Yesterday was a interesting day in Chicago. In the afternoon, there was the Blogwell conference which featured real life case studies from large organizations executing initiatives in the social media space. Companies like:

• The Home Depot
• Mayo Clinic
• H&R Block
• Sharpie
• US Coast Guard
• Allstate
• Walmart
• Procter & Gamble

And later that evening, I gave a talk at the Social Media Club in Chicago (above). In both talks I noticed a reoccurring theme. When companies engage a social manner, even the big ones—their initiatives are often powered by individuals. People with real names. faces, families and lives. In fact, most of the more successful examples included people who worked for brands who were beginning to become known on a fist name basis. The Home Depot for example has Sarah, who handles their Twitter initiative. This poses a question for all organizations. What happens if the Sarah’s of the world leave your company? Isn’t it better for a brand to just be a brand?

Enter the “brandividual“, a term I blurted out in my talk about personal branding later that evening. The phrase was born of a series of questions from the audience which all focused around the same topic. Where is the hard line between my employer’s brand and my own? The answer is not a simple one—but I believe that trends are pointing us to a blurring of that line whether we like it or not. “Brandividuals—people who represent your brand and their own, balancing the two may be something we see more of, not less as companies and brands try to figure out how to engage on a web that’s become increasingly social and personal.

Take this list for example—40 of the best Twitter brands and the people behind them. The title of the list is enough to make you think. For each brand on Twitter, there’s an individual (or individuals) behind that effort. It’s both business and personal. The two have become one. The tactic comes from a fundamental truth when it comes to the social spaces on the Web. People want to talk to other people. They want transparency. They want to know who they are talking to.

Who’s behind that masked brand?

And as the people—the “brandividuals” begin to reveal themselves, it wil create new scenerios where we’ll all have to think about the relationships between the brands we work for and the personal ones we build and maintain and how the two relate and mutually benefit from each other. As the dawning of the age of the brandividual comes upon us, we’ll all have to re-think the boundries between us as individuals, brands, and the brands who employ us.

Written by David Armano