Comments

Great post, Tom.
Going a step further, Your internal brand and your external brand must be the same!

Seth Godin has a great post this a.m.,
"Dancing with Entropy". Since brand entropy is real, we need to be alert to the fact that such entropy begins internally.

Going a step further, leaders, if you have brand trouble internally (=externally), YOU have brand trouble internally (personal problem, not personnel problem).

Someone wisely stated, "Do not confuse correlation with causality - ever" (hat tip to NNTaleb).

Posted by Randy Bosch at December 16, 2009 4:08 PM

Speaking of personal problems... great post STEVE, too!

Posted by Randy Bosch at December 16, 2009 4:09 PM

Thanks Randy. You can mix me up with Tom any time you want!

I had read Seth's blog post this morning, and I just re-read it after you made the connection to this post. Thanks for making the connection ... here's what I'm thinking:

I wrote about a concept I called "Brand Entropy" on page 93 of my book Brand Harmony. The idea was that you need a strong brand essence to hold all of your different customer experiences together, because entropy, one of the strongest forces in the universe, will inevitably lead to brand dissonance ... entropy forces any system to go from states of high organization to states of disorganization, and since there are more possibilities for disjointed customer experiences than harmonious experiences, your brand experience has a strong pull towards disorganizastion. A strong brand essence is key to resisting this force.

The same principle hold true inside your company, which is why you need a strong internal brand. There are more possibilities for employees to not be the brand than to be the brand, so odds are they won't be the brand unless you have a strong internal brand to illuminate the way for them.

Seth's post says that "Most people, though, the ones with great jobs, are in the business of dancing with entropy." That is true of the people with great jobs, but any of us who have managed people know that one of the distinguishing factors between senior/successful people and others is the ability to deal with ambiguity. A fact of life is that many of the people we work with can't deal with ambiguity or, as Seth says it, dance with entropy.

A strong internal brand helps address this phenomenon, making it easier for everyone in the organization to dance with the level of entropy they can handle, helping them see how to take the random events that make up every day on the job and deal with them in a way that adds to a better experience of brand harmony for customers.

Posted by Steve Yastrow at December 16, 2009 5:17 PM

Steve,

Really good post. The fact that none of the execs know anyone who works directly with customers is incredibly sad, and it makes a lot of sense when you think of how bad so many companies are at it.

I'd like to know your top two or three things a company can do you enhance it's internal brand. Off the top of my head, I'd say that walking the talk is going to be pretty important - that if a lower level employee ever sees an exec doing something that is contrary to the company's ethos, then that employee will feel like he/she can slack off on it too.

Posted by Aaron Windeler at December 16, 2009 7:57 PM

Also the same things apply internally as externally.

You cannot "brute force branding" internally either. Yet most big corp internal communication looks like branding 20 years ago full of gloss, spin and corporate BS.

Another factor is how internal employees react to external branding. I work for a software company that has some brand links with motor racing.

The difference with just doing corporate sponsorship/advertising is that we supply software to one of the teams - they did an internal film about the difference that makes to their performance - in other words there was real business behind the sponsorship - many employees took real pride and loved that film. They felt a real connection with the success of the team that they contributed to.

I would love to know what Accenture employees have felt about Tiger Woods (well the non golfing ones anyway). Personally I have long felt it was one of the stupidest images in advertising. It always lacked reality or any connection (apart from the obvious and rather pathetic point of high performance). Presumably it was successful (maybe a lot of people buying Accenture services play golf?).

My thoughts about Mr Wood's recent problems is not should they have dropped him or not - but how much of that brand connection was about personal image (which is very fallable) rather than substance. Feels like yesterday's branding.

I WANT SUBSTANCE!!!!!!

Posted by PaulH at December 17, 2009 2:57 AM

Great article indeed.
Still, I have a case study for you (Mr. Yastrow and Mr. Peters both ).
Our company is a real solid company regarding our employees. We've tested their opinion about our company many times, and w/ great success. We have a real implicated group of people willing to stay and help our company. The point is we have a solid internal brand.
But unfortunatelly we do encounter some problems in this period w/ our customers.

Posted by Vlad Maior at December 17, 2009 3:49 AM

Empirically a very debatable proposition. I can think immediately of two internationally renowned and respected arts organisations which have quite appalling internal brands and have been like that for decades. A good thing? No, but it can certainly happen.

Posted by RobCH at December 17, 2009 8:34 AM

I agree 100% the human capital must be the biggest investment. At the end of the day someone needs to answer the phone and deliver on all of your SEO, Twitter and Press Releases. Well SAID!!

Posted by Brian Coester at December 17, 2009 9:10 AM

For this entry, let’s think of ourselves as a product…We are changing from moment to moment, internally and externally. To stay alive, we must strive for better and more of ourselves for the world; our only legacy in the end is who we have become and how we touched and contributed to those whose paths we crossed. Did we add value, comfort, and enhancement? Can the world do without us? How challenging would continuation be for others if and had we not existed? If we can remember these submissions everyday, our authentic trade mark will be defined by those with whom we share a minute or two in making the energy around them brilliant, affirmative and enduring…indeed, branding has to start from within, in the deepest sentiment of our hearts, with confidence. Now go out there and be radiant! Branding will follow…

Posted by Sabrina Mandanas at December 17, 2009 10:49 AM

I'm with RobCH on this one. Steve, are you referring to premium-priced service brands, or all B-to-B and B-to-C brands?

