Seven Part Personal Branding Series:
- The Importance of Branding
- Personal Brand Building: Niche
- Personal Brand Building: Differentiation
- Personal Brand Building: Branding
- Personal Brand Building: Affiliation
- Personal Branding Case Study: Garr Reynolds
- Personal Branding Litmus Test
There are four aspects which work together to form any brand image. They are: niche, differentiation, branding and affiliation. Today’s post examines how all of these aspects work together in practice to provide one speaker with a brand which makes him one of the most successful and helpful presentation skills advisors today.
Garr has a distinct presenting style, which encompasses the way he speaks, the subjects he discusses, images he uses, and his slide design. today’s post investigates how Garr’s personal brand is made up of the four key aspects: niche, differentiation, branding and affiliation.
Niche
Garr has a history in marketing and design, and clearly has many presentation skills to share. So he has combined his expertise in these areas, and developed some of the best advice there is on presentation design. Although most of his public talks don’t focus directly on marketing, he applies his knowledge of the area to the concept of presentation design, giving him great insight into the ways we can use visual aids to explain and persuade.
Differentiation
As an American immersed in Japanese culture, Garr has a fairly unique perspective of culture, business and presentations. All of the advice he gives is centred around Japanese ideas, traditions and culture. It works brilliantly to make Garr’s advice interesting, unique and memorable. And his ideas and advice are equally interesting to Western audiences as Eastern ones.
Branding
Garr’s slides are instantly recognisable. He uses unique backgrounds which seem specifically chosen to reflect the feeling of each presentation, and often includes his own pictures to ensure he’s sharing something truly unique.
There’s definitely a pattern to the images Garr uses – he talks about and shows pictures and videos of nature, Japanese places and culture, and his own family. Garr also has a particular way of inserting text into his pictures, as seen in the image below. This, together with the consistency of his images, means that we could probably all pick one of his slides out from a line-up. His slides have a brand, which adds to our sense of Garr’s brand.
Affiliation
Garr used to work for Apple, and although he’s no longer on their payroll he does maintain a public relationship with the brand. He speaks at Apple stores, and makes no secret of his love for and use of Keynote. This has surely given Garr more opportunities to market his brand, and widened his audience.
The complete effect
The four key aspects of branding work together in Garr’s case to create a brand which makes him appreciated as an expert on his subject; encourages the people who buy his books to recommend them; and makes his seminars, wherever they are in the world, sell out.
Take a look at this great TED talk of his to see his entire brand ‘coming together’.
As we’ll explore in the next post, Garr’s consistent and unique branding have made his audiences and fans feel like they know and understand him, and helped him to build a stellar reputation.
Seven Part Personal Branding Series:
- The Importance of Branding
- Personal Brand Building: Niche
- Personal Brand Building: Differentiation
- Personal Brand Building: Branding
- Personal Brand Building: Affiliation
- Personal Branding Case Study: Garr Reynolds
- Personal Branding Litmus Test
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