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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of Image Group International and an award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old-school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies, and hacks for the new tech world. Here you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques, and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image, and reputation.

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Hello, everybody, great to have you here today. Today's chat will be about the seventh type of brand power model. I've already explained branding many times previously. But I believe it's always useful to clarify this topic, especially for our new listeners. In order to be effective, every organization, business individual etc, needs a clear sense of purpose that people within and outside the entity understand. In today's competitive and crowded marketplace, you must differentiate if you are to stand out from your competitors. Without it, you cannot get cut through to be seen, heard and valued. And what I mean by that is virtually you have so much noise, so much content, so many distractions, especially in the digital world. That unless you make a convincing case. And you can do that with soft sell or hard sell. And I can explain the differences later, what will happen is basically, if you don't do that, you don't get found. And that's very simple. Because you don't have to do a Google search, as we all do daily to look for, obviously, the product service, and of course brand, you might be looking for. So if they don't exist online, obviously they don't exist. So that's why the reason for branding plays a big part in all aspects that I'm going to be explaining today. So branding supports the organization, and all the individuals to elevate and make their presence felt. So it differentiates you from your competitors. Because when done well, it builds extraordinary added value to whatever your message is the product or service, your advertising, marketing, or selling. Branding dramatically increases your visibility factor in the marketplace from being an unknown, or what we call a no brand, to a highly developed global, super brand. And that's when you get the opportunity, of course. And, you know, if you observe, and we talk about global super brands and iconic brands, you know, you're talking about Coca-Cola, you're talking about McDonald's, you're talking about Louis Vuitton, you're talking about Chanel, you're talking about Mercedes, et cetera, these are all global super brands, you know, and it's not like there have to be just luxury, there could be virtually anything that specifically is in the marketplace and become a global Superman I McDonald's, for instance. You know, that's why we brand we've brand basically to communicate. And obviously, to sell, you know, the end game of this is to move your product service or whatever other message you're hoping to get across no different to a political party or religious organization, or any other form of government that might want to get, you know, NGO that wants to get the message across. So I'm going to give you examples of that very soon. So we've spoken about what branding-wise is important. I don't think I have to go over that anymore today. So it's time now to mention the seven different types of brands applicable today. Now, there might be more spin-offs of this but I'm just gonna give you the seven today. The first that we all know well is the individual personal brand. And of course, the examples there incorporate Elon Musk, Oprah and even right down to Mother Teresa. These are all that we would call personal brands, Tom Cruise, is obviously a big entertainment brand and you know his latest movie this follow-up to top gun a very successful but this is what you call branding. That's a follow-up sequel to his original Top Gun. And of course, because it's created a brand legacy, you know, he's also getting major success with this current movie. Other examples are sportspeople in the Australian vernacular, of course, you know, if you think of Cathy Freeman, or Ian Thorpe, these are brands that are very well recognized in This country, on an international scale, you have everything from soccer brands, to football brands, to cricket brands, et cetera. These are all brands, and individuals, obviously, that play that particular sport. So the personal brand is, you know, like Chanel said, Coco Chanel, to be irreplaceable, one must always be different. And that supports the case that we've already shared regarding how noisy online is. The second type of brand we will cover today is the organizational corporate business brand, you know, and what that means is brands like, for instance, Amazon, Manchester United from a football perspective, or Liverpool for the Liverpool fans, and of course, Greenpeace. These are all brands, and some of these brands specifically. Well, when I say some of them, they're all internationally well known, and of course, carry a lot of cachets, other football brands, I mean, you know, from from the perspective of AFL football, you know, you have Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, et cetera, Hawthorne, these are all that we would call our organizational sporting brands. And in the education sector, you got Harvard, you got Oxford, these are all brands as well that speak, and people have a perception of them, that they are definitely leaders in their field. Does that always ring true? Look, it doesn't matter. It's all perception. So even if it's not true, perception is a reality for the person that has that perception. And the third area we want to cover today is product brands. And product brands are brands that represent a particular product. So you know, that could mean Mercedes, McDonald's, Rolex, these are all product brands, you know, they produce a product that basically people buy, of course, Coca Cola fits in with that, what else could I'd say Vegemite, a great product when and a great international Australian brand that basically has a lot of cachets, and well renowned and of course, you know, other products, like for instance, Mont Blanc, in a Penfolds in the Grange and, and the cache carriers in the whole wide world. And other ones like Godiva in chocolates, et cetera. These are all product brands. The next area we're going to cover and known as service brands, example visa, Qantas, Telstra, what else could I'd say that to virtually every hotel, every airline would be a product of some description, description, FedEx, you know, Hard Rock Cafe. Sotheby's, these are all product brands. And what was said about that, I mean, quoting Richard Branson, he said, the way a company brands itself is everything, it will ultimately decide whether a business survives or fails, or sorry, or thrives. So this is the key here. And if you're talking about the times we're living in, yes, survival is also an important consideration now, because basically, at times being successful, is actually to also survive, especially in challenging times. So your business right now is going through some of those challenges. You know, your accountant would normally say cut the cost cuts that cut this cut that, for me, there's nothing imaginative and creative about operating a business that way, in challenging times, you're gonna have an option here, you got a choice, you're either