Adie Umali embodies the modern twenty-something Melburnian carving out her personal brand in the creative scene. From documenting her twenties in a tastefully curated Instagram to sharing self-learnings and reflections on her Substack, Adie’s journey reflects her commitment to writing and passion for connecting with others. Whilst her time working at Melbourne start-up Paire allowed her to explore a flexible creative role in social media, event hosting, podcasting and written content production, Adie emphasises the importance of investing time into finding yourself and defining your personal brand. For her, this means dedicating more time to writing for her Substack, having her article published in Fashion Journal and embracing new opportunities for self-growth.

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Embarking on Your Brand Discovery Journey

The trial-and-error process of discovering one’s personal brand was a crucial opportunity afforded to Adie through Paire’s supportive work environment and linear startup structure. Surrounded by creatives who were constantly pushing boundaries and advancing in their roles, Adie was inspired to take the leap with her own work, ultimately leading to her successful pitch to Fashion Journal. Adie reflects, “Moving forward, I’ve had more time to focus on my Substack, At the moment, which is my main indicator of my brand, as it really shows my personality and my priorities. I wanted [it] to reflect that everything I’m writing about is something that’s happening in my life and that I’m really passionate about at the moment”. 

 

Dedicating time to curate a personal niche is an easy goal to set, yet not one that many people can find sustained motivation to actually commit to. For Adie, her two greatest incentives to start writing, posting online, and filming for YouTube were, 1) to build a portfolio and, 2) to express herself creatively.

 

“Because our world is so quickly becoming digital alongside consumerism and capitalism, [having a strong] brand identity and ability to create content that captures people’s attention is an essential skill. Unless you’re going into corporate - which requires a different set of hard skills - a portfolio that demonstrates your personality and passions beyond your degree and resume is crucial! For creatives, people may think that doing internships and formal roles are the only way to improve, but investing time in creating and sharing your own content is the best way to learn. Your audience’s feedback and responses teach you to stand behind the things you create and post”.

 

“On the creative side, I love taking photos - I love my Instagram! That’s where I find a lot of my energy from. Even in my previous role, yes I was a creative, but it wasn’t aligned with my personality so I didn’t find as much energy from it as much as doing my own content alongside it”.

 

Breaking the Worker v. Working (for yourself) Mindset

 

As children, many of us took our parents’ constant reminders about the importance of extra-curriculars and hard work for granted. We often saw them as nagging or scolding, but as adults, we can appreciate that these were lessons in self-investment - encouragement to shape our identities and foster personal growth. Adie’s experience working closely with Paire’s founders gave her a strong sense of entrepreneurship. This was a key catalyst in empowering her to believe that she could and should share her work to build her personal brand. “If you don’t branch out from within that very rigid uni structure, you may not realise it, but you’ll adopt the mindset that you’ll always be a worker - you’ll always be working for someone”. 

 

Adie reflects that the most important mindset shift she had was “believing in yourself and believing that you can be proud of something that doesn’t have to be under someone else’s name.” This came from the opportunity to put her name on the emails, podcasts and events she hosted at Paire. “Frankly, I’m young and inexperienced with not much on my resume, but the fact that people showed mutual respect for me as a colleague was a huge opportunity for me.” She adds, “Having others respect me and my work also helped me respect my own work, as I had my name and face behind it, I was able to own up to it”. 

 

Committing to building your brand is similar to having a consistent gym routine, and there really is no better time than to start now. Adie points out the hard truth: “your goals don’t care about you, only you care about you and how you achieve the goals you set for yourself. The relation of this is that, you may have a goal, but if you’re always waiting for the right time to start - when you have time, when you feel like it, when inspiration comes - you’re not pushing yourself, and it will never happen!” There is no question that overcoming a ‘worker mentality’ is the hardest part, especially when you’re doing it alone with no tangible reward at the end of it to flaunt on LinkedIn, but “if you dig deeper and realise that you’re doing it for other people’s attention, to gain fame or to be attractive”, Adie unearths one of the crucial reasons why people lose motivation. “You’ll eventually find satisfaction in [achieving your goal], but especially at the start, it’s just you, you have to do it for yourself, not for other people. That’s how it will become sustained”.

