GLOBAL TOP 30 BRAND GURU · #7 · 2026

Stop building brands.
Start being one.

Branding is a leadership matter, not a marketing one. Richard Sauerman spent the first 18 years of his career helping build brands on the outside. The next 22 were spent helping organisations build them from the inside. Then, at 63, he realised there was one brand he’d never consciously built that way: his own. It didn’t change his work. It changed him.

Start a keynote conversation Richard’s Brand Framework →

#7: Global Top 30 Brand Gurus 2026
200+: Brands built & repositioned
40: Years in brand strategy & culture

Richard’s Brand Framework The BIP Model™

Discovery
Strategy
Identity
Launch

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The Idea

Human performance through brand identity.

Most people treat their brand like a costume, something to put on for the boardroom and take off at the door. Richard’s 40 years across 200+ brands taught him the opposite. The brands that win, and the people who lead them, are the ones who stop performing an identity and start working from one.

Forensic brand expertise

He’s spent 40 years rebuilding brands from the inside out for organisations like QBE, RSPCA, CSIRO, Mortgage Choice, and Munich Re. Not parachuted in for a workshop, but sitting with CEOs asking the only question that matters: what do you actually stand for?

Personal identity work

This isn’t something Richard learned. It’s something he lived. After 40 years telling other companies who they are, Richard discovered, at 63, he’d never asked himself. He calls this your Brand on the Inside. He found his the hard way.

Culture performance

Culture isn’t a slide in the all-staff deck. It’s built, or quietly dismantled, in the moments between meetings. Richard closes the gap between the brand you present and the brand your people actually feel.

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Keynote vs. Workshop

Same thinking. Different depth.

Keynote

45–90 minutes. One talk, one room, one outcome. Includes a pre-event briefing, customising his content for your specific needs, and a follow-up summary for your team.

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Workshop

Half-day to full-day. Built around Richard’s BIP Model, then tailored to your organisation’s specific challenges, objectives and priorities. Combines facilitated exercises, individual work and group discussion to help teams apply the thinking directly to their own business. More depth. More discussion. More practical application.

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Coaching / Consulting Programme

Multi-session, scoped to your organisation. The full Brand Consulting engagement: Discovery, Strategy, Identity, Launch, and now structured Follow-Up. Or, for an individual leader, one-on-one Personal Brand & Executive Coaching.

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The Promise

I will change how your people see themselves.

And when people see themselves differently, they stop performing safety, and start performing with confidence and conviction.

That’s not a mood. It’s measurable: in engagement, in retention, in how your brand actually shows up when no one’s watching, and in the BIP assessment.

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The Framework

The BIP Model™

Brand Identity Performance.

Discovery

Who you actually are

Strip away the job title and the performance. What’s left? It starts the way it always has for Richard: real, one-on-one conversations, what he calls his red wine, midnight conversations.

Strategy

What you actually stand for

Turn that raw truth into a position everyone in the room helped build, and believes. The promise you make. The difference you deliver. Said the same way, every time.

Identity

How that becomes real, visibly

The truth made tangible: in how it looks, how it sounds, how it shows up. Not decoration. The visible proof of what Discovery and Strategy found.

Launch

How it lives, inside and out

The brand activated: in behaviour, in the market, and checked on again after the fact, not filed away and forgotten.

Richard didn’t invent this from a whiteboard. It’s the model behind 200+ brand transformations, now turned inward, and outward, for people.

Brand Consulting

Brand on the Inside.

Richard spent the first 18 years of his career inside some of the world’s leading agencies, working on some of the world’s best-known brands. But he came to realise that while advertising could make a brand promise, only the organisation could keep it.

For the past 22 years, he has worked directly with CEOs, executive teams, HR and marketing to build brands from the inside out. Because the strongest brands are those in which every part of the business walks the brand talk.

Richard’s Brand Consulting →

Keynotes & Workshops

Three talks. One framework.

See the keynotes → See the workshops →

Passionate, provocative, ruthlessly honest. Every talk is anchored in the BIP Model™, so your people don’t just feel something on the day, they leave with a system they can use. Want to go deeper than a keynote? Every one of these also runs as a half- or full-day workshop.

Signature Keynote

The Real YOU

Most people are doing their job with the handbrake on. This keynote removes it. Built on Stages 01–03 of the BIP Model™: Discovery, Strategy, Identity.

For Conferences, all-staff, senior leaders, culture programmes Format 45–90 min

Richard Sauerman delivering the Power Branding keynote to a corporate audience

Corporate Keynote / Workshop

Power Branding: People Edition

Your people are your brand. Not your logo. Not your tagline. Your people. Branding is now a leadership matter, not a marketing one, and the leaders who understand that build cultures that outperform.

For HR, L&D, Exec teams Format 45–90 min

Change & Innovation

Business as UNusual

Certainty is overrated. The organisations that thrive in disruption are the ones that know who they are when everything else changes.

For Teams in transformation Format 45–90 min

The Story

The brand guy who finally branded himself.

01

40 years telling others who they are

Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy, DDB, McCann, STW, The Brand Guy. 200+ brands: Coca-Cola to CSIRO. Microsoft to Mortgage Choice. RSPCA. Data61. Munich Re. 35 years spent helping organisations define their identity and find their place in the world.
02

ADHD diagnosed at 63

The man who spent a career unlocking identity in other people’s organisations discovered he’d been working against his own.
03

Oldest groom in MAFS history (Season 11)

Not a stunt, a demonstration of the very thing he’d been teaching for decades. When you know who you are, you stop performing safety and start living conviction.
A brand strategist who closes the gap between identity and performance.

When identity and behaviour align, performance follows. In people. In teams. In organisations. That’s where culture, leadership and brand become one system.

Read Richard’s full story →