Make a list of all of the brands that you choose - from financial service brands and big box discount retailers, to self-service gas stations, local dry cleaners, snack food brands and book publishers - and tell me: Do you believe the people at those businesses think as highly of those "brands" as you do? Really?

Posted by Tom Asacker at December 17, 2009 5:49 PM

Thanks for the post, Steve. I always appreciate them. It seems like what's important here is the need for investment in people. Who can argue with this? Even if those arts organization that Rob spoke of have succeeded over a period of time does not mean that they will always do so. Perhaps they would even be more successful with a change in focus. Also, isn't what we really want is to aim for the best possible example? In this way, we build better work environments and better teams.

Sabrina - I love your words. There is an individual and collective responsibility that is important. Thank you.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 17, 2009 7:54 PM

Vlad ... the external brand can never be better than the internal brand, but it can certainly be worse!

Tom - I work with a wide range of clients: B-to-B, B-to-C, premium/not-so-premium, service, manufacturing ... etc.
I'm convinced this is the case for all types of situations. Can there be exceptions? Of course ... just like for everything else. But, in virtually all cases it can't last, because customers' brand impressions are influenced by all points of contact with the company, not just those influenced by marketing, sales or products. What do you think? And, to Judith's point, how much more successful would those organizations Rob mentioned be if they had healthy internal brands?

Posted by steve Yastrow at December 17, 2009 10:54 PM

Once I did an assessment for a large resort hotel chain and also with a large supermarket chain. The focus for both was what the delivery personnel had to say about their daily experiences. I thought that if we could hear what they were saying about their encounters with the internal brand that this would make a difference with the external brand. Word of mouth is so important. The focus of the analysis became two kids of internal brands: (1) delivery personnel that was actually external although they had regular contact with the internal brand proper, (2) the staff. The analysis was helpful.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 18, 2009 4:41 AM

Amen to this idea! I work for a large bank that seems to be going in the opposite direction. Mid-year top level management announced that a consultant had told them that they had been "too nice" with employees.

Now we have a rigid system designed to catch employees failing. The central focus are these customer service survey calls with simplistic questions. If an employee receives 4 bad calls in a rolling year period they are automatically terminated, regardless of how many positive surveys or other contributions.

The sampling rate is low and random, and thus employees are not even sampled at the same rate, creating inequities. Some questions hold employees accountable for circumstances outside of their control, such as wait time, when the bank has dramatically reduced branch staffing.

We see many customers irate at general bank policies, such as high fees, and these customers may take it out on the employee during a survey call.

Some questions ask for a customer rating from 1 to 7, and only a 6 or 7 is scored as a positive for the employee; anything less is scored as a zero. If a customer says they cannot remember, that is scored as a zero.

Branch morale has been crushed, and now employees live in fear from week to week that this ticking time bomb may go off on them. The internal brand has been severely damaged.

Some speculate that top level mgmt is doing this to create excuses to get rid of employees to shed costs.

Posted by Anon at December 20, 2009 2:40 AM

Anon -

What a sad story. The bank will suffer ... they will squash any good internal brand that exists, they will save costs in the short term, but they will lose big-time the long-term as customers' positive brand impressions shrink away and are replaced by feelings of indifference or, worse, distaste for the bank.

Posted by Steve Yastrow at December 20, 2009 11:30 PM

There are a lot of great points here between the well written article and all of the follow-up posts!

One thing I would like to add is to be careful not to fall into the trap of "this way" or "that."

Yes I will be the first to tell you how important a culture/internal brand is. But what a culture is not is limited only to the people employeed today. What makes a sustainable company that has a strong culture is the influence and interaction between employees, processes, technology, marketing, communication and so on. It is how these elements come together that makes all the difference.

Yes the employees carry out most of the other elements, but do they have the freedom, encouragement and motivation to step outside of the way things are to find better, stronger, more effective ways of executing the tasks? Are they given the tools and technology that is really needed to do their job?

Just a few thoughts. . . all the best!

Posted by Mel DePaoli at December 22, 2009 10:18 PM

To answer you question (Are you investing enough in your internal brand?)...We invest in our internal brand by hosting numerous all-company events, such as fundraisers, holiday parties, sports leagues, outings, and other events. In addition, we keep have an inter-office social networking site (similar to Facebook) that we use for both work-related and non-work-related topics.

Great post, and great follow-up comments. At Total Attorneys, one of our main focuses is on building a strong sense of culture and strong relationships among employees. (We even did a short video for Crain's on the subject here if anyone is interested in checking it out: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1681730445?bclid=979465104&bctid=34286461001)

Posted by Kevin Chern at December 30, 2009 12:16 PM