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Marketing that feels Authentic and Human ft. the Influencer Ick

 

Garnering internet attention and earning praise as “the most humane, respectful marketing communication” from Paire’s customers, Adie’s ‘Mother’s Day opt-out' email hit what mainstream marketing tend to miss: authentic human connection. Diverging from push marketing tactics typically employed by other brands, the goal was to focus on being “genuine and sincere”. Despite being more text heavy compared to Paire’s typical emails, Adie emphasised the importance that “every part of the design - text, design layout and subject heading - was aligned [and would be] perceived as sincere by the receiver”. However, what touched audiences the most was the genuineness of signing off with her name, with more people than expected replying and thanking her; “frankly, this email was sent en masse to our whole subscriber list, so the fact that people actually read the words, hit the reply button, and wrote a response, showed how much of an impact it had on people”.

 

In Digital Marketing, we are taught how to build email lists, create leads, and maximise email analytics, but Adie weighs in on the true skill of creating genuine connection through nuanced copy. “Some people think that understanding how others think and feel won’t get you anywhere, but in fact, even with AI, it relies on the input of humans to teach and define these things, so don’t dismiss it. Of course that email was a bit more taboo, but it just shows that you can make great emails that emotionally touch people, and that words matter”.

 

Whilst so much of marketing tries to push people to buy in order to meet sales objectives and maximise profits, even as brands shoot their shot at authenticity, cases of social washing and tokenism aren’t rare to come by. Adie agrees that from a PR perspective, focusing on brand mission takes up space over selling something instead. The consequence? Brands don’t invest in quality customer relationships, which is especially important given how majority of the modern consumer generation are “digital nomads - we can see and understand what brands are doing, so marketing has to evolve to have that balance.” As it turns out, the lack of genuineness seems a common problem that plagues not only digital brand marketers, but also social media influencers. Where is the line drawn between promoting a brand you love to becoming a “walking ad”? For Adie, the question became, “how much are influencers willing to sell their loyalty for?”. 

 

“There was a girl I followed, her makeup was so fun, but a carousel post she made for Fashion Week full of Prada just made me think, you’re not giving me the genuine content I followed you for - I started getting the ick!”

 

In an era where influencers and content creators can conveniently shift from genuinely investing in a product to simply associating their face with it through posts and promotions, audiences are increasingly calling out this passive approach. As Adie puts it, “Of course I’m not ignorant to the fact that we need to make money, but when you start off as a creator, to me, you’re “selling-out” when you don’t creatively create content. You lose the trust of your audience”. Many of us have no doubt daydreamed of a Katie Fang-esque life, fueled by copious amounts of PR packages and brand gifts (because who doesn’t love free stuff?), but for Adie, “I don’t want my whole life to be online”. 

 

As someone who thrives on meeting and connecting with others, Adie adds,“I feel kind of proud when someone asks me what I’m wearing or for my opinion, because those are all my tastes that I’ve chosen, so to know that someone trusts me enough to ask me and follow through with my suggestions - that means a lot to me. If I were ever to become an influencer, that’s the kind of influence I want to have”. Ultimately, influencer authenticity and genuine marketing trace back to human personality and emotion - something that is curated over time through relationships nurtured by real words and meaningful conversations.

 

Investing in Yourself to Create an Impact

 

‘Impact’ - at times tossed around deep or corporate conversations as little more than a buzzword, but it truly encapsulates the two-way nature of human connection. Creating and experiencing meaningful impact is rare, yet achievable through investing time in oneself. Pulling out the half-read but already “life-changing” book from her bag, Adie passionately vouches for Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ - “communicating with people, presenting yourself, and developing genuine, sincere relationships are real skills that universities don’t teach you. The book helps take you out of that bubble to reflect on how you can actually make an impact on others”. She channels this through her Substack, with the intention to “create stories that people can relate to, because that’s what living life is - learning from my experiences and mistakes”. 

