Ashamedly, I am an avid Kardashian fan, and if I am being totally honest, reality TV in general, so you can imagine how I felt when I saw Kris Jenners Masterclass series on ‘The Power of Personal Branding’.
‘Finally.’ I thought. ‘I can talk about the Kardashians at work!’
Before watching, I did wonder if Kris Jenner was qualified to be teaching anyone about how to be ‘your most authentic self’, which is not really how I’d describe any of the Kardashians.
But first, a quick Kardashian 101 (in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 15 years), this Refinery29 article is a good guide. The family are famous for being famous. Which has worked pretty well given two of the kids are now certified billionaires who boast over 1.2 billion Instagram followers combined. So maybe ‘Momager’ Kris Jenner maybe does have more qualifications to run a Masterclass on ‘how to become an influencer and get heaps of followers’ than I gave her credit for.
In this Masterclass, Kris Jenner teaches viewers about how to define their personal brand, how to connect with their followers and to grow their brand. Before I watched this, I hadn’t really considered that the Kardashians would call their online personalities a ‘brand’. I thought ‘branding’ was something for businesses selling goods and services.
In the first 30 seconds, Kris Jenner asks the audience pretty profound questions like ‘How do you want the world to see you?’ ‘What is the legacy you want to leave behind’, ‘What are your core values’ – all pretty deep questions for someone teaching us how to become a succesful influencer. There were some pretty big clichés in there too. Things like ‘the early bird gets the worm’ and ‘hard work pays off’. But she did have a few key points that would stay with me after the class.
- What is a personal brand – It is the way you present yourself to the word, who you are and what you stand for.
- Figure out what you love and then work out who you can make money from it
- ‘Very rarely are we taught to promote ourselves and be our own biggest advocate’ – Kris Jenner
Perhaps not all the lessons would turn into a new money making venture for myself, but I think they were still pretty important takeaways on how to live. Maybe more importantly, key ideas to think about when working on client projects and their branding. At the end of the day, how different is a personal brand to a corporate one? People buy from people – people do not want to buy from faceless corporation. So having a strong personal brand can be extremely beneficial to a business. It is about branding. Our brand guidelines often speak to a ‘tone of voice’, as if a brand can say something instead of writing it down as in 99% of our comms. People buy clothes to a colour palette, fit and style, as if they’re shopping for a visual identity. Graphic designers have created their own tongue in cheek guidelines to parody this, an Art Director created brand guidelines (called Fland Guidelines) for dealing with his former Copywriter.
The Kardashians clearly know how to create a personal connection from their individual businesses with their followers, as both Skims (Kim Kardashians shapewear and loungewear brand) and Kylie Cosmetics (Kylie Jenners makeup range) are billion-dollar businesses.
Don’t believe you could learn anything from the Kardashians? Take the Kris Jenner Masterclass and see for yourself.
If you’d like to see how we can build your brand, reach out to luke@affinity.ad
