Successful organisations align the customer, corporate and employer brands and experiences to increase alignment to and engagement with the brand, and empower employees to deliver consistently against the brand. Research indicates that such organisations boost performance-related business outcomes by 240%1
Most organisations will have an brand idea or rally-call that sums up the promise the organisation is making to its customers, employees and key stakeholders. It aligns employer, customer and corporate brands, and sits at the heart of the brand to drive everything your brands and people say and do.
In many cases, the brand idea is expressed in slightly different ways for different audiences and business objectives. At Westpac, we developed a brand idea that underpinned all strategy and activity (confidential), communicated to consumers as ‘doing things differently to other banks’ and with employees as the core behaviour ‘can do’ that empowered employees to deliver against the consumer brand promise. At the time, we researched ideas with employees including ‘doing things differently’, ‘can do’ and a couple of other alternatives, and decided that this because of the major shift in attitude and behaviour needed, ‘can do’ would be the most effective at rallying the employees and driving the customer experience.
The four examples below demonstrate how the one brand idea can work for all audiences.
The promise that Ford makes to customers, employees and key stakeholders is that they will go further. ‘At Ford, we go further to make our cars better, our employees happier and our planet a better place to be.’ Ford aims to deliver this across their customer, employer and corporate brands, communications and experiences. Ford uses this as their consumer-facing tag-line.
For Nike, ‘just do it’ is the brand idea that links employer, customer and corporate brands. In Nike’s case, it is their consumer-facing tag-line.
For Zappos ‘Delivering Happiness’ is the brand idea that drives employer, customer and corporate brands. Zappos’ purpose is their brand idea.
We recently completed the brand strategy for SUMO Salad and created their purpose ‘Fuelling Greatness’ that is the brand idea that drives the business forward, .aligning all audiences, brands and experiences, You can read more about the case study here: https://www.thehealthybrandcompany.com//sumo
1 http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/176063/five-ways-top-performing-companies-engage-customers.aspx
Image source: Jorg Stober | Dreamstime.com
