Brandspresso

How well organizations link brand on the outside with the brand on the inside will ultimately determine how strong their corporate brand will become.  There are many implications to this important notion; in particular it is becoming imperative that marketing and human resources executives need to learn to collaborate on an internal brand-building process.  The objective of a robust internal brand-building program is to create a culture that is passionate about the difference it makes for its customers.  Internal brand building is customer-centric culture building.

Most management gurus agree on one thing – the companies that have achieved the most sustainable growth have a strong, focused corporate culture.  Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, and Jim Collins all point to the importance of corporate culture as a key contributor to long-term success.  In fact Collins, in his new book How the Mighty Fail, suggests that weak or underdeveloped corporate cultures is one of the main causes of failure in many companies.  Conversely, he shares that a strong culture often prevents great companies from suffering through extended downturns.

Building and maintaining a strong culture is unarguably important to every organization.  The value of a strong customer-centric corporate culture cannot be overstated.  But knowing how to proactively build one is a real challenge. If a strong culture is important to success, why are the tools needed to build one in such short supply? There are several good reasons.

1. Corporate culture is difficult to define.
   Culture is often described as the psychology, attitudes, experiences and beliefs of a company.  It is the specific collection of strong values and norms that are shared by people and groups within an organization.  Culture greatly influences the way people interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.  Defining the culture in terms of how it is relevant to delivering value to customers can begin to add clarity defining a business culture.
    
2. Corporate culture is intangible. 
   Most leaders believe that you will know the culture of an organization when you feel it.  Ask many companies who are known to have a strong culture and they describe their culture as “the organization’s way” – e.g. the IBM Way, the Apple Way, or the McKinsey Way. 
    
3. Corporate culture is self-sustaining.
   Culture is not a by-product of a single event or situation. It develops over time but can’t be mandated. Corporate culture relies on each individual’s commitment to change. Because when you change people you change cultures. Once established, it can be counted on to manage change brought on by external factors or internal failures.  
    
4. Strong cultures are built on a strong set of shared values.
   At the core of every strong corporate culture is a long-standing commitment to a set of values. Values are not intellectual or passive in organizations with strong cultures.  The values must be perceived to be authentic, consistently applied and durable.  The values of the most successful organizations are admired by employees and customers.
    
5. Corporate culture must impact customers.
   Successful cultures have one thing in common – there is a clear understanding of how the distinctive nature of the organization makes a substantial difference for customers.   Strong cultures are admired by customers, as well as employees.

Here are a couple of examples of how well known organizations have linked their cultures to delivering distinctive value to customers:

Since its inception in 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have worked hard to maintain a small company feel. At lunchtime, almost everyone eats in the office café, sitting at whatever table has an opening and enjoying conversations with “Googlers” from all different departments. This is critical since Google is committed to innovation, and innovation requires that everyone feel comfortable in sharing ideas and opinions.  Moreover the egalitarian nature of their culture resonates and connects with the democratic nature of the Internet itself.

Another example of a strong culture is Southwest Airlines. – the only major airline in the U.S. that is consistently profitable and has a great reputation as an employer. This is no coincidence. In an article written by Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s former CEO, he shared how Southwest maintains its culture as a strategic imperative:

“We are looking for attitudes that are positive and for people who can lend themselves to causes. We want folks who have a good sense of humor and people who are interested in performing as a team and take joy in team results instead of individual accomplishments.”  

Delivering a differentiated traveling experience for customers is a high stress, complex business.  Without a positive culture with a sense of humor, and teamwork it would be difficult for Southwest to succeed with employees and travelers to the degree they have. 

I believe that every organization has the ability to build a strong culture and it doesn’t have to be complex.  There are just a few key principles to understand and ultimately apply on a consistent basis. 

• Everyone in the corporate culture must believe in the clear connection between the distinctive values of the culture and how it makes a substantial difference for customers. 
• The way the organization leverages its culture, starting with its values, to make a distinctive difference for customers, establishes its “brand” of doing business.
• One of the largest untapped opportunities for building a stronger culture is helping each employee discover their personal brand (attitude, skills, beliefs, and values) and fostering alignment of their personal brand and the brand of the company. 
• Customer-centric employee engagement must be embraced as a sustainable corporate strategy.  Employee engagement and customer engagement are two fundamental long-term strategies of every sustainable, successful organization. 

