Delivering on Your Brand's Promise

In March of 2000, The Journal of Brand Management published an article I wrote entitled "Developing the brand building organization." Around that same time, I helped create and chaired the one of the first conferences dedicated to inside out branding. It has been said many times that more important than making a unique and compelling brand promise is keeping that promise. United Airlines found that out with their United Airlines Rising advertising campaign as their flight attendants were threatening a labor action labeled CHAOS (an acronym for "creating havoc around our system") and chanting, "No raises, no rising." Later, they found out again with the "United Breaks Guitars" YouTube video. BP found out when its environmental/green energy company brand repositioning was shown to be false during its catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter teaches the concept of value chain analysis. If you have created a brand that has a strategy and positioning that you are certain will cause consumers to insist upon your brand, then you must tangibly deliver against that strategy and positioning. This means you invest in people, processes, activities and systems that support the brand position and do not waste time, money or energy on those that do not. You invest in the value chain that supports the brand position.

Inside Out branding requires organization design and organization development support among other activities. To transform employees and the organization itself into a strong brand advocate requires more than a brand rally or internal education and communication (which are a part of what needs to happen), but it also requires internal alignment and incentives.

We have worked with more than one brand whose intentions were good but whose systems or processes worked against delivery on their promises. Inside out branding is a critical part of any brand management function. It is for this reason that the brand manager needs to be the consummate influencer and preferably at a very high level in the organization, because he or she certainly does not have control over everything that will insure delivery against the brand promise.

Here is a chart that I have taken from the second edition of my Brand Aid book. It illustrates the types of organizational activities that need to be aligned with the brand strategy and positioning if they are to be effective.

Branding from the Inside Out

As important as making a unique and compelling promise is keeping that promise. Brands that make promises they cannot keep lose customers. If your brand cannot keep its promise, it should not make that promise.  That’s where inside out branding comes in.

At BrandForward, we work with organizations to help them keep the promises that they make. We do this through a two-day intensive workshop with pre-work that will explore each of the following:

• Transforming employees into brand advocates by:
• Reviewing and possibly revising hiring criteria
• Building employee understanding of brand strategy and messaging through a comprehensive employee communication and education plan
• Recommending modifications to performance objectives for targeted employees
• Establishing employee rewards and recognition for brand advocating behavior

• Exploring alignment of the organization’s culture with the brand’s intended personality
• Establishing brand metrics as a part of a balanced scorecard
• Reviewing organization design to determine its strengths and weaknesses relative to support of the brand’s promise
• Understanding how brand plans align with business plans and how budgets for brand initiatives are presented and approved
• Aligning systems, processes and procedures to better support delivery of the brand’s promise
• Identifying new brand promise proof points at each point of customer contact

The output of the workshop is:

• A report of specific recommendations to better align the organization in support of its brand’s promise
• Including an employee communication and education plan

This workshop is highly facilitated by inside-out branding experts and includes questions and worksheets that will be completed during the workshop and prior to the workshop in preparation for the workshop.

We recommend that OD and other human resource professionals attend the first day along with the organization’s leadership team, general managers and marketing executives. The second part of the second day switches to customer touch point design ideation and requires a different mix of “out-of-the-box” thinkers.

This workshop will result in a much better understanding of how the organization can better support delivery of the brand’s promise. Our report of findings will include specific recommendations on how to powerfully deliver on the brand’s promise, including identifying barriers to accomplishing this and how to overcome those barriers.

For more information on this workshop, contact vanauken@brandforward.com.

The 10 Proven Ways to Align Your Organization with its Brand's Promise

I have helped many organizations build their brands from the inside out for over ten 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.

The 10 Proven Steps to Align Your Organization with Its Brand’s Promise

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.