 

One of Adie’s more provocatively titled pieces - I’m a 20 year old girl and I want to invest - consolidated her reach and impact to those who related and responded to her story. “Two responses in particular stuck with me. One girl was a mutual acquaintance who sent me a full reply about how she related to it. It became a topic of conversation among her friends, which honestly had a big impact on me - that’s all I want. The second was from a guy in his 30s who goes to my church (and I’ll admit, I’m a bit intimidated by him since he’s from a different demographic!), but he actually reached to tell me I was doing a great job. To me, that was like, wow! He has his own startup and does a lot of work enriching the youth, so when he suggested we catch up over dinner to talk about leadership and enriching others, I felt valued and equal to him, particularly as I felt inferior in age and experience. This gave me the confidence to embrace my age, because this piece came from still feeling young in my 20s, so for him to reach out made me feel so seen”.

 

Having started out working in a space dominated by others with more experience and older than Adie herself, she emphasises the importance of building up your confidence to own up to your work by discovering yourself and forming your own opinions. As cheesy as it sounds, the pandemic became the perfect time for Adie to spend time with herself and push herself - “because I wasn’t consistently surrounded by my high school friends, I did a lot of reading and formed a lot of my own opinions. If you’re always in the same circle and environment, you’ll watch a TikTok, you’ll send it to someone, you wait for their reaction and you feel validated”. Yet in this interconnected digital age, avoiding an echo chamber of ideas and opinions is harder than it seems…

 

Personality and Authentic Branding

 

The world shares and consumes media so quickly with millions of digital personas online, so it’s more often than not that a ‘hot take’ perhaps isn’t quite as hot as it seems. What does this mean for individuals building and sharing their personal brand? That it’s harder to differentiate their niche within an almost imperceptible echo chamber. Adie reflects on Flex Mami’s podcast, Dopamine Constipation, where she essentially discusses how we often think we’re forming our own opinions when, in reality, we’re just regurgitating what others are telling us. This served as a confronting reality check that made her more conscious of her actions online and how she shares on social media.

 

“It is harder if you don’t invest in yourself. If you're always online surrounded by people who aren’t interested in self-development, you don't develop a personality. Your personality becomes a reflection of others. If you’re not aware of it, it's hard to break out of it. It's like, I don't know who I am anymore!”

 

People are no longer willing to invest time in discovering themselves - but who’s really to blame? The consumerist world moves so quickly that no one wants to feel left behind. So we see mass-produced, chemically aged bags mimicking Jane Birkin’s maximalist style alongside pre-stacked charms and aesthetic ‘keepsakes’ sold in stores. “You lose that human aspect of discovering something and having a story”, Adie agrees. “People swipe up on my story asking, ‘Where did you find this? Where did you eat this?’ I don't know if it’s bad to say, but we should be gatekeeping! Because at the end of the day, life is about having stories”.

 

Adie acknowledges the positives of social media, particularly the ability to share her opinions and online learnings through her Substack. But she also notes the challenges of staying authentic in a sea of curated content. “You need to put in even more effort than what you put out. For me, my goal is to find like-minded people in a loyal, genuine, attached community.”

 

Our takeaways? 

• Personal brand and personality are intertwined.

• The primary goal of making an impact in a digital world filled with millions of other voices isn’t to be the loudest or most controversial, but to be the most authentic to your brand and personality.

• Personality is more than being funny and charismatic, and definitely isn’t just something you’re born with.

• Think of personality like a long-term investment (ok, maybe the analogy is a stretch, but hear me out!) In the short-term, you might yield some arbitrary profit, but the real value comes from long-term capital gains (learning about yourself, forming unique opinions) AND dividends (the lasting impact you create for yourself and others).

 

Concluding Words

 

Personal brand isn’t only about marketing, nor is it only relevant for creatives starting out their careers. Finding herself on the same journey into adulthood and self-discovery as many of us, Adie emphasises the importance of investing into individual passions and skills now, developing your brand authentically, and sharing your stories to create an impact for others. Whilst personal brand can be shaped, influenced and curated, it is ultimately a streamlined reflection of reality - what and how much you put into yourself and your personality matters!