Great brands are built from within. Now, more than ever, it’s important to focus inside and out.
By Amanda Szylo-Duncan and Paola Norambuena
We’re in the midst of unprecedented change within organisations, as COVID-19 forces businesses to make some difficult decisions that impact both their customers and their people. Now, more than ever, it’s important to focus on both, because consumers are watching brands closely. On the other side of the curve, how brands have managed what they said to the customers, what they did during the crisis, and how they managed and cared for their people, will all go toward how people evaluate their relationship with a brand.
Here, authors Amanda Szylo-Duncan and Paola Norambuena look at how a brand’s Customer Value Proposition (CVP) and Employee Value Proposition (EVP) need to be absolutely aligned for an organisation to succeed.
Outside in
By Amanda Szylo-Duncan, Strategy Director
Brand strategy starts on the inside. It’s a catch cry we’ve all heard and used for decades. As brand consultants, we look inside an organisation — seeking to crack open the assumptions, the ‘this is how we’ve always done it’, the myths that become lore — to get to the truth. Not the popular truths or the ones held by a sample of one. But the undeniable truths that form the foundations of every brand. Yet, defining a brand strategy from the inside only is like reading half of a book. Brands don’t exist in isolation. They exist in markets that are ever-moving. And they’re seeking to attract customers and employees that are ever-changing.
Defining a brand strategy from the inside only is like reading half of a book.
How do we build brands today if the wants, needs and desires of employees and customers are constantly shifting? And critically, how do brands maintain integrity if they are to constantly adapt to the changing wants of their customers and the dynamics of their market?
Put simply, many times they don’t.
A brand that moves with no foundation or belief system, is no brand at all. Yet on the other hand, a brand that remains unmoving will find itself on the quick path to irrelevancy.
So how can brands win?
Developing a brand strategy that aligns with where the business is today, yet is fit to propel the brand towards a new future is key. Brand building is a long game. It takes time. But it does require a keen eye for the future. Here’s three ways we build brands to keep up with the ever-changing world:
1. Don’t settle until you find the deeper human truth
Although expectations of people are exponentially exploding, we challenge ourselves to find the deeper human truth that’s often buried below the surface need. If we respond to every inkling of change, we’d never build a brand. But if we look deeper, the core human truths we share are often longstanding and deeply embedded, and the only way to identify a shift in these human truths is by connecting with people on a regular basis.
And when a shift is identified? We ask how the brand and business is positioned to respond — is it something it’s already connecting to, yet it requires more prominence in the strategy and understanding throughout the business? Or is it an earth-shattering shift that provides great risk to the brand and the business? If so, a deeper analysis is required to understand the impacts, current and future, of acting on this newfound truth.
2. A solid foundation is the only way to move, adapt, and flow
It’s easy to get swept up in change. Yet in times of change, a strong foundation is a strength. It ensures that when a brand does move, it does so in a way that retains its integrity. And today, integrity matters. We’re all drawn to brands, experiences and people that are authentic. Some branding rules remain golden for a reason. A solid foundation will give a brand the freedom to make the right moves.
3. Connect the internal and external strategy
The most successful brands create synergy between their external and internal strategy — creating customer value propositions in tandem with employee value propositions. Yet too often, CVPs and EVPs are developed by separate teams with little discussion or alignment between them. To future-proof a brand, bulldoze the barrier between them, because they work together in a virtuous cycle. Your brand is a critical tool of attraction and meaning — it’s the bridge between your people and your customers.
Inside out
By Paola Norambuena, Chief Strategy Officer
Even if you are only slightly familiar with the Service-Profit Chain, you understand that business success is built on a simple truth: happy employees equals happy clients. Yes, that may sound overly simplistic, but it’s at the core of how growth and profitability are achieved. Or as the research by Heskett, Maister, Sasser, and Schlesinger found that led to the development of the Service-Profit Chain; if you know your level of employee satisfaction and loyalty today, you can predict tomorrow’s client satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately your profitability.
Decades of working with organisations of all shapes and sizes shows that many businesses still miss this fundamental truth. Most efforts go into deciding how the brand is translated to marketing and communications, to customers, even to partners. Far less is dedicated into how the brand can positively impact employee satisfaction.
However, this is an area that brand can impact profoundly. The greater dissonance that there is between what you say to customers and what you say, celebrate, and measure with your people, the greater dissonance between your brand promise and actual brand experience.
Change needs to be hardwired into your organisation — and people need to understand what that change is in service of.
At Interbrand, one of our core measures determining the value of a brand is what we call Brand Strength. This assesses 10 key elements of a brand. Of the ten, four are internal metrics: Clarity, Commitment, Responsiveness, and Governance. That’s nearly half of what makes a strong brand.
So, it stands to reason that brand is not the sole domain of marketing. Instead, it becomes a shared responsibility with a team: your human resources. The challenge, however, is that HR are most often not part of the brand development process, which means organisations don’t get valuable input or buy-in from this very influential team. On the flip side, these teams often author values which, while likely true to the organisation, if created in isolation of brand, don’t support or indicate on-brand behaviour. And that’s when the inside doesn’t match the outside.
To create and manage a brand that is poised for Iconic Moves, your entire organisation needs to be ready for action. To do that, change needs to be hardwired into your organisation. But change alone is not enough — people need to understand what that change is in service of. That’s where a brand’s purpose is key; setting an ambition that’s as clear and as rallying internally as it is externally. And to ensure that every single person is ready to move in the same direction:
1. Embed your higher heroic purpose in the organisation
Show people how everything they do — no matter how small — goes to delivering on this purpose every day. Help them not only believe it, but understand how it’s relevant to them.
2. Make everyone the author of your story
An EVP is not a ‘once and done’ exercise. It’s just the start. A great EVP is organic, and by allowing people to author and shape it as they go, it will have a long-term impact.
3. Activate the real influencers
Brand ambassadors are key to sustaining the momentum of an EVP platform. But the influencers in an organisation are rarely who we think they are. Find and empower them.
4. Do more than educate, engage
This is not a one-way exercise, or a single announcement. Build your EVP into day-to-day behaviours, make it actionable, and engage people in the ways that they prefer.
5. Invest in high impact hallmark experiences
Brand experiences exist within organisations as well. Choose those with greatest impact — the ones employees care about and frequent — and make those epic.
6. Build it into performance metrics
People won’t follow on-brand behaviours if they are being measured on entirely different metrics in their reviews. Align brand and operational metrics in one.
If you’d like to talk brand strategy or figuring out what to do next, please get in touch: hello@interbrand.com.au
