Internal Branding Articles
Leadership – Taking Your Brand to the Frontline
The importance of the role managers play in infusing real change is under-estimated in most organisations. Whilst it’s true that perhaps certain leaders are born, the significant majority are developed into becoming leaders. Your position as a manager or supervisor gives you the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives. This power does not make you a leader, it simply makes you the boss!
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.
Consumer-celebrity attachment: The key to brand endorsement success?
A common feature of marketing strategy is celebrity endorsement, with brands leveraging a celebrities’ popularity to boost their own. The influence of such endorsements is undeniable, with a plethora of market research supporting the notion that sales, stock returns, company image and awareness, amongst other things, are boosted by having a celebrity on board. An obvious indication of the sheer power these endorsements have in the marketplace is the speed at which brands seek to distance themselves from celebrities who ‘behave badly’. Tiger Woods, Kate Moss and Kobe Bryant are just some of the celebrities that were quickly dumped by brands they represented after personal indiscretions became public. Perceptions of brands are inextricably associated to those of their celebrity backers, both good and bad.
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.