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Strengthening the Living Brand: Three Keys to Internal Branding 5 July 2004—Lord Leverhulme famously pronounced that he knew half his advertising spending was wasted, but he didn’t know which half. These days, many services firms are wasting a significant proportion of their branding investments because they under-invest in their people. The main problem is that many services companies, for which brand value is built on the interactions and relationships among clients and employees, rely on inappropriate product branding concepts and fail to create strong, differentiated brands that drive preference and future value as effectively as possible. ITSMA research indicates that just 8% of marketing resources (people and spending) in services firms is focused on employees. At a time when brand differentiation, client retention, and the total service experience are critical to any services company’s continued success, this lack of focus on employees is a potential showstopper. According to participants at a recent ITSMA Europe inner circle dinner, the internal branding challenge is far greater than simply improving internal communications. Even "living the brand" workshops, although useful, are of limited value if they are the only tools used to help employees deliver on brand promises. The ITSMA dinner participants, from a range of leading technology-based companies in Europe, highlighted three specific approaches to building brand integrity and equity in services organizations, where the brand walks out the door every night. 1. Align Brand Personality, Company Values, and Corporate CultureA good services brand is corporate culture working at its best, where the values of the company are aligned with the desired brand values and the employees who choose to work for the company share these values. McKinsey offers a great example of this idea in the professional services; Virgin and Southwest Airlines provide great examples in consumer services. To achieve this degree of alignment, marketing must work closely with human resources to ensure that there is only one set of common values internally and externally, rather than one set of company values and a separate set of brand values. Not only must these values be reinforced consistently; they should also lie at the heart of all recruitment and rewards systems. Brand champions in this context are not just people who manage logos, guidelines, and visual identity in the field. They are people who demonstrate the company’s values and personality and set a clear example for their colleagues. 2. Build Each Employee’s Relationship with the BrandThere’s no doubt that well-conceived advertising can work wonders for getting employees behind the brand and driving recruitment of the right people (think of the IBM e-business campaign). But external advertising isn’t right for everyone, even those who use it need to run more targeted internal brand programs. Segmentation is as useful internally as it is with external audiences. Taking different approaches with new recruits and long-term veterans makes sense, for example, when the latter may have been through several changes of brand emphasis or even M&A activity. Another useful approach connects customer relationship management to employees, with the goal of moving employees to brand loyalty and advocacy. This approach requires careful consideration of how to move people through the classic relationship stages in a focused but sensitive way. 3. Develop Feedback Loops for Ongoing EvaluationEvaluating the effectiveness of internal branding requires ongoing tracking of the way external audiences perceive their interactions with the brand and the way your employees themselves perceive the brand. When employees understand the brand, feel proud to represent its values, and recommend that others work for you too, their positive attitudes will inevitably come through in dealings with external stakeholders. And when this, in turn, helps persuade clients to work with you rather than your competitors, that’s when you know you’re building sustainable value for your shareholders. —Bev Burgess, info@itsma.com |
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