I spent an embarrassing amount of time customizing V, my avatar in Cyberpunk 2077. I was low-key obsessed. Her hair, her tattoos, the precise shade of her lipstick…obsessing over details in a first-person game where I rarely see my own character. Buthere’s what struck me: even though I was looking through V’s eyes for 99% of gameplay, the intentionality I brought to building her affected everything.
As I pondered every decision, from her backstory to her combat style to which fixers she worked with, I realized each choice shaped the doors that opened, the jobs offered, the reputation built across Night City. It occurred to me: that’s exactly howpersonal branding works in the real world.
The Mirror You Don’t See
What fascinates me about character creation in games like Cyberpunk is how itfunctions as a personal brand mirror. You’re making dozens of micro-decisions that reveal who you are, how you want to show up, what matters to you. It’s low-stakes experimentation with high-value insights.
For professionals navigating their own narrative, there’s something powerful in that parallel. Your social media presence, your speaking style, the partnerships you pursue, the projects you accept: these are all character-build choices that shape your professional positioning in your industry. They compound over time into a reputation, a positioning, an identity that precedes you into every room.
And just like V in Night City, you don’t always see yourself the way others do. You’re living in first person, looking outward. But the intentionality you bring to how you construct your presence? That shapes everything about how the world responds.
Consistency Is Your Combat Style
In Cyberpunk 2077, you can mix playstyles (a net runner one mission, a guns-blazing solo the next) but it takes planning. The game still rewards focus. The deeper you invest in a skill tree, the stronger your build feels. Gear synergy matters. Cyberware choices matter. Even your street cred with fixers and factions shapes how the world responds. You can experiment, but true power comes from committing to a style and making it your own.
It works the same way in real life. Think about the rooms you want to be invited into. The opportunities you want offered without asking. That doesn’t happen by accident. It
happens because you’ve made consistent decisions that communicate: this is who Iam, this is what I do, this is the value I bring. It is this reputational “promise” that opens up doors of opportunity. At the end of the day, your brand promise is about what you can do for others, and each decision you make (from your style to how you engage with the public to the professional moves you make) should support who you’ve told the world you are.
Play as Practice
What I love about character creation as a framework is that it reframes personal branding from something performative and exhausting into something exploratory and intentional. You’re not faking anything. You’re designing. You’re iterating. You’re experimenting with combinations until something clicks. Maybe you’re a strategist with media training and on-camera experience. Maybe you’re a creative outlier who brings luxury aesthetics into B2B spaces. Maybe you’re fluent in both agency leadership and influencer culture. These aren’t contradictions; they’re your skill tree. You get to own every hyphen in your multi-hyphenated skill set. Being yourself is imperative. But the strategy behind that is to be intentional about what parts of you show up, and when. You don’t have to reveal every version of yourself to everyone you meet. Just like in Cyberpunk, you wouldn’t walk into a corpo boardroom with the same energy you bring to Afterlife. The boardroom is a sleek, high-stakes world of corporate executives: polished suits, hidden agendas, and power plays where one wrong move can cost you everything.
Afterlife, on the other hand, is the city’s legendary mercenary bar: a gritty, neon-lit haven where street legends and edge runners drink, brag about gigs, and cut deals in the dark. The boardroom demands calculated poise; Afterlife thrives on bold, merc swagger. Authenticity isn’t full exposure. It’s discernment. Knowing which parts of you fit which moment is its own kind of power.
A lot of people think personal branding is about self-promotion. In practice, it’s closer to reputation: what you consistently contribute, how you operate, and the value people can reliably expect when you enter a room. V isn’t compelling because of a single trait or aesthetic; the character works because of accumulated choices, skill investments, and situational awareness. Over time, those decisions form a recognizable pattern.
That’s the real discipline of personal branding: not visibility for its own sake, but building a track record that makes it obvious.
Jetta is Chief Strategist at Twist Global and founder of Jettasetting, a culture-forward media platform and experiential and storytelling consultancy. She is also an award-winning travel, lifestyle, luxury, and tech media contributor and a guest lecturer at Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Communication program, where she teaches how AI and influence intersect with brand strategy.
