When I entered grad school 20 years ago, I got to know a fellow who was just wrapping up his graduate career and preparing to go on the job market. He told me that his personal motto had become, "I am a box of Tide."
I was reminded of this quote this morning when I read, "Copy Writers: See Yourself As The Product," by Chris Marlow. Written with the intent of helping freelancers create for themselves a "lead generation machine," she writes, "The first step requires you to see yourself as a product or service, because in fact, that's what you are." She puts a finer point on it by continuing, "If you think of yourself... as a commodity, it becomes more apparent what you must do in order to market yourself effectively."
If you are going to build a clientele as an independent contractor/consultant/freelancer, you could certainly do worse than heed Ms. Marlow's advice and take the time to identify your unique selling point and articulate your particular offering(s). In fact, unless you are already famous, you will have to do this in one form or another if you want to attract people who will pay you money to do what you do.
It was just that her turns of phrase, "a product... that's what you are" and "think of yourself... as a commodity," hit a long dormant academic nerve with me, and not only by reminding me of the cynical/apt words of my erstwhile co-inhabitant of the Ivory Tower (who is gainfully employed as a professor in San Diego and just recently published a fascinating book on representations of the "Mexican" in American culture).
You see, a long time ago I read a book called History and Class Consciousness, which, in its well-known chapter on "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," asserted that, in capitalist society, relationships between people increasingly take on the appearance of relationships between objects. (This was meant as a damning criticism, for those of you who have not studied early-20th century Marxist thought.)
The point is that there is something de-humanizing about thinking of ourselves as "products," "services," or "commodities" - and something disturbing that we don't even notice it. Shouldn't we think of ourselves as people who have certain skills or talents that could be "commoditized" and marketed to other people who have need of them? "Think of your clients as data-points, because that's what they are," would be a strange thing to say, right?
Nice piece, nice points. And I do agree with Matt about the de-humanizing aspects of "productizing" ourselves. But, at the same time, I believe it is sometimes useful to think of ourseleves as products. Why?
Three Reasons:
** (1) All too often we find it difficult to see ourselves from a third-person perspective. We are reluctant to say "Gosh, I AM a darn good at Dreamweaver" (or whatever). But, it is somehow easier (requires less modesty? allows/requires us to step outside ourselves?) to say, "If I were a box of Tide, it would say 'Now 500% better at Dreamweaver'" (or whatever).
** (2) Thinking of ourselves as a product forces us to think about "the whole package". It somehow makes it easier to say "OK, what ELSE do you have? - what is your next bullet-point?" All too often we think of our ONE best feature and get stuck on that.
** (3) It makes us realize that we now need to consider how we might package/wrap ourselves. Do we wrap/spin all our qualities into an overall brand like: "mystique and air of artsy", or into a "science and methodology", or into a "solidly and reliably"?
== SO, overall, while de-humanizing it may be, I often recommend that people product-ize themselves -- but, that they don't get too "wrapped up" in it (hahaha - lame pun....).
Thanks for the comment, James. As you point out, it can be very useful to think of ourselves as products because it provides us with a distancing framework that allows us to package ourselves effectively, etc. The de-humanizing line gets crossed when one asserts "that's what you are," IMO.