In both the examples mentioned, the top management of the companies are vigilant about aligning their employees with their organization’s values and their “brand” of making a difference for a customer. Although organizations may have unique cultures, few consciously understand how to create the alignment required to successfully leverage the full potential of their value with customers. The health and vibrancy of a corporate culture is predictive of their strength in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Building a strong culture can be achieved by any organization willing to make the commitment. Strong cultures don’t happen by accident or are only achievable by organizations with exceptional leaders or extraordinary products.  If more companies had access to the practical tools to build and sustain a strong customer-centric culture, it’s likely they would.  Internal brand building is a set of process tools that will build the foundation for creating and sustaining a customer-centric culture. Is your organization ready for internal brand building?

Truly great brands are few and far between. These great brands are in a class by themselves. For starters, these great brands consistently maintain their relevance as markets change through time.  In addition, these standout brands consistently outperform competitors and produce innovations that enhance the usage behaviors of their consumers. 

Great brands have another thing in common. These highly admired brands were the brainchild of an individual, who in their own right, are/were a strong personal brand among their peers. These individuals didn’t set out to create a brand, in the context of a modern marketing strategy. They had bigger, nobler ideas in mind. These overachievers had a vision and an unflinching confidence aimed at changing the way the world worked or the way people lived their daily lives. The special qualities of these outstanding individuals are the souls of the great brands. These phenomenal people are the brands inside the brands that so many admire. These are brand achievers.

Unfortunately brand achievers, like many, phenomenally gifted people are hard to dissect, much less model (of course that’s why they’re phenomenal!). The curiosity surrounding these people has motivated many writers to understand the source of genius that powers these special people.  Recently, two popular business authors have each published books that have added to the body of contemporary literature on the topic. Geoff Colvin, a well-respected business journalist, presents his ideas in his recent book Talent is Overrated. Malcolm Gladwell has presented his ideas in his new book Outliers. 

I think Colvin and especially Gladwell’s point of view is limited, at best. David Brooks, New York Times columnist, is a smart guy and a practical intellectual.  In a recent column David provides a perspective on highly successful people that hits the target and can offer insights about the types of qualities that are at the base of many brand achievers. 

Reading business history is a more direct route to gaining some insights into the brand achievers that created the great brands we know today. If one stays attune to history you will find valuable tidbits here and there. As an example, this recently published article by Michael Schrage provides insights into how some brand achievers changed the game by changing the way product performance is defined. Michael’s perspective is an interesting angle and another tidbit to understand the mind of the brand achiever.  Nancy Koehn’s book Brand New Delivery, a well-written expose on the brands inside (brand achievers) six of the most successful enduring brands in recent history. It’s worth the read. 

Not everyone can be a brand achiever, but learning about the brand achiever behind the brand you manage can provide valuable insights.  The ethos of the brand achiever that created the brand you manage is the soul of that brand.  The more you understand that ethos, the more you will have a profound, organic understanding of the brand.  That intimate understanding will enable you to better manage and extend that brand.  A more profound understanding of the ethos of that brand will enable you to be a better steward of the brand and extend its legacy of greatness.

How well do you know the ethos of the brand you manage??

Recession and economic chaos are key items on virtually every leadership team’s agenda. How do brand managers address or take advantage of these challenging times? Harvard Business Review recently re-released an article titled “Moving Upward in a Downturn” that offers insights that are useful to take advantage of economic slowdowns. The author points to a three point platform to thrive in tough economic times: look bad news straight in the eye and plan for the storm; stay focused on your core business, and maintain a long term view while relentlessly managing costs. 

How can this proven advice be applied to brand building?

• Plan that budgets for brand building activities will become tighter. Don’t go into denial. Now is the time to proactively challenge the effectiveness of all your brand building activities. Look at the “storm” as a way to make your brand building ship stronger and more efficient. Be tough minded, your brand demands and deserves it. Plan for a time when the seas will be less rocky. 
   
• Don’t stray from your brand platform. Now is not the time to let your brand flag. The true character of a brand is known in times of stress and distress (the same applies to your personal brand.) Step up and reinforce the key elements of the brand platform. Don’t let the dark cloud of economic downturn eat away at the confidence in your brand’s platform. If you must revisit elements of the brand platform be sure not to let any gloom and doom bias your thinking about what your brand stands for.
   
• Keep a long term view, build a stronger brand for good times that are sure to come. No one ever knows when an economy turns the corner until long after the bottom happened. Stay intense and don’t let up with your brand building activities, you’ll be rewarded faster than you think. 
   
• “Contrarians know that downturns don’t last forever and, in effect, they make friends with others who are trapped in the same foxhole - employees, vendors, business partners, and customers.” Be an enthusiastic brand leader and enlist all your partners to develop, innovate, and create ways to build a strong brand in these challenging times. 

