Before everyone started obsessing over “personal branding” on social media and polishing their LinkedIn headlines, there was someone who got it right before anyone else: Robert Zimmerman.
You probably know him better as Bob Dylan.
Originally from a middle-class Jewish family in Minnesota, Zimmerman reinvented himself as a wandering outlaw poet who escaped from the circus.
And in doing so, he reached heights that Robert Zimmerman, the shy, nerdy kid from Hibbing, probably never could have.
Because, let’s be honest: “Robert Zimmerman” doesn’t sound like someone who’d change the world.
But “Bob Dylan”…. That’s an idea. A character. A brand. He built a legend around himself so convincingly that even today, it’s hard to separate the man from the myth.
These days, everyone fixates on Visual Identity, but the foundation of a brand goes far deeper than that. The deepest part of a brand is its voice, its verbal identity, its internal myth.
From something technically inauthentic, he built something original and exquisite, and the entire rock era blew open because of it.
And that’s the paradox: Dylan built his legend on a story that wasn’t literally true, but it allowed him to express something emotionally real.
That’s what great brands do. They don’t start with colours or logos, they start with a myth, a core idea powerful enough that people want to step inside it. The visuals come later. The myth is the foundation.
Robert Zimmerman couldn’t change the world.
Bob Dylan could.
Not because he was fake, but because he created a story big enough for people to believe in…. including himself.