If you have absolute no love for the truth, if you don’t care what the people you work with are thinking about you in reality, if you have absolutely no sense of ethics, if you attribute yourself work and responsibilities which you never had in reality, if you continue to have a false image in your head of yourself then your ambition to have a strong personal branding which is actually fake, will grow till the painful end. Now if you go again over the text above you could say that person would be crazy, or at least living in an imaginary world created to push down the real person he/she is.
The outcome of sustaining for a long period of time such a fake personal branding has his ups but I personally think more downs, because at the moment people realize what’s behind this superhero person, they remain with a bad taste in their mouths. I mean at first or at least when creating new contacts it’s a win situation and you get what you want of course, but what about the moment when people discover your real value? They will feel betrayed and maybe won’t work with you ever again and the possibility to get bad recommendations is very high.
Of course you would be able to hide the for a period of time, but for how long? If the number of people who discovered your fake personal branding is getting higher and higher, the risk of getting a very bad personal branding is higher.
Now, if we think about a situation where you actually go ahead and brag about stuff others did like your team colleagues or even your boss, then it’s getting a bit dangerous. Your colleagues will hate you and try everything to get you down, but what about your boss? He won’t be happy, because, let’s think, if you don’t brag about what you did then it means that you haven’t done anything so special and that’s why you use his responsibilities and his achievements or even the team achievements.
I am thinking if this is like a highly dangerous drug, you start to do it once and you cannot stop doing it.
Then, let me position myself as a manager who wants to hire someone new, and before I had a person like described above and found out about the fake personal branding and the actual quality of the employee. Your trust in applicants would be medium to low, what if the applicant is actually bragging about someone else’s work? How do you identify this? Well, if it’s to great to be true, then it’s of course fake. If you still have a doubt, do a test, try that person, put him/her to do some stuff you expect even after she/he gets hired, try to get phone recommendations because people are more open to positive lying in written recommendations than in phone conversation ones.
In one sentence we can say about “How fake can a personal branding ambition become?” that: If you start doing this, then it might not exist an end to it.
My question to you is: Have you ever met/worked with such a person? How was it?
People and Situations 
These are some great points to consider whenever you are presenting yourself in any situation – work or personal. Your personal brand reflects who you are. To be a brand it must be consistent (unless your brand is being inconsistent, which may be difficult to be successful with).
If you’re presenting a false you to others you have to really consider where this will eventually lead. Let’s say you get away with it for years on your job. What are the chances you’re really going to be happy with your job? What are the chances you’ll hate your job? What if you present a false self to someone and get married? How successful will your marriage be?
Of course, before you can present your brand to others, you need to understand yourself first. Sometimes we lie to ourselves too.
If you want to avoid (or at least lessen) a midlife crisis, then understand who you are, your personal brand and then show it to the world. Some people will love it. Some will hate it. That’s ok. You want to be in the job or relationship where people love your brand.