With the right attitude and discipline these may be the best times to build a brand that will thrive when the good times return. Short term determination + long term perspective = strong brands. Are these tough times exhilarating or exhausting for you? Will your brand be stronger or weaker because of the downturn?

Sounds like a tabloid headline doesn’t it?   Our organization, Brand Tool Box has been conducting workshops on personal brand and the power of perceptions for years. Believe me, you hear a lot of stories about how relationships changed after the workshop from participants understanding how perceptions can affect relationships in all areas of their life. One story struck me in particular about how awareness of the perceptions you’re leaving can really change a relationship for the better.

A couple of weeks after conducting one of our Brand Tool Box Brand Alignment training session, one of our trainers was doing some follow-up with the participants who attended the session. One woman pulled aside our trainer and told her that the workshop had saved her marriage! Kind of a big statement don’t you think? Well it turned out that she and her husband had gone over some the basic principles (intentions vs. perceptions) of the workshop and had realized that many times they weren’t saying the things they meant to and were unintentionally insulting each other with their choice of words, inflection, and tone. They weren’t communicating in an effective manner and by not paying attention to the perceptions they left on each other; they were unconsciously damaging their relationship. The woman said that after they starting paying attention to the perceptions they were leaving with each other they are communicating in a more meaningful manner and their marriage is greatly improved.

While I don’t think we’re ready to get into the business of marriage counseling quite yet, this story is a really good illustration of how by learning to manage perceptions in everyday relationships, you can strengthen and change them, for the better.

What do brand, perceptions, and personal relationships have in common, you ask?  It’s simple. Brands are relationships.  Any brand is defined by the perceptions surrounding it.  When the principles of brand are sensibly applied to human relationships positive things can happen in the relationship.

A recently written column by Nick Coleman in the Minneapolis Star Tribune titled “Cranky lady tangles with Mr. Nasty.” caught my attention.  The title in and of itself is enough to get me to click, I’m a sucker for well-written headlines. I was expecting a story about a strange and slightly weird domestic encounter. But what the article was really about spoke to me on a much stronger and deeper level, a business level, related to brand (bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?).

The story is about a 79 year old woman who was at a Target store trying to return 3 shirts because they didn’t fit and she wanted her money back. The customer service employee would only give her a gift card and refused to give her money back because she paid by check. The manager escalated the situation and told her to leave with her gift card because she wasn’t getting her money back. She refused on the grounds that since they had already taken the money out of her account, they could easily give it back. The heated exchange escalated until the police were called.  When the woman refused to leave without her money an ambulance was called to take her to the hospital to have her mental health evaluated.

When I first read this article I immediately thought that this would be a perfect example of how one insensitive, harried employee can alienate a customer. But then I realized that it is even bigger than that, it’s about inflexible corporate policies.  As I read this story it came to mind that there is maybe a bigger theme here.  A theme about how corporate policy gets in the middle of the relationship between a well-intentioned employee and an upset customer.   An inflexible, insensitive corporate policy that inhibits an employee’s desire to build a relationship with a customer.

Many of today’s large retailers are so into designing corporate policies and regulations for their employees that they don’t allow individual employees the room or the margin for human judgment to help customers as they see fit. Of course I don’t know this, but there is a distinct possibility that the manager was just following policy. Granted he didn’t have to be so inflexible or try to send a customer to the emergency room of a hospital, creating an unneeded expense and wasting a woman’s time, but what if he was just following policy? In his mind the rules say that he HAS to give a gift card no matter what. He has not been given “permission” to help solve customers’ problems the way that HE sees most appropriate, not the way that the corporate policy dictates it should be done. This resulted in two things. One, Target lost the opportunity to live out their brand in this customer interaction. Target tied their manager’s hands by insisting that the manager use a hard, cold corporate policy as a framework to manage a very human relationship. Two, this employee will now have to live with the fact that he lost a customer, possibly alienated some other employees’ friends and neighbors and changed the public perception of both himself and his Target store. His personal brand took a hit and the brand of Target ended up with a ding. All because the big bosses at the top didn’t think he could be trusted to make his own customer service decisions. 

Corporate policies set the tone for the brand on the inside and trust me, any insensitivity will find its way to a customer!

Brandspresso is a new Brand Tool Box blog. This blog will provide a real world look at brand. Brand is so often presented as complex, hard to understand and frankly more pretentious than the topic deserves. Our approach is to make it as pragmatic and personable as possible. We’ll do that here by breaking brand down in real-life situations. Welcome to Brandspresso!

P.S. If you want your “brand caffeine” a bit more stout, but still lacking any pretension, visit our other blog Brand Insight Wit Attitude.