The Power of a Strong Brand Culture
Posted on | December 15, 2009 | mike zeller
Over the years, much good “how-to” stuff has been written about the subject of strategic marketing, branding and brand building, with the end game being to help marketers identify new ways to persuade more people to buy and become loyal to a brand, e.g. external marketing. But another very important and often ignored market is even more critical—the internal market—the very employees in a company or organization who can make or break the brand for the customers it is trying to attract.
John Wanamaker, the famous retail magnate considered by many to be the father of modern advertising, once said,
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; trouble is I don’t know which half.”
I’d like to take that idea one step further: The majority of any brand’s marketing dollars is wasted if investments are not also made in internal HR and marketing initiatives to create a strong brand culture; e.g., hire, retain, educate and inspire company associates to consistently and enthusiastically deliver on the brand promise. Why invest large sums of money on promoting an idealized image and set of expectations through external marketing initiatives if the brand itself under delivers? Yet many marketing and brand managers still believe advertising and promotion is the Holy Grail to drive sales and market share. Internal brand-building continues to take a back seat, even though now more than ever, market success is ultimately determined by the holistic brand experience one has with products or services and their intimately related touch points.
In a recent article by Sara M. Roberts, author and president of Roberts Golden, an organizational change management and internal marketing consultancy, she underscored the importance of the following statement:
“How many employees does it take to make a brand? Every one of them. How many employees does it take to break a brand? Just one.”
Larry Oakner, Director of Brand Culture at Interbrand, also wrote in his white paper, Managing Your Brand Through Your Employees,
“What makes the difference between a ho-hum brand and a truly great one? A company’s employees.”
So in the weeks ahead, I’d like to share a few mini reviews from what, in my opinion, are three great books on the topic of motivating and inspiring employees to deliver on the brand promise. Each book brings a fresh and different perspective:
Light Their Fire
First a little about the authors: Susan M. Drake is the founder and president of Spellbinders, Inc., an internal marketing and communications consultancy; Michelle J. Gulman is an independent consultant who specializes in change management and internal marketing; and Sara M. Roberts is the founder of Roberts Golden, a San Francisco-based consultancy that specializes in change management and internal marketing solutions. Their book, Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers, does a great job of providing step-by-step approaches to engage employees in the vision of a business or a brand and to empower them to make decisions that build brand and customer loyalty. The book includes practical tools and case studies to address the role of internal marketing in a variety of situations.
Living the Brand
Nicholas Ind is a writer and brand consultant based in Scandinavia. He’s written several business books including The Corporate Image, Great Advertising Campaigns, Branding Governance and The Corporate Brand. In his book, Living the Brand, Nicholas explores ways in which organizations should endeavor to engage and empower their employees to create “brand champions.” He advocates that organizations need to build meaning into ideas so that employees can genuinely live the brand in their day-to-day lives. The book explores the nature of branding and explores why people have become such important definers of the brand. Perhaps his biggest point is this: both organizations and people need values—they are essential to well-being and a sense of worth.
Brand from the Inside
Authors Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann bring yet another fresh and relevant perspective for proven ways to link strong emotional connections between employees and brands. Libby is a senior vice president of human resources for Yahoo and is responsible for leading Yahoo’s global HR efforts. Mark is the former global communications practice leader for the consulting firm Towers Perrin, where he counseled leaders of major corporations around the world on how to engage employees during challenging situations of defining change. Brand from the Inside is also a great “how-to” book that provides step-by-step instruction on how to motivate employees to consistently deliver on the experience the customer brand promises. The book is complete with examples and case studies from companies that prove how the “employee brand” can contribute to business results.
Be watching for more in-depth reviews of, and highlights from, each of these books. In the meantime, if you have any insights regarding your own personal experience (success or frustration) with getting employees to buy in and support your brand’s promise to the external marketplace, share them here. More to come.
Did you like this post? Here are a few more:
- Book Review – Light Their Fire – Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and WOW Your Customers
- Accenture Readies Launch of Borderless Workplace Using Web 2.0
- Pitfalls of Out-of-Touch Branding in a 2.0 World
- Welcome to “The New Clutter”: Everyone Who’s Trying to “Cut Through The Clutter”
- Why PR Matters in a Down Economy
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Welcome to The Cure for Common Marketing, a Jackson Marketing Group blog dedicated to sharing insightful thinking, new ideas, technologies, what-if concepts, success stories, and book/article reviews about light speed changes in the B2B marketing universe. We encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions.
January 8th, 2010 @ 12:30 am
Good advice. We often advise our students to take a step back and understand what they are getting into. This article reinforces that concept with some practical advice.
January 11th, 2010 @ 4:40 pm
Here’s more fuel for the “branding from the inside” fire. Great article:
http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp