Branding - not just for marketing any more

You’ve probably heard a lot coming from your marketing department about “brand loyalty.”

Marketing types tend to throw the term around the same way human resources uses “war for talent.”

But product branding is not, or at least should not be, only a matter for the marketing department. Not at all.

While eye-catching visuals, and memorable tag lines are very important, a corporate brand launch or repositioning, as they say, means more than simply new wrapping around old packages. A brand is designed around a commitment to delivering a product or service to customers. Delivering that product or service requires specific behaviours from employees and — here’s where HR comes in — making sure employees can demonstrate those behaviours becomes critical to brand success.

“A brand is fundamentally a promise made and kept,” explains Lynn Upshaw, a California-based brand strategist and author of The Masterbrand Mandate.

Brands are increasingly considered to be an important creator of stakeholder value, but exist based on a trust-based life-support system, he says. “When that trust is continually reinforced with the delivery of anticipated benefits, the brand is healthy and grows. When trust is damaged or diluted, the brand sickens and may expire.”

So while it may be marketing’s job to design a slick branding campaign, to a large degree the HR department shoulders responsibility for making sure the promise is kept, says Nancy Stewart, a change management and communications practice leader with the management consulting firm Towers Perrin.

“When it comes time to implement, it’s the employees who will deliver on the brand promise,” she says.

Most of the time, businesses derive their value proposition from, and create their brand around, larger business strategies, and each strategy requires different behaviours from employees.

“Organizations need to be clear on what their brand is,” says Stewart. “It’s surprising how many haven’t really thought through what they are promising to deliver and if they are actually capable of delivering it.”

What this means is slick marketing campaigns and million-dollar advertising initiatives could all go for naught if employees aren’t ready, willing and able to deliver on the promise of that great-looking campaign. “The first time you don’t deliver, you’ve just flushed millions of dollars,” says Stewart.

Once the company is clear on what exactly its brand promise requires it to deliver, that promise and the expectations that flow from it have to be clearly communicated to employees and then constantly reinforced. Line of sight has been around for a few years now, but employee branding goes way beyond that, says Stewart.

“Line of sight is a piece of it, but it’s not the whole thing,” she says. Line of sight suggests the employee understands what the corporate objectives are and how they are supposed to contribute.

If the company is going to promise great customer service, employees need to be prepared to deliver great service above all else; they need to be rewarded and recognized and evaluated against it. Hiring and recruitment strategies need to be changed, as well as training and development programs.

One organization that was trying to build its corporate brand around great customer service was evaluating call centre staff on the volume of calls processed. When employees are rushing through customers on the phone, employees think they are doing a good job but customers are left asking “what happened to that great customer service I was promised?”

Another company launched a large communication campaign to educate employees about the new brand, but they were still being trained and rewarded the same. “Nothing else changed,” says Stewart, and that can’t happen. If businesses commit to doing something differently for customers that means they have to do things differently with employees too.

On the other hand, one company that was developing a brand around customer satisfaction opted to bring customers into employee town-hall meetings so they could hear first-hand exactly what customers thought and begin to understand better how they can deliver on the brand.

A small survey conducted by Towers Perrin of senior executives in the New York City area found organizations usually believe they’ve been spending enough on their corporate brand, but not enough is being done to communicate the brand promise to employees, most of whom don’t understand the relationship between their rewards and their ability to deliver on the brand promise.

There’s a common complaint from employees in the middle of a new brand launch, says Stewart: “I understand how I’m supposed to contribute, but you know what, that’s not what I get rewarded for.”

“It’s not for the faint of heart because this is hard work,” says Stewart.

It takes a thorough assessment of the processes and systems in place to determine if they are ready for the changes that may be necessary. “It’s almost like auditing your people practices,” she says. What works and what doesn’t, what needs to be done differently and what has to be eliminated altogether.

Sometimes it means the wrong employees are in place, or else they might need new technologies.

For a successful brand launch, employees have to understand what is expected of them, believe in the new way of doing things and have the resources (systems and processes) available to actually do what is promised. If anyone of those elements is missing, the company won’t be able to deliver on its brand.

What to look for in staff

According to the Towers Perrin model for employee branding: “Most companies passionately pursue one of three dominant business strategies that drive their value proposition, and each value proposition implies a set of desired employee behaviours from different employee groups.”

The three common strategies and expected behaviours:
Operational efficiency:
Best Cost

Staff expected to demonstrate:
•speed;
•efficiency;
•cost cutting;
•resourcefulness;
•creativity;
•commitment;
•care; and
•teamwork.

Product excellence:
Best Product
Staff expected to demonstrate:
•innovation;
•passion for quality;
•continuous improvement;
•risk taking; and
•detail orientation.

Customer intimacy:
Best Experience
Staff expected to demonstrate:
•respect for people;
•teamwork;
•caring/sensitivity/empathy;
•listening skills; and
•friendliness.

Staff are:
•empowered;
•anticipatory; and
•experienced (low turnover).