自我到品牌化.docVIP

2014年考研英语阅读理解：自我品牌化 For Benjamin Franklin, it was early to bed and early to rise. For Dale Carnegie, it was the dictateto do and dare. For Stephen Covey, it was seven simple habits. The principle of self-improvement hastaken varied forms throughout history and is perhaps Americas most successful export. But in the digitalage, the idea of improving yourself is under siege by a similar-seeming but utterly different principle: thatof self-branding. The Internet-connected class worldwide faces growing pressure to cultivate a personal brand. Ordi-nary people are now told to acquire what once only companies and celebrities required: online findabili-ty, thousands of Google hits and Twitter followers, a niche of their own, a virtual network of patrons,a personal Wikipedia page and dot-com domainThe rise of the personal brand reflects changing economic structures, as secure lifetime employmentgives way to an agitating market in tasks. It suggests a new unscriptedness in institutions as we evolvefrom the broadcast age to the age of retweets. It predicts a future in which we all function like one-personcompanies, calculating how every action affects our positioning. As personal-branding experts see it, individuals internal sets of skills, motivations, and interestsare merely responding to new economic realities. It is no longer enough, they say, to join an organizationand ride its brand for decades. Companies are outsourcing aggressively; globalization is creating and de-stroying industries more rapidly than before; the Web is fostering job-hopping; the recession is throwingmillions on the street. In this new world, personal branders argue, self-packaging rules. Employees aretold to run permanent marketing campaigns to build an audience that follows their tweets and maintainsFacebook-level awareness of what they are doing. This audience belongs to you, not your organization,branders say; it will follow you and attract employers to you. Companies are wrestling with