How people actually stand: a quarterly report and an annual edition on where personal brands measure across The Five Personal Brand Pillars and the six tiers, built from Identity Positioning™ Brand Audits, the free personal branding tools, surveys, case studies, and the Personal Branding Agencies directory, with commentary from Isaac Mashman, Eric Chow, and vetted professionals in the field.
No report has been released yet, and no figures from one have been published. The first quarterly report will appear here when it is released, with its catalog entry below and an announcement in the MCG newsroom.
What moved in the last three months. Every quarter’s audits and directory activity, reported whatever the sample, with the size of every figure stated beside it, and any breakdown of fewer than five people withheld so no one can be picked out.
The year in full. Composites, tier and band distributions, and pillar patterns across twelve months, reporting only groups of at least 25, with the year’s trends set beside the ones we expect next.
Each report has two halves. The first is generated from the data, the same way every time. The second is written by people: Isaac Mashman, Eric Chow, and the professionals who contribute to that edition.
Where people stand across the six tiers of the Hierarchy of Personal Branding, how they score on each of The Five Personal Brand Pillars, the patterns by profession, which free tools people reach for and what they ask them, and what the directory saw: practices listed, people searching, and the matches they asked for.
Findings from the surveys run for that edition, and case studies of real work, each published only with the permission of the person or organization it describes.
What is changing in how people build a name, and what we expect to matter in the quarters ahead.
The patterns behind the figures that a table alone would not tell you, from the audits and from the field.
The source, the dates the responses were collected, the sample behind every figure, and how figures were rounded.
The State of Personal Branding is written by Mashman Consulting Group, not by one voice. Isaac Mashman and Eric Chow write its commentary, and each edition can carry contributions from vetted professionals, including practices listed on Personal Branding Agencies.
MCG invites contributors who have shown their work. A listed practice or another professional can propose a contribution through the inquiry below.
Every contribution carries its author’s name and is read by MCG before release. The data half of a report is never written or changed by a contributor.
Contributing earns no rank, placement, or endorsement on Personal Branding Agencies or anywhere else, and no contributor’s practice is promoted in a report.
Every quarterly report and annual edition will be listed here, newest first, with the next release beneath them.
Findings describe groups. No name, no individual result, and no combination of details that could identify a person or an organization is ever published.
Directory figures never count the sample listings Personal Branding Agencies uses to show how its pages work.
A case study names a person or an organization only when they have approved it, word for word.
Every figure states how many people it comes from and when their responses were collected.
The full standard is on MCG Research.
identitypositioning.com, MCG’s technology hub, was built for this: Identity Positioning™ Brand Audits, the free personal branding tools, and the surveys and quizzes run there, all counted in aggregate. Alongside them, activity on Personal Branding Agencies, the world’s first dedicated personal branding directory, which MCG founded, and case studies from real work. Taking the free audit tells you where you stand today.
Engagements are accepted by application and seats are limited each quarter. Tell us who you are, what you are building, and the position you intend to hold.
