 welcome to your brand expert tips. So today I'm in the car I'm driving to interview Raphael Dos Santos for our monthly brand-brain magazine so you'll have to forgive me I am driving although you are sat in a phone cradle so I'm not holding the phone I'm still holding the steering wheel just imagine that we're on top gear or something really interesting so I'm talking to the camera. So today I want to talk about celebrity branding and because I'm going down to interview Raphael who's very much making a name for himself in his industry and becoming known as a celebrity in his own right now Raphael is one of the most action-taking customers I've ever worked with he's absolutely fantastic and you know he's the kind of guy that when you say this brand new thing has just come out and you need to try it or this is really working in branding and building your brand right now go and do this he just goes and does it it's absolutely fantastic so I've got way to interview him today and I can't wait to bring you the interview in our monthly brand-brain easy I'll put a little link to it to the page on our website so you can go and have a look anyway talking about celebrity branding so what's really good about using celebrity status in your branding is that people position you as somebody that they really really want to do business with and they really want to work with and spend time with it's really funny I don't know if you've ever been in a room with a friend maybe or someone you know and a celebrity has walked into the room maybe you've been in a concert or you've been somewhere where there's a celebrity there and you've noticed that that person sees a celebrity come in and they just go really weird by weird I mean they they sometimes they go quiet and it's like they're in awe of this person or sometimes they can go really over the top and try and get the attention of that person become quite annoying I know a few people like this and I don't know I've just noticed that they go really weird I think it's because that to a certain extent they are in awe of that person but they're also excited and nervous and all these other feelings and emotions that come up when this celebrity is in front of them which is really interesting because as a nation and as you know as people growing up around kind of what we consider to be normal people the minute that a celebrity or the boss walks in the room that's it they're positioned as a certain status well that's exactly the same as your brand when you position it with as a celebrity you position it with celebrity status a great way of leveraging your your brand is to use somebody else's brand like a celebrity who has built a very very good personal brand so when you take Richard Branson for example he's built an incredible brand that's very people based very customer focused very customer service driven he's all about fun and adventure and he doesn't take himself seriously although he's very very serious about his brand and as a positioning tool using Richard Branson if that's the kind of brand association you want people to have with your brand by using a name like Richard Branson and working with him or have him endorse your product or service you are automatically borrowing some of that credibility that he has spent years building if you take for example Mylene class you know she's and Danny Minogue as well Twiggy you take all of these leading role models who Marks and Spencer's have paid to help leverage their brand now these are people who have built really good relationships and personal brands with the public so they're loved by the nation so if you want other people to love your brand you want the nation to love your brand then you want to use celebrities who have built that kind of culture those values so do think about using celebrities because just as we are in awe of celebrities when we see them and they walk into the room that's how you want your potential customers to feel about your brand isn't it I know that I would want to have people think you know I really want to work with this person what is it going to take to work with rather than you have to try and fight for the business and get people's attention all the time you see the more you position yourself around these kind of people the more your prospects and your clients are going to value you and appreciate you with somebody who is on the way up somebody who is already hanging around with a circle of influence that they themselves want to be a part of and be a part of that environment so doing this with your brand will help you I mean it could double triple quadruple or even more your business sales just by aligning yourself with somebody of that kind of status so ask yourself what kind of brand you want to be and if you were to position yourself with a celebrity what kind of celebrity would you want to represent your business obviously you don't want somebody who's in the paper for doing naughty things regularly or that does have any kind of stigma attached to them in that way because again you know whatever brand you associate yourself with you're going to end up borrowing or inheriting some of that culture whether you like it or not so do try and pick somebody who could represent your brand in a way that you want it to be represented don't just pick us any celebrity just because you can it's not worth it it's really not worth aligning your your brand to somebody who is known for failing or letting people down or peeing people off just don't do that found that by going to events where you know that celebrities are going to be there it's not that difficult or challenging to get in front of them especially if you've paid for an advanced ticket like a platinum ticket for example some conferences and trade shows that you go to you can actually upgrade your ticket so you get a chance to have a photo with the celebrity or you might get a chance to spend some time with that celebrity because you've paid to upgrade that ticket that is absolutely worth doing last year at the national achievers congress miles and i paid 1200 pound a ticket to be in the platinum lounge but i tell you what when