the above images you have certain associations in your mind. That’s why their names have become brand. Let us take some examples from Indian context what comes to your mind when I say, ‘The Great leader of India, certainly Mahatma Gandhiji, or when I say superstar / star of the millennium from Bollywood, undoubtedly your answer is Amitabh Bachhan, or recent one when I say “God of Cricket” it must be Sachin Tendulkar or Sign of social service and peace (Female) not other than Mother Teresa or The Business Leader having ethics as the base of business, yes you are absolutely right he is Ratan Tata, or Queen of Television Industry for producing TV serials, once again good guess she is Ekta Kapoor and so on. These are some of the examples from different sector. In the same direction many people try to create his/ her own name as a brand in respective area.

Up to this point, I think almost everyone is familiar about it but my point is what is the meaning of creating a brand in others mind at the cost of own human values. I am talking about something which is unethical. I don’t think that the brand created in unethical way may last longer. At the same time one needs to understand that it has equal negative consequences because when people realize the intention / base of that particular brand they will ignore it for the life time and hence one cannot have a second chance. Say for example, what is the meaning of getting promotion and creating a brand by leg pulling in the organization? What is the meaning of success at the cost of family’s valuable time? To whatsoever extent you may become successful but it has no gain to enjoy that particular success. You must be coming across the people who may overexpose their human brand. That is also an unethical mean to promote the brand. Without a strong value based system and implementation brand cannot be successful in long run. You cannot hide truth for a long run.

Conclusion:
Brand without strong value base cannot sustain in long run. One should identify his/ her values and must not compromise with it at any cost.

References:
=> Kelvin K. (2008). Strategic Brand Management, 3/E, Prentice Hall, New Delhi
=> Kotler P., Keller K., Koshy A.,Jha M.(2009). Marketing Management – A South Indian Perspective,      Pearson Education, New Delhi