Brand as Culture: Create Something to Believe In
How reframing brand as culture can jump start employee engagement
Creating a meaningful brand in today’s hyper-competitive market is challenging. Marketers are increasingly forced to create new strategies in order to cut through the static of a marketplace that is growing louder and more crowded by the minute. So often we try and “buy” our way into building the brand we want, focusing too heavily on the latest technology or the fanciest content, so much so that we forget the needs of one of our most important stakeholders―people.
Over the past several months we have heard from our client partners about employee engagement, leading us to explore best practices around how to apply brand as a driver of culture change. More specifically, we have looked to identify how we can bring a brand to life through motivating people to authentically commit to the values of a company.
Given how the reframing of “brand” as culture seemed to ignite our conversations, we began to talk about alternative language that can be used to create the sort of principles that can unite a workforce. We came up with a few ways to apply straight-forward language to refer to your brand in a more people-centric manner.
Alternative descriptions for using the word brand:
- Culture
- Principles and behaviors
- Simple stories we tell
- What others say about you
- How people describe what you do and how you do it
- How you would like a new customer to describe you
- The things you would most want a customer to know about you
- The spirit in which we do business
- Talking the language of the people you want to get the order from
- See as you wish to be seen as “brands only exist in the minds of customers” (from IBM)
Other option is to talk about brand in terms of outcomes:
- Buy from you
- Recommend to others
- Trust
- Say something positive
- Invest in you
- Work for
- Pride and emotional connection
Realizing that your brand is your culture, and your culture is your brand is a key pillar to ensuring a branded experience both internally and externally. Creating an ethos that your people will believe in can have immense outcomes for your brand overall. Because at the end of the day, if you have an inspired brand culture that your people believe in, it won’t be too far of a stretch to give your consumers something to believe in as well.
To learn more about employee engagement visit our website.
Gabriel Cohen is Chief Marketing Officer at Monigle.