Hey everyone, HugS here, and I wrote a little piece.

This is for the players that are getting good and are wondering how to get known. This is for the players who feel they are better than some of the game’s biggest names, yet can’t seem to pull in the same kind of notoriety. Building a brand that people associate with can get you more support than your skills ever could alone.

Intro to Branding

While I can’t say I’m the foremost expert on brand building, I can say that I am very much in control of the image I put out there, and it’s all very intentional. I want there to be no confusion about who I am, and what I represent. In fact, it’s almost disgusting how predictable I am. However, that makes my actions a consistent reminder of my brand.

The thing about building your brand is that you can produce both positive and negative perceptions about yourself. Widespread likability is not the point. I don’t care who you are, as long as you’re in the public eye, you’re going to get negative feedback. Is your record completely spotless? Well then, there are people out there who hate cookie cutters too.

So let’s get this straight: the main point about brand building is to generate support from the people who associate with it.

My brand involves a combination of being highly opinionated, smart (I’d hope), well spoken, supportive to new players, and somewhat of an overly honest d***.
If you think I’m dumb and arrogant, I want to instill enough passion in those who do support me to feel like you’re wrong for that. So even when my brand is in question, it sustains itself through the support it generates. Only I can destroy my brand. That’s why I think it’s important to be meticulous with the image you portray.

A Simple Case Study:

Let’s take a look at Prog, one of the leading figures in our community. Can you agree that the following 4 words help describe him?:

• Supportive
• Selfless
• Promoter
• Informed

That was pretty easy right? Whether it’s intentional or not, Prog does an excellent job of putting an exact brand out there. Do you love him for what he is? Do you hate him for being so nice? It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you know exactly what he stands for. So now, the people who associate with that image will want to support him.

How to define your brand:

You need to decide what behavior empowers you. That’s the key.
For example, you could be talking about a toaster oven, and Kage would still find a way to bring up the warrior spirit.
I’m kidding, but still, the point is that his persona empowers him, and I’d hate for him to be anything else.

Your brand should be an extension of your true self so that it seems genuine. Who cares if you tell the world that you’re the nicest guy alive? If you’re not, then people won’t buy into your brand; unless your brand involves a lot of irony.

Actions to Establish Your Brand:

Stay consistent, and be public. You need to portray your brand to the world via twitter, streams, facebook, and you need to do it in a similar way every time.

The world wouldn’t know what to think if Prog wrote an expose trashing the West Coast. That’s not his brand, that’s not how he functions in our eyes. His consistency reminds us of who he is at all times.

Tweaking Your Brand

Finally, this is where the issue lies with most smashers. There are amazing top players who don’t have nearly the support they could be wielding. I know for a fact some of these guys are geniuses, hilarious, informative, or incredibly well spoken, but they haven’t communicated that brand to the public, and so people have no idea what they’re missing.

I’d say the time to tweak your brand should be when you feel that it’s not serving you right. Perhaps a tad too many people think you’re incredibly rude. Maybe you should tone down the trash talk. Perhaps not enough people know how clever you are, so maybe you should contribute a writing piece to promote this idea.

In either case, I hope this has been helpful to all of you, especially those aspiring to be recognized for more than just your skills.

-Hugo “HugS” Gonzalez
Questions or Comments on anything? Twitter – @HugS86