A Great, Big, Beautiful Persona

There's no one in class. My rhetoric of written communications class is more like a scene from a Western saloon than a coveted class section at UGA. I'm almost certain a tumble weed just rolled across the front of the room. I bet the same is true of the workplace—nobody wants to get down to work.

Why are so many of my peers playing hooky? I blame the weather. Georgia is thawing from an extended Winter and people across the state are fleeing conditioned air for the warm sunshine and soft grass. Behind the indoor exodus is the assumption that work is intrinsically boring. But that's only  true if students are shackled to a desk and employees are caged in cubicles to perform mundane tasks and satisfy social constrictions. A quick step outside our work-time paradigm introduces us to a new reality in full bloom.

We can unlatch ourselves from work we hate if we redefine our jobs. Instead of a student in this classroom, I consider myself a keeper of secrets—the sole surviving scribe of a forgone people set out to preserve knowledge upon this Earth. Likewise, a public accountant could redefine her job to be a champion of fun in the office. A marketer would realize these redefinitions as new personas. Give yourself a more exciting persona, cultivate it, and see if it doesn't improve the quality of your life. 

Similarly, every brand should have a strong, identifiable, and relatable persona across online media. Just as you give yourself an upgrade with a well defined persona, consider your brand a person and give him or her a persona promotion. Users will love it and your boss will love your engagement.