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.

Many organisations fall into the trap of developing an advertising strategy with the intention of communicating how wonderful and customer-centric the organisation is. While the advertising direction may be in-line with the organisation’s brand, where it falls down is where what is being promoted is not being delivered.

The result of this is that both customers and employees are disconnected with the organisation, as UK oil company Total experienced. The company ran an ad campaign featuring the perfect employee called Steve who spends his time running around helping customers with heavy loads, childcare and car maintenance with the tagline ‘You’ll find people like Steve at all of our service stations’. The company did not reinforce this customer expectation with training and additional support to help employees, leaving both the employee and the customer frustrated and disappointed.

Internal branding today is all about connecting employees with an organisation’s brand and ensuring the internal brand experience is authentic. Just ask one of the 46,000 employees of The Dow Chemical Co. about the authenticity of their internal brand. They will most likely point you to the ‘I Am the Human Element’- an internal campaign which celebrates the contributions and successes of their employees, helping the organisation achieve its vision.

FedEx is another example of an organisation that has focused on building a strong internal brand and as a result is considered one of the world’s most admired companies and trusted employers. The company’s workforce not only know and believe in the values instilled by their ‘People-Service-Profit’ internal brand, but they can cite chapter and verse the actions they and others have taken to deliver the FedEx brand and what it means to them. This level of employee engagement delivers significant benefit to FedEx in terms of high performance and strong profits.

So perhaps it is time to consider the benefit to your organisation of building a strong internal brand. Recent transitional times with a turnover of employees, changing management styles or the merging of departments may have had more of an impact on your internal brand than you realise.

Reinvigorate your employees on what your organisation stands for and build passion for your brand promise. Not only will you reconnect with your employees and improve engagement but you will also reconnect with your customers and improve profitability.

If you Google the word ‘leader’ or ‘leadership’, there are 487 million hits. That’s a lot of information which can only add to the confusion of what leadership really is. Leadership is not the sole responsibility for ‘people at the top’, everyone can learn to lead by tapping into the abilities that lie within each of us. Leadership differs from management in that it makes the followers want to achieve high goals, rather than simply bossing people around.

True leaders always go first; they set the tone, inspire, coach and above all, lead by example to gain commitment. To inspire your team into higher levels of teamwork, there are certain things you must be, know and do. These do not come naturally.

Leaders walk their talk – in true leaders, there are no gaps between what they say and their actions. Leaders think, act and behave in line with the value and behaviours of the organisation.

Aligning the organisation with its desired brand values is a continual and complex process. Yet, I’m amazed that all too often companies adopt a single focus approach around internal communications. It’s absolutely essential that any internal branding initiative is supported by internal communications but NOT in the absence of addressing the role of managers. Flooding the office corridors with brand posters, handing out glossy brand books and company merchandise will not alter employee behaviour. This has to be addressed by management behaviours. After all, the actions and behaviours from an employees direct manager influences what the employee does and how they act, not the poster behind the water cooler! Unfortunately, the so called ‘sexy’ side of internal branding seems to receive a lot more attention and resources than the critical elements of developing managers into brand leaders. Ask any employee who has attended a grand, Hollywood style internal brand launch, “what really changed the following day, month, year”? I would bet that in 9 out of 10 times the response would be “bugger all”.

Our approach to aligning brand with culture is to start with management, from executive management to middle management down to supervisory positions. This is where the communication blockage lies. Most, if not all managers lack the skills, competence and confidence to lead by example. It becomes even more complex and challenging when we throw in brand as well. So these people need to be developed and empowered to make a difference with their teams. Clearly, the CEO needs to set the tone, but it needs to be cascaded down throughout the organisation. One off leadership training days serve little purpose. What’s needed is a structured, continual learning and development program.

Current thinking is based on transformational leadership. Transformational leaders work towards a common goal with their team; putting team members first, trusting them and developing team to the next level. They inspire their team members to ‘live and breathe’ the company’s brand. Not because they have been asked to, but because it makes sense for the individual, the customer and for the organisation.

