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Turning values into value |
by Isabel Collins |
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The job of a brand is to help make the organisation easy to understand so it’s easy to trust so it’s easy to do business with.
It helps them make more money. Yet organisations often invest heavily in their brand without making sure that investment can be turned into value.
When an organisation’s people understand its purpose and are proud of what they do then it’s more likely to succeed.
What do these values really mean for customers and employees?
How do they relate to what people do every day and the effectiveness of the business? What does the organisation really value? And is this acted upon by everyone?
That’s what matters. That’s when brand values stop being a fig leaf and start becoming a powerful business asset.
Our experience with many kinds of organisations – big, