Brand Strategy Articles
Internal Branding – the Key to reconnecting your Customers and Employees
Customers drive sales and profitability. So how do your employees interact with and engage customers? How would your customers describe their experience? Do your customers have an expectation on how your employee will represent your brand?
So how does an organisation manage its customer experience to ensure its people, processes and culture are reinforcing customer expectations? A key foundation of customer experience management is internal branding.
Internal branding in essence is ‘living’ and ‘delivering on’ your organisation’s brand promises. It is an organisation-wide initiative that enables all employees to understand how they can personally impact on a customer’s experience and contribute to building the company’s reputation and brand.
Brand is Image and Image is Brand….
For those that believe brand and image are separate and in no way linked may need to rethink their position. In the media recently have been two prime examples of how brand and image are closely interrelated, albeit almost the same thing. Brand in its simplest context are those attributes that makes one product or company stand apart from another. Image is how products and companies present themselves, through logos, colours and artefacts.
The definition of brand needs to go one step deeper because those attributes that make a product or company stand out from others stems from something beyond image and below the surface of what we see – that part of the iceberg that lays underneath the waterline. These are normally considered core values. That is, those values that help us create a relationship with products, services and companies so we then grow to know and trust them.
Is the Qantas brand still well-liked?
Well, does it matter? Do we have a real choice? After all, the latest IBISWorld report indicates that Qantas (along with its subsidiary Jetstar) is the clear leader with a 74% market share of domestic passenger travel. Virgin Blue’s shift away from the ‘No-Frills’ image and business model is still in transition: its point of differentiation does not command the price premium that Qantas does, while its price (and cost structure) is similar to that of Jetstar, a rising star to whom it has lost market share over the last five years. Having outlasted its competitors (remember Ansett and Australian Airlines), the brand is quite endearing and the history or legacy appears to associate it as Australia’s airline.
Data or Analysis: What gives the greater edge? The debate continues…
In part two of this debate, the question of what truly gives a competitive edge is explored through looking at the types of data captured, and poses a further conundrum of what is the better type of data, quantitative or qualitative?
In the previous blog (posted 12th August, 2011), the position was taken that it is the uniqueness of data that can provide quality insights that help establish a sustainable competitive advantage; but in saying this, the unique data needs to be matched by quality analysis. However this raises the question of how data can be “unique”? Should you look for the hard, quantifiable and crunchable analytics or the more “soft touch” that is afforded with qualitative data?
Getting Paid NOT to use a Brand!
Creative agencies have long used “personification” as a technique to develop and describe a brand. Describing inanimate products as people allows consumers to understand and relate more closely with the product.
Taking this further many organisations appoint brand ambassadors or spokespeople that represent the attributes that they would like consumers to associate with their product or organisation. A good example of this was Gillette who associated themselves with the world’s best performing athletes. In 2009 Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry were Gillette’s global ambassadors. Securing these three ambassadors cost Gillette millions!
The Tale of Two Visions
A recent article in The Australian entitled, “Volvo’s fork in road as owners vie for future” (08/06/2011) posed an interesting dilemma currently being faced by the automaker. Having been acquired by Geely Holding Group, a Chinese car manufacturer, from Ford Motor last year, the new owners have been working tirelessly to transform Volvo and revitalise the brand. It is at this point that the “fork in the road” presents itself.
The question is whether Volvo is appropriately consolidating its brand equity as a “safety” oriented brand, by representing afresh as edgy, sleek, and target to the luxury oriented customer. Arguably this has the potential to undermine such established brand equity, and Volvo must prove the credibility of such a strategic change to espouse what are clearly different organisation visions and values.
What does your Political party really stand for?
Political parties traditionally are the embodiment of a set of strongly held beliefs about the way a country and economy should be managed. Sadly, most political leaders now spend more time thinking and worrying about their public image than they do about what they and their party really stands for.
In his recently published book “The Dumbing Down of Politics” Lindsay Tanner explains that political leaders are now obsessed with achieving media exposure. He goes on to explain that serious political debate about the big issues is being lost in a political sideshow that is more concerned with appearances than substance. In essence many political parties are now poorly positioned as brands. Brands actually stand for something – many political parties do not.
How to Turn Your Customers into Promoters?
We are living in a time now where customers can voice their opinions that will be heard by masses of other people around the globe. This may be a concern for some organisations as they increasingly lose control of their brand message. However, there is a very strong opportunity for organisations to foster advocates that will promote your brand. The same platform that customers used to voice their opinions is the same channel organisations should target to create a positive buzz around their brand. And they can do this by identifying and focusing on those customers that are brand promoters.
When saving a $ will cost you a Fortune
Over the last 15 years there have been a plethora of companies that driven by cost saving have chosen to outsource their help lines to overseas locations. The lure of cheap labour and the dramatic reduction in communications costs has made outsourcing Help Centres increasingly more financially attractive. Sadly, outsourcing Help Desk Services is now prevalent in many Industries as service providers seek to reduce their costs.
As a customer of a major Australian Telco I recently spent 3 hours on the phone to a gentleman in India called Raj and by the end of the conversation I was no closer to getting my issues resolved. His English was ordinary his product knowledge almost non-existent, worse still he had no understanding of how important my broadband is to me. By the end of the conversation the Telco’s brand had been damaged beyond repair. There is no doubt the Telco had saved money by outsourcing the service in the short term but what about the long term?
Creating a Meaningful Brand
In a recent video blog titled Rethinking the Idea of the Brand (25/02/11) on the Harvard Business Review website, author Umair Haque discussed the concept of brand as it is perceived today. To say we must think of brands as dynamic and continually evolving is nothing new; and we know that brands are by no means a static entity. Simply put, a brand, both organisational and employer, is a means by which companies can differentiate themselves from competitors and consumers can identify particular goods and services.