The Chief Marketing Officers Council and Executive Networks Inc. collaborated in 2015 to produce a report titled, “Making the Workplace a Brand-Defining Space.” The report explored ways in which marketing and human resource leaders could engage employees to bring a company’s values, ethics, commitments and qualities to life within the organization.
What I loved about the report is that it explored social media platforms being used by leading consumer brands to retain and recruit, build customer-centric cultures, recognize and reward innovation and output, and drive productivity, performance and motivation by “gamifying” the workplace.
Start the conversation
According to the report, areas of conversation included such questions as:
- Does your company have a formal brand platform with shared values, ethics and collective buy-in?
- How important is your brand persona to employee recruitment and customer gratification?
- What value does management place on organizational branding and employee engagement?
- Do you have a well-defined corporate culture that is universally embraced by the organization? If so, how has this been achieved? If not, what is lacking?
- How well do your employees reinforce and deliver on brand promises and claims?
- How are you encouraging, rewarding, measuring and amplifying this?
- To what degree is your brand personality reflected in your people and workplace?
- In what ways are you engaging, motivating and recognizing employees to underscore brand qualities?
- How are work styles changing and what are you doing to adjust to the millennial mindset?
- Which platforms, methodologies, mobile applications or protocols are you using to do this?
- Which business events, milestones or commitments require active employee participation and partner support?
- How does your organization use social media, and how are employees and partners contributing to this?
These questions are a good starting point for assessing where your organization stands and may provide some insight to ways you could better align the company’s brand clues within your organization.
Finding the disconnect
Here are some of the report’s findings, as gleaned from the executive summary.
Nearly 70 percent of marketing and human resource leaders believe their management teams are strongly committed to their company’s image, identify, culture and collective ethos, as well as shared values and employee participation in organizational branding. Yet, just 37 percent say they have a well-defined corporate culture that is universally embraced by the organization.
Brand persona is seen by almost 90 percent as essential, very or moderately important to attracting new hires and building a lasting relationship with customers. Only 62 percent, however, reported having a formal brand platform that defines shared values, ethics and collective buy-in to a singular value proposition.
Leaders first
In order for marketing and human resources to succeed in making the workplace a brand-defining space, a company must first uncover its brand. This is a top-down, CEO-driven initiative with the company’s leadership team as the main brand ambassadors.
The leadership must first embrace the value of the brand and its impact on the company’s future growth, customer loyalty and employee satisfaction, as well as its ability to drive greater profitability and competitive advantage.
From this foundation, a brand that is enculturated into an organization is a game-changing, transformational market advantage.
Kelly Borth is CEO and chief strategy officer for GREENCREST, a 25-year-old brand development, strategic and interactive marketing and public relations firm that turns market players into industry leaders™. Kelly is one of 35 certified brand strategists in North America and works with companies to establish brands and build brand value for their businesses.
