We've been on video calls for months now and I want to talk about something everyone is doing and nobody is admitting: carefully curating their Zoom backgrounds. The books you display. The art on the wall. The plant that's barely surviving but looks great on camera. This is personal branding at its most intimate and most unconscious.
We've been on video calls for months now and I want to talk about something everyone is doing and nobody is admitting: carefully curating their Zoom backgrounds.
I find it fascinating because it reveals how deeply internalized branding thinking has become. Nobody taught most people to curate their background for a video call. They just did it because the instinct to control your presentation is now universal. We're all brand managers of ourselves whether we chose it or not.
The people using virtual backgrounds are making the most interesting choice: a complete rejection of the domestic-background-as-brand-signal game. It's either privacy (reasonable) or an acknowledgment that your actual space doesn't match the brand you want to project (also reasonable). Both are strategic choices presented as functional ones.
What this means for actual brands: the line between personal and corporate branding has dissolved. When your employees are broadcasting from their homes, their personal brand IS your company's brand. You no longer control the visual environment of your brand representatives. The employee is the media channel now.
My Zoom background is my real apartment because I spent ten years making it look the way I want and I'm not hiding it behind a fake beach. This is my brand. Truffles occasionally walks across the keyboard during calls and that's part of the brand too.