you're hanging around with these celebrities and people who are on stage like sabastian co donald trump richard branson alan sugar gosh who else did we meet antony robbins you know when you're hanging around with those kind of people in the back room there's something special about that and by getting your photo taken with them and by asking them questions and i mean not pitching your business at them ask them questions about how they overcame something in their business a challenge that you're going through right now because these people have been through it and nine times out of ten they've probably been through it in a much more public way and a much more expensive way than you've had to go through it so use it as an opportunity to ask them questions the year before last tony robbins was out the back again the same event national achievers congress which i love going to it's in london every year and i asked tony robbins a question about branding and what he thinks about building a brand what's been the most important thing in his brand journey and i have my iphone right next to me so as he was answering me i recorded the whole thing well i was able to then put that out to my entire network that positions me as somebody who is hanging around with that level of authority and that kind of person and i'm not lying because i am i might be paying to be out the back there but that is building my circle of influence there were people on the stage that day like andy harrington and simon colson sharing the stage with tony robbins who i didn't even know before and i was looking at them on stage thinking oh my god wow this is amazing you know these guys are incredible they're speaking to like there's 8 000 people sat behind me now these people are some of my closest friends and it's because i put myself in that environment of being around them so don't be afraid to ask because if you don't ask you don't get a great example of that is my other half steve who he has so much more confidence than me and sometimes i look at him and think oh my god i wish i could be like that but i don't have as much confidence as him he's he's really ballsy and he just goes to show that actually um you know when i've mimicked some of the things that he's done when i've thought hang on a minute you know if he can do it i can do it when i've gone and done it it's not being that difficult so it just goes to prove you don't need to be a ballsy confident person to get in front of these celebrities when we were at the um unleash the power within tony robbins upw event about five weeks ago in london one of steve's friends has a little girl who um she'd said to one of tony's bodyguards that she would really love for tony to carry her little girl across the fire and tony apparently had agreed to this well when um when this friend of steve's was telling him about this steve in his head's going i want that for lily he's little girl who's four years old my stepdaughter so we were um we were around the back of where everybody was hanging out and steve says i'm gonna i'm gonna get tony to carry lily across the fire and uh and i just knew that he was gonna do it because steve is a sort of person when he sets his mind to something that's it i've learned a lot from him and it's something that you can learn as well you know i i just i thought right he's gonna do it so off he went and that night it was about oh gosh it was about midnight one o'clock in the morning by the time we were actually walking across the fire it was really really late i'm trying to get five thousand people across the fire was a bit crazy but steve had it in his mind that he was going to get tony robbins to carry lily across the fire and he actually went through i i believe it was 19 people it was either 18 or 19 different people he went through saying i want to get tony robbins to walk my daughter across the fire who do i need to speak to they pass him to the next person who do i need to speak to to get tony robbins to carry lily across the fire and in the end he got in front of tony robbins best friend and wife sage who both said yep no problem get into that lane over there that's where tony's going to be walking make sure you're there because he'll come across and he will walk lily across the fire sure enough tony came along him and steve had a really great chat steve got to know sage a lot better and gary king one of tony's really good friends who's an incredible speaker that i saw speaker the yes group last week and sure enough tony robbins carried lily across the fire now four years old lily won't even probably remember and she won't know until she's older what a big thing that actually was but to people who follow tony robbins and he has got millions and millions of followers all over the world steve using that footage will help him to position himself as somebody who hangs around with tony robbins who is a family guy and you know and that's who steve is steve's all about community and family so it's a great brand for him to position himself with so think about who you could position yourself with sometimes you might need to pay to go in front of these celebrities other times you don't you know there are b-list celebrities who are out of work you might not want to align your brand to somebody out of big brother but then there might be somebody who has been on tv in coronation street or emmerdale something like that who you know they made a good amount of money while they were working but now they're out of work because the season is over the project is over and they've got no money coming in well people still remember them as the celebrity they were when they were on tally so it is worth asking them to help you endorse your products or service it might even be that you can help them with something that you already so for example not long ago i helped a musician with the album cover and the branding and everything for their music and in return they gave me incredible endorsements because i was really helpful and i helped them to position themselves as a market leader in the music industry which is incredibly tough and in fact within 24 hours of the launch