Twenty years of the Beckhams: how they ushered in our era of personal branding

Victoria Beckham never claimed to be the best singer in the Spice Girls, or the best dancer either. Nor was David Beckham necessarily the greatest footballer ever to wear a Manchester United shirt. The team’s former manager Alex Ferguson once said he had only ever worked with four world-class players, and didn’t include Beckham on his list.

Yet, by dint of hard work, strategic decision-making and a remarkable ability to stay likable even while becoming preposterously rich, the Beckhams have achieved the goal Victoria identified back in 2001, when she wrote of wanting to be “as famous as Persil Automatic”.

Read the full article on The Guardian.