Integrating people and brands is a key to sustaining competitive advantage, PIPT check list 1. TREAT ALL YOUR ORGANISATION’S PEOPLE AS INTERNAL CUSTOMERS. Create an internal market that wants to know it’s valued and trusted. Listen to your organisation’s people, gain their understanding, seek their insights and create an environment where they feel comfortable about being truthful.
2. APPROACH THIS COMMUNICATION TASK WITH THE SAME RIGOUR, DISCIPLINE AND CREATIVITY AS YOU WOULD EXTERNAL CUSTOMER MARKETING. You need to create a brand which reflects your organisations and your people’s attributes, sets them apart from competition and rings true with them. Internal customers are consumers too; they’ll spot when your brand and your message don’t gel together and you’re indulging in spin.
3. ALIGN YOUR ASSETS Make sure your business, your organisation and your brand activity are all aligned. Ensure there is no disconnect between the brand promise and corporate behaviour. Compel your people to understand your customer vision. Compel your people to understand their contribution.
4. TELL THE TRUTH To gain the trust of your people make sure that your message has openness, honesty and integrity. Colour, style and message impact are all important so create a language that is particular, original and dynamic. Make sure that your communication embodies emotion as well as logic and remember to show flair and edge in your message.
5. USE MARKET SEGMENTATION TECHNIQUES Tailor both your message and your medium to your organisation’s people. Make your people feel valued by understanding you are communicating with them in an appropriate and relevant way and, most importantly, in jargon free language. Remember to concentrate your message on benefits and not on features.
6. BRING THE BRAND TO LIFE Make sure your people really get under the skin of your brand promise in a practical and functional way. Connect your people with the needs, values and aspirations of your core external target audience and get them to relive their real life situations.
7. EMBED THE BRAND IN KEY CORPORATE PROCESSES Internal behaviour within your organisation is the single most important factor in ensuring the creation of a culture that truly reflects the brand. Behaviour that supports and endorses the brand within your organisation should be recognised and encouraged.
8. HELP YOUR PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THEIR ROLE IN DELIVERING THE BRAND PROMISE Remember that all of your organisation’s people are part of the fabric of your business and therefore of your brand. Whether it’s the receptionist, the accountant or the driver, everyone has a role to play, not least as an evangelist in the outside world. Customer experience lives or dies through the talent and involvement of your people – these interfaces are the moments of truth.
9. TRACK THE EFFECT ON BRAND ADVOCACY AS YOU GO Don’t leave it to the unwieldy annual corporate report or company research surveys to tell you that you’ve got a problem long after it has arrived. Find out whether your people are adhering to these five criteria:
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if you don’t take care of our customers, somebody else will; |
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nothing is gained by winning an argument but losing a customer; |
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always deliver what you promise, if in doubt, under promise and over deliver; |
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treat customers as you yourselves would like to be treated; |
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the reputation of your entire organisation is in the hands of every individual. |
10. SUPPORT FROM THE TOP Make sure of the backing and active endorsement of senior management. Get them to “walk the talk”. A simple idea is to introduce the “white postcard to the CEO” system. Your people can use these postcards to send, anonymously if they like, positive and negative comments to the boss about how the business is going. After a few months the CEO will certainly be up to speed. Remember that if senior management are not on board then all your good work to help create the right kind of culture for brand building will be undone.
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