I have helped many organizations build their brands from the
inside out for over fifteen years. In the process, I have learned what is critical
to the success of those endeavors.
1) RIGHT RESEARCH-INFORMED PROMISE: Your brand’s promise
must be based upon customer, competitor and internal insight. This can be
achieved through qualitative and quantitative research and an honest assessment
of internal strengths, weaknesses, core competencies and strategic intent. The
promise must be unique, compelling and believable.
2) CONSENSUS BUILDING PROCESS: Your brand’s promise must be
developed through a consensus-building process that includes (at a minimum) your
organization’s chief executive officer (CEO) and his or her staff and its top
marketing executives. Don’t leave this step to an internal marketing department
or an external marketing agency (unless they accomplish this through a
consensus building process). Brand strategy and positioning is closely tied to
organizational strategy, especially for organization level brands.
3) BRAND PROMISE TRANSLATED TO BRAND IDENTITY: The brand
promise should be translated into a supporting brand identity, including logo,
tagline and elevator speech among other key components. This should be
integrated into a system that includes brand architecture and naming
conventions. These should then take the form of guidelines that are available
to all employees and business partners through an online platform. Digital asset
management systems provide for even greater consistency control.
4) CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINT DESIGN: Involve your employees in
brainstorming how you can bring your brand’s promise to life at each point of
customer contact and how you can create new points of customer contact prior to
the purchase, at the point of purchase, immediately after the purchase and on
an ongoing basis during product/service usage and beyond. The brand’s promise
must come to life in more than just its identity and in its marketing communications.
5) INTERNAL COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION: At a minimum, you
should communicate to and educate employees and business partners about your
brand’s promise. This can best be accomplished through a multiple year (2+) integrated
communications and education plan and campaign that touches each employee at
least seven times. Tactically, one can build key brand messages into all
existing employee communication and training vehicles. One can also post the
brand promise or elevator speech in the most visible locations throughout the
organization’s workspace. There are also numerous ways to put it into each
employee’s workspace (screensavers, posters, mouse pads, etc.).
6) EMPLOYEE REWARD/RECOGNITION SYSTEM: Fully customizable
online employee reward/recognition systems that can help align employees in
support of the brand’s promise are now available to be leased or purchased.
They state brand promise goals clearly and concisely and provide rewards (gift
certificates, merchandise, etc.) and recognition for employees who are caught
bringing the brand’s promise to life. The systems encourage employee
involvement and provide a mechanism for manager involvement and oversight.
7) CULTURE THAT ALIGNS WITH THE INTENDED BRAND PERSONALITY:
In a seminal study on corporate brand strategy success, The Conference Board
discovered that alignment of organization culture with brand personality is
highly correlated with brand strategy success. This can be achieved in the
following ways:
- Choosing brand personality traits that are both compelling
to customers and natural for the organization to deliver upon, that is, ones
that seem to be built into the organization’s “DNA”
- Being honest about whether senior management can live in
alignment with the intended brand personality
- Where there are alignment gaps, pursuing a culture change
project to align employees with the intended brand personality
8) BUILDING BRAND MEASURES INTO EMPLOYEES MEASURES: Peter
Drucker said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This is true of brand
alignment as well. Build key brand measures into organization common measures
or translate them into individual measures for the positions most likely to
impact customers (product development, marketing, sales, customer service,
etc.).
9) INTERNAL SURVEYS: Periodically survey employees to
understand how well they can articulate the brand promise, whether they know
how they can positively affect the brand and whether they have personally
pursued actions to enhance the brand.
10) CEO SUPPORT: When the CEO understands the power of
strong brands and uses the brand promise to align all of the activities of the
organization, you are halfway to your goal of creating an organization filled
with brand champions. Assigning responsibility for day-to-day management of the
brand to a senior executive also is very helpful. And communicating to
employees that they are all expected to be brand champions rounds out brand
ownership from the top to the bottom of the organization.
I wish you great success in transforming your organization
and its employees into a brand promise delivery machine.