basically gonna reinvent, and do what you have to do to stay afloat, okay. And then, of course, ride the next wave, or do nothing, and suffer the consequences. And that's where branding comes in. Branding, basically, is your opportunity to communicate, especially, especially even more so when there is so much negative news around. So now, let's talk about the next one. The fifth one, we call the event plan. And the event plan, also, you know, is a concept again, that also relates to commercial outcomes, because you wouldn't, you know, everything's got commercial, even if it's just reputational, there's the commercial outcome from that. And the Olympic Games, for instance, is a commercial brand. Christmas Day is a commercial event brand. So Christmas Day and the association was Santa Claus was created as a brand Coca Cola or you might not be aware of that but you might want to look that up. It was actually created as a concept okay to make on Christmas Day, obviously, more RAM, commercially orientated and of course, to sell more stuff. Now, the other one that's also become a big brand is Anzac Day. And I remember when I was you know, younger, Anzac Day was not the biggest deal in the world, especially when I was a kid. Of course, in those times, it wasn't revered as it is today. But that also took a lot of branding, to bring it to the consciousness of the public like it is today. There are all sorts of other event brands, you know, the Melbourne Cup, very, very famous International, a horse race, that's also a big brand. We've already spoken about the Olympic Games, you got the World Cup, and the FIFA World Cup, these are all brands that have big commercial returns. And of course, from an international point of view, you got the US masters, you got Wimbledon, you got the Australian Open, you got all sorts of positioning around these event brands, that of course, have big outcomes, and they are not as altruistic as they look. So this is, this is branding from the perspective of events, you know, and events, festivals, tournaments, religious, historical, etcetera, are big business. And they also big business for governments. And obviously, even NGOs that are involved with them, because it actually gets them also to communicate, and push whatever message they are committed to pushing. Then we have the six. These are geographical brands, like countries, cities, tourist attractions, et cetera. And the best example I can just give us, Australia, Sydney Opera House, this is branding at its best. And of course, if we're looking at this, you know, from an international perspective, what does the brand Made in Italy mean for you, Italy, of course, is seen as the Colossus in fashion style, and what we will call is everything aesthetically beautiful, has that particular brand. Of course, when you think of Paris, what do you think, when you think of New York? What do you think these are all, you know, these all bring up connotations, keywords, if you like, regarding what these cities, countries and of course, geographical locations represent, and you would have some sort of, you know, feel when you hear those particular cities, and of course, even more exciting when you visit them and experience them. So these are all also essential in positioning countries, and even from a geopolitical point of view that they play a big role. And, of course, bringing serious tourist dollars, some countries without this would actually collapse. You know, and I'm sure there's many beautiful countries in the world that yet have sort of discovered how beautiful they are. Because for whatever reason, including economics, they might not have been branded, effectively. And the last one that I want to mention today, and the one that sort of is avoided very frequently, is spiritual brands. And of course, when you think about it like this, and some people don't like to think about it this way, but basically, Jesus Christ, of course, today, that's, you know, one of them, if not the number one brand on the planet, from the point of view of followers, that also has got a serious positioning on it. And you know, and I say to my Christian friends out there, it's okay, basically, every particular messaging, in this case, Christianity needs the occasional messaging from the perspective of a story. So we get that so Buddha is another example, of course, Krishna, and so on. So even religion is a brand, okay. And of course, spirituality, of course, has another link as well, where you can even incorporate whatever you think fits your spiritual beliefs and reality. But there are brands behind that right across the board, right across every religion on the planet. There is branding behind this branding behind the scenes, as I said, some of it is what I would call his hard sell. Some of it is a soft sell. Some of it is over, and some of it is COVID. So this is branding per site. And if you think about that, when you get followers, okay, you know, just to finalize that particular conversation on religion, spirituality, when you've got the most followers on the planet as Christianity has. That's what you call branding at its best. And what I mean by that is, we're in a world today where you know, an influencer, for instance, that Kardashians got to several million followers, and it's like, big influencer. Well, what we're talking about here is at least a couple of billion followers. And that's the difference in branding. When people have bought the belief, the purpose the mission, then you create a super brand and you know, and in my experience has nothing better to study them, you know, religion spirituality, to see how branding works effectively. And I say that with a lot of experience having done that, over the years. So branding is nearly everything. And that Steve Forbes, the media entrepreneur, was quoted as saying, your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business. And that sort of sums up everything I have to say today about branding. And what I'd like to do is invite you to come on board, and send me any emails you have any questions you might have. And of course, if you liked this episode, and it's helped you get a little bit more understanding about the brand new world, you know, that'd be great. Just send us a message on that. I know it can be a bit overwhelming at times. But you know, the idea is we'll do our best in this short podcast to give you some sense of what the subject is all about and give you actually more opportunity to research it further if you choose. And if you liked that chapter again, I kindly ask you to rate the show on the Apple podcast. And if you do, please send us an email confirmation and again, we will send you our ebook the real-world guide to authentic personal branding. You can find me on social media my Twitter is John underlying my LinkedIn is John Michael and on Facebook, you can find me under image grip International. I'd like to thank you all and I look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great week and cheers.

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Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass" Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists, based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence and authority in the business world.   To learn more and apply for your personal coaching, seminars and group workshops please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.