There are generally five characteristics of transformational leaders:

1. Model the way – people follow the person then the plan. It is the leader’s behaviour that wins respect.
2. Inspire a shared vision – enlist others in a common vision or objective by inspiring confidence to achieve extraordinary things.
3. Challenge the process – search for opportunities by seeking innovative and better ways to do things. Support good ideas and make things happen.
4. Enable others to act – foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust. Engage the team.
5. Encourage the heart – recognise contributions by showing appreciation for excellence. Celebrate your success stories with the team.

By all means introduce an element of fun and enjoyment into your internal branding program. And use all available internal communication tools to keep the company brand front of mind across your organisation. Above all else, engage your management teams to take the message to the frontline through their individual behaviours and abilities to communicate brand to their teams. Ensure your managers are consistently displaying “on-brand” characteristics; walking the talk and integrating brand into daily decision making, setting of goals and priorities and actions.

If an organisation’s people have been exposed to years of excessive spending, risk-aversion, HR rationalising, bureaucracy, or even overly centralised control, then there could well be major obstacles to shifting that culture, especially throughout introduction of any new strategy and initiatives. Altering the behaviour, perceptions, and performance of teams of people to successfully achieve change is very difficult.  Take for example, downsizing, the more prominent implications of downsizing are actually in relation to the impact on culture (and not as one would envisage, upon cost savings or short-term productivity gain).

Sound strategy resonates with the culture of an organisation; it’s a natural fit if you like. That being said, cultural shifts are sometimes required to support a new strategy or framework in an effort to become a true value-based organisation. This is especially the case if that strategy necessitates increased cost containment, customer focus, speed, and a focus upon leadership & development.

Culture is heavily influenced by an organisation’s executives and managerial staff, through decision making and their strategic input and direction. It’s imperative that more managers commit to a greater understanding of the critical importance of culture; especially the assessment of culture. Only after people in an organisation recognise that the current culture needs to transform to support their organisation’s success and progress, can change actually occur.

By assessing culture more thoroughly, managers gain a far broader awareness as to the full extent to which their team are willing to accept change, and determine the root causes of problems which impede stronger organisational performance. Ultimately, the choice will come down to whether Managers allow the culture to grow/change inceptually, i.e. self-develop where individuals operate in self-defined silos / vacuums; or more wisely, those same Managers invest the necessary time and resources to proactively define the internal brand, culture and behaviours anticipated which best serve all team members, the organisation and the customers.

In an article published by the Australian Leadership foundation Mark McCrindle explains that Generation Y’s have lived through “the age of the internet, cable television, globalisation, September 11 and environmentalism. Such shared experiences during ones youth unite and shape a generation. There is an ancient saying that bears much truth: People resemble their times more that they resemble their parents”

Whilst these events have shaped the views and psyche of Generation Y there are other changes that have taken place in the world which have led them Generation Y to think differently.  Factors including increased crime rates increased housing costs, body image issues and high rates of youth unemployment all contribute to a greater focus on short term thinking. McCrindle’s research shows that Generation Y’s life expectation is to complete their education (94%) with not too many plans after this.

Previous generations of Baby Boomers and Generation X had values including a strong work ethic, respect for the system and authority, loyalty, commitment, long term planning, conservatism and delayed gratification.

These values contrast dramatically with generation Y who have become disillusioned with their parents material success and the price that they have paid for this success. They have seen absent parents, divorced parents, and a significant incidence of stress related disease. In many ways generation Y have rejected the values of their parents as they have become disenchanted with the materialism that has driven so many of their elders. Generation Y “work to live” whereas their parents could be described as “living to work”.

So what does this mean in the context of an Employer Branding proposition? What is it that Generation Y workers are looking for in an Employer? McCrindle explains “When deciding to accept a job salary ranks sixth in order of importance after training, management style, work flexibility, staff activities and non-financial rewards. A job merely provides an income to do what they want to do. They are in search of fun, for quality friendships, a fulfilling purpose and for spiritual meaning.”

Communicating effectively with the people from Generation Y is another challenge in itself; the younger generation can detect hidden agendas and insincerity at a thousand paces. They don’t respond to slick presentations, driven by facebook and other social media they expect communication to be real, spontaneous and real time rather than slick and well-rehearsed. Additionally, they are looking for quality interaction as McCrindle says “They don’t care how much you know until they know that you care”

With almost 28% of the total population being classified as Generation Y understanding their needs and changing the workplace accordingly will be critical to the success of Organisations in the future. One of the greatest challenges for Organisations is recognising that this generation probably has a very different set of values than their incumbent executive team. In reality many organisations need to be redesigned to appeal to the next generation of workers.

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.

The lines between image and brand were recently blurred when QANTAS launched a campaign over Twitter asking customers what their dream luxury in-flight experience would be.  Whether the timing of this campaign was intentional or not, QANTAS customers used the medium as a platform to comment on the airlines current operational and industrial dispute issues.  The attempt to garner some support and goodwill towards the company was entirely misdirected.  Instead of creating a polished image of QANTAS the campaign really exacerbated the internal issues and drew attention away from QANTAS’ key brand message.  Evidently, this exercise has been dubbed “the Hindenburg of social media” but goes to show that when something is not right at your core, where your brand draws its meaning from, then no amount of “image polishing” that can fix it.

Another example of how image and brand are interrelated is shown in the current plight of Kyle Sandilands.  Love him or hate his brand message is about sensationalism and as such in his need to be “sensational” he can go very awry.  His recent public outburst cost Austereo 60% of their sponsors which estimated to be worth $8 million.  The bankable image of the man has truly tanked and we are seeing glimpses of what he truly values.  It was reported that Holden was the first sponsor to leave Austereo citing disconnect in values of the shows and the Holden brand.  Next to follow were The Good Guys.  What sponsors are starting to see is Kyle Sandilands brand, and values. Sponsors are then making judgement calls on whether his brand is congruent with theirs.

So whereas QANTAS tried to use a competition campaign to polish its image in an attempt to gloss over what was happening in the company on an operational level, the sentiment felt by its customers did not change – customers wanted more.  How was QANTAS going to address the issues the company faces whilst still being “the spirit of Australia.  The opposite occurred with Kyle Sandilands.  His real and overtly sensational self bubbled to the surface from his core and tarnished his incredibly bankable image.  These examples highlight the very tenuous but also very real link between image and brand because really the two cannot be separated; your brand is your image is your brand….

For the context of this blog, “brand” transcends the more simplistic view of being logos, slogans, pictures and jingles. It represents more of the DNA of an organisation that is then succinctly distilled into the logos, slogans and pictures we know and see every day. Brand in this context really lays at the heart of an organisations core competency(s).

Taking Apple Inc., how did the company go from virtual bankruptcy in the late 1990s to the number one company in the world in terms of market capitalisation? It thought differently. With Steve Jobs leading the way the company used the term “think different” to transform industries. And it all started from a premise of “let’s do things different…” Thinking about these simple words, it is hard not to see how they managed to transform a poor performing company into a superstar. The foundation of Apple was built on being innovative and thinking differently; from developing an operating system that can boot up in a short amount of time to revolutionising the way we listen to and purchase music. All this came from a core belief that the company could simply do things different.

Looking at another company, General Electric (GE) we can immediately understand what the company is about. Like Apple, GE’s “imagination at work” brand statement really permeates all aspects of their business and sits at its core. You can get a sense that no idea is too audacious if there is value and merit in it. As a diversified company GE aims to be a market leader in whatever industry they operate in. How do they do this? Through using your imagination at work. No matter what industry GE is operating in, the company believes and understands that they can best serve their customers by being innovative. They also understand that they can attract the best minds because GE’s brand is synonymous with ideas and innovation.

