It's not what she wanted
Even though Audrina Partridge, who stars on the "Hills," says she regrets her decision to pose nude right out of high school, and she hopes young women learn from her mistake, she can't take back the nude photos of here circulating around the Web (caution: nudity).
It brings up the extreme importance in business, and online marketing, of the importance of protecting and defining your brand. The fact that Audrina has expressed that she wishes she hadn't allowed the photos to be taken, shows it's not what she wants to express as her brand.
The problem was she didn't understand, as we all need to - personally and professionally - that we are a brand. To that end we need to live and act out what we truly believe in accordance with that. This is another reason why Eliot Spitzer fell so hard when it was discovered he was paying for prostitutes and using government expense cards to fly to the dalliances.
He had set himself up as a brand, and then was living the opposite of that brand, and had vigorously pursued and condemned prositution cases, even though he had been particapating in the same activity.
The problem isn't as simple as saying people don't think straight when it comes to sex, and bypass their brains. That may be the truth about the final actions taken, but it isn't true in leading up to them.
When it comes down to it, we need to understand what we and our companies are as a brand, and never secretly or privately depart from it. It's knowing who we are that is important, not the eventual road we travel down. If we truly believe who we are, we will end up living out those principles - whether someone observes us or not.
The same with our companies. We must absolutely know what our brand represents, and then live that out on a daily basis in how we conduct our businesses, and insist that our people do the same.
Audrina Partridge didn't want this to be seen as what she represented, but now will have to live with it for a long time. She'll be considered a certain type of brand that will attract those interests she in reality doesn't want to do business with.
To protect our personal and professional brand, we must know who we are and what we represent, and never go off that road: personally or in business; whether we know we're being seen or not.
If we do that, we don't have to worry over whether we'll be caught doing something. We'll live who we really are, and there won't be any surprises that will negatively impact our brand in this way.
The bottom line is we must know our brand and never deviate off it.
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