Internal Branding Articles
Congruent Brand & Culture
With globalisation, Brands are so much more than just products and logos. They’re channels of self expression which transcend the label of ‘commodity’. Avenues through which most people express their personalities, attitudes, likes, dislikes and association to certain groups and communities. Brand is strategic, a long term imperative requiring Leadership to carefully consider and manage it across the entire organisation. This usually takes a collaborative effort involving both the HR, and Marketing Departments, which is best achieved through forming a Brand Steering Committee which can strategically understand the whole of business requirements.
Branding from the Inside
Think of marketing or branding and you could be forgiven if you thought this encompassed a primary focus upon sales, the brand’s position, or even the customer. Just as critical and often omitted in this equation are employees, your brand’s ambassadors and the very people who carry the brand to make it meaningful to the customer.
In the midst of marketing executives developing brand campaigns, we wonder how this crucial element has been so often overlooked by most companies. Ask any group of employees and many will readily admit they don’t actually believe in their brand, feel disengaged or even quite hostile towards it, or the company. By building an employer brand your internal teams are given a powerful emotional connection to the products, services and the company.
Brand – Driving your bottom line!
A company’s culture really is its internal brand (what you stand for to your employees, stakeholders and vendors). Internally, culture plays a major part in driving revenue. Your customers and employees are human after all and operate on emotion.
Internal brand/culture is more than just this – it is about employee expectations and their behaviours (adhering to what makes your Company so unique). So how does internal brand/culture really have an effect on revenue?
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.