Whether you love brands or hate them, we all have a connection with them on some level. Brands, like the Apple and GE, can both inspire customers and discourage them. How we are able to have a connection with brands is by knowing explicitly what they stand for, which means as a consumer we can make a value judgement about whether or not we support them. So it is imperative to assess and test your brand to know if customers and consumers really know what you stand for.

Businesses are said to achieve a competitive advantage when they simultaneously have resources that are valuable, unique and difficult to imitate (Somaya & Williamson 2008).  Value in this context pertains to reducing consumer uncertainty by delivering what you promise them.  Porter (1998 p.3) suggests that a business’ competitive advantage can be enhanced through increases in value created for customers.  Uniqueness refers to a point of distinction or difference that your business can claim and own, aside from your competitors.  Due to the dynamics of people, your employees are a business resource that is very difficult to copy or replicate.  An engaged sales force for example is a product of your culture and work environment.

As engagement is critical to achieving this competitive advantage, let’s clarify the term ‘engagement’.    When you engage, you actively choose to involve yourself in or to something.  Volunteers for the Red Cross, for example make a choice to involve themselves to the cause of providing for the homeless and poor.  In the employee engagement context, this refers to the choice to be involved through employment (also a form of engagement) towards the vision of a business be it delivering a good or service i.e. Airlines delivering airline travel experiences.  It is this cognitive agreement, alignment and motivation to work towards the vision that is at the heart of employee engagement (Luthans & Peterson 2002).

Employees are a critical interface that interacts with buyers and consumers.  This interface serves also as the point of value exchange between your business and consumer.  Logically if you are an airline promising superior customer service (i.e. Singapore Airlines), consumer uncertainty is reduced when at both check-in counters, boarding and in-flight they are met with employees embodying sincere, efficient, intuitive and quality customer service.  Through each of these consumer touch-points, engaged employees deliver value to consumers, fulfilling their service expectations.  Such consistency in customer service can only be delivered by Singapore Airlines aligning and engaging their employees with their company values.

It is your employees that will set you apart from your competitors, and airlines such as Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia are a great case example of using employee engagement to enhance competitive advantage.  Virgin Blue distinguishes itself apart from its competitors through its cheeky jargons and more importantly its corporate value set being value for money, quality, fun, competitive challenge and innovation. Virgin Blue employees embody these five values and convey a message to consumers that distinguishes them from employees of Qantas or Tiger Airways.

Employees are not imitated easily because not only are they of value to your business, but they are resilient to change and depositories for ideas, attitudes and behaviours (Somaya & Williamson 2008).  No other asset within a business has this capacity. This human capital, when harnessed through employee engagement cannot be cloned, purchased or easily acquired by your competition.  Furthermore, if your business can engage and ‘tap’ into this human capital, there is a very real opportunity to maximise employee efficiency and productivity. Businesses often fall into the trap of placing consumers first, and employees second.  As a business, don’t neglect to nurture the very interface (the employee) that interacts with your ultimate source of business revenue (the consumer).  It makes sense to become an employee-first organisation.  Your most valuable asset: human capital, when engaged and aligned with your company values is a real source for competitive advantage (Somaya & Williamson 2008).  Attract, recruit, retain and engage your employees with your company values to distinguish yourself from your competitors, deliver value to your consumers.

In the previous blog (posted 12^th 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?

In another Harvard Business Review blog entitled, “You can’t analyse your way to growth” (12 September, 2011), Roger Martin argues the need to separate “analysis from appreciation”. By his definition, analysis is basically crunching the readily available data to make assumptions about and extrapolate into the future. The problem being this data is usually historical and fails to provide insight into new opportunities that can grow your organisation. By contrast, appreciation is the qualitative side of data. This data is regarded as being more in tune with your customers, basically putting yourself in their shoes and having a deep “appreciation” for their lives. How you capture this data relates to understanding how your customer uses or interacts with your product and service – what makes it easy, what makes it hard, is it enjoyable and fun or tedious and difficult. It is from having this appreciation that Roger Martin believes opportunities will present themselves because you can imagine new possibilities that did not previously exit.