of their first single we had 13 000 hits to their youtube channel and helped to continue that within a week they had over 50 000 hits to their youtube channel so in return for the endorsements that that person gave me i gave them the credibility the visibility and everything they needed to start building their brand as a musician who previously was pretty much unknown so what can you offer a celebrity there might be something that you can do in return for that endorsement if it comes to you paying for it it's not actually that difficult to get in front of a celebrity when you use google for example you can get in touch with their manager or their their agent yesterday i was looking to get in touch with ruby wax i googled ruby wax her business came up online there were different things about her being a speaker um there were different websites that she's put herself on because she's wanting business she's wanting to attract work wasn't that difficult for me to get through to her and send her an email twitter is a brilliant way of you getting in front of these celebrities so you know don't be afraid to use the channels that are there that are open to you if you're on twitter and you you find out their twitter address just start tagging them in things start promoting them start helping them to promote them do really good things get in front of them be nice start conversations with them have a chat these people are not supernatural they are human beings and and you know like jada um what's her name uh jada pinkett smith will smith's wife she was on facebook last night and i i sent a message to her haven't responded to me yet that doesn't mean she won't you know it's get in front of them the more you start getting in front of them the better i'll leave you with a little story about a friend of mine who is in a circle that i am part of and this this goes back a number of years but it always stuck in my mind just okay well if she can do it i can do it now this lady she is a a dog trainer and a very very good dog trainer and you might know who i'm talking about if you're in the same kind of circle as me anyway she decided that she really wanted to build her brand as a celebrity brand she wanted to become the celebrity dog trainer now to become a celebrity dog trainer she put together a proposition how she was going to brand herself and the unique selling point that she had was that she trains the owner not the pet so what she did was she phoned up every radio station in her local area and all of the national radio stations she pushed herself at the forward as the celebrity dog trainer she came up with a great little story and within a few days she got the opportunity to go on one of the major radio stations and do an interview on dog training and what she does anyway she positioned herself as a celebrity dog trainer they did this whole interview with her and gerry halliwell happened to be listening to that radio interview and got in touch with my friend and it didn't take long before she'd built that celebrity status because the minute she got one celebrity on board who do celebrities hang out with other celebrities so it really didn't take very long for her to actually become the celebrity dog trainer so that should teach you something about making a decision about who you are and then branding yourself as that person because all she had to do was decide that she was a celebrity dog trainer and she made that happen she manifested it because the more you talk about being a celebrity dog trainer the more it's likely that you are going to start bumping into celebrities who want you to train their dogs so she did really really well out of that and has built a fantastic brand now these are just some of the tips that i can give you around building your your brand as a celebrity and i'm sorry that this video has been a bit jumpy but hopefully the content has been really good for you if you want to get in contact with a celebrity to help you position your brand they are the biggest tips i can give you either hang out where they're hanging out go to trade shows and events where they're going to be and upgrade yourself to a ticket which enables you to get out the back with them or get a photo with them get online find out who they are on twitter find out their twitter names um find out who their agents and their managers are find out how much it would cost for them to endorse your brand so i'm going for a tunnel find out how much it would cost you to do that um you know because it might not cost you that much and if you have to pay one thousand or two thousand pounds of celebrity to endorse your brand well if that's going to quadruple your sales or increase your sales by 50 times then that's got to be worth spending two thousand in fact you're not spending you're investing it so it's worth doing that and you know it another way of doing it is if you're writing a book include them in the book that you're writing you know mention them in it let them know you're going to mention them in it if you want them to endorse the book then ask them for it it's it's really it's really a simple once you've made up your mind on which celebrity it is you want to help you with your brand you can get yourself in front of them quite easily and i could go on all day about stories i know about people that have got in front of celebrities really easily but i want you to find this out for yourself do let me know how you get on i can't wait to find out and if you've got any questions at all about positioning your brand or leveraging your brand using celebrities to do it please do put them in the comment box below and if you've liked what i've said in this video please like it and share it with other people you know who might want to position their brand with celebrities or position their brand as the celebrity in their industry because we really really want to help more people just like you so i'm coming up to my turning now to go and interview Raphael do pick up your issue of brand brand magazine i'll put a link to it under this video and i shall very much look forward to seeing you in another branding tip take care bye bye