The blog cites some great examples from Procter & Gamble which shows how being in tune and close to your customers can present great opportunities for growth. The product Febreeze was born from the company having an appreciation for consumers. The market for air fresheners was only showing minimal growth and the product simply “masked” odours. Having an appreciation for the needs of consumers P&G understood that air fresheners fell short of expectations; where users would prefer a product that eliminates odours. Out of having that appreciation, Frebreeze was developed and the product produced tremendous growth and profit for P&G.

In this instance, the unique data that is needed to provide quality insights is captured by having an intimate and deep appreciation for the lives of your consumers – how they interact and use your product is vital to understanding where new growth opportunities lie and maintaining your sustainable competitive advantage. However, it is also the analyst, with their qualitative proficiency, that could identify the expectation versus performance gap, like in the case of Frebreeze, which created a new growth trajectory for P&G. So is it data or analysis? The debate continues.

Just reading the headlines alone one can see how quickly these companies’ brands have been decimated. Almost overnight Tiger Airways has gone from being a company that espouses affordability without compromising passenger safety and security to an airline branded as being unsafe and unfit to fly. The actual grounding of its entire Australian domestic fleet is estimated to be costing the company $1.5 million a day, their stock price is in decline and a minor shareholder has reduced its stake in the airline.

At the same time the damage to The News of the World brand has forced the Chairman of its parent company to shutdown the newspaper. The newspaper had a rich 168 year history reporting the news and now in the space of a few days it has ceased operation; all because of a scandal that has thrown the reputation of the company into turmoil and caused irreparable damage to the brand; not to mention the questionable ethical behaviours and criminal investigations currently underway.

How it is these companies lost control of their brands and let customers decide what to brand them? There is a myriad of issues that underlie these cases but from a branding perspective these companies failed to deliver on its promises. When a brand fails to deliver on what it is supposed to then customers and the public will retaliate. The News of the World failed to follow ethical journalistic standards and the public have been quite outspoken, to the point where the newspapers owners have closed the doors. Tiger Airways has failed to meet the required standard to operate in Australia, forcing the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to ground the entire domestic fleet. As a consumer would you fly again with a carrier that was once grounded over safety concerns?

Companies should really take note of what happens in the coming weeks to these company’s brands. Tiger Airways may be granted the ability to fly again but will it be welcomed by customers? The News of the World may again publish news under a different name but will readers really ever trust them again? Perhaps if they fully grasped the warning Warren Buffett gave, they would have actually done things different to safeguard their brands from being branded.

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.

Lindsay Tanner explains “Politicians are now so desperate to get media coverage at almost any cost that they willingly participate in entertainment formats that have little connection to any political issue.” This media sideshow contributes towards the substance of political parties being lost.

A party’s position on an issue is often influenced by the outcomes of focus groups rather than deeply held political conviction. Adopting a popular position based upon the outcomes of a focus group means that as public opinion changes politicians regularly need to change their policy. This is not leadership – rather it is the” tail wagging the dog”. This approach drives the increasingly held belief that politicians primary agenda is to attend to what will get them elected at the next election.

Mark Latham explains that “politics has evolved into a long-running TV show, whereby its senior players gear their daily schedules, not around matters of public policy and governance, but the quest to have their comments . . . replayed on the nightly news”.

George Megalogenis argues that: “To a visitor from outer space, it would be hard to distinguish the job description of prime minister from that of a talk show or game show host.” In essence the quest to win the ratings war directly influences the activities of politicians and they invest more time, energy and effort into this agenda than they do into the serious political debate.

Neil Postman suggests that “cosmetics has replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control”. Much public perception is now influenced by appearance and superficiality. Substance is often disregarded because of the way someone looks or the way that they present their ideas.

Political parties are not unique; many organizations focus more on style than substance. These organisations invest millions of dollars in fantastic looking television advertising, great websites and flashy premises; meanwhile their people lack a common vision and purpose. Great organizations understand that deeply held beliefs and values combined with a common vision are the drivers of long term success. Substance is critical to creating a strong brand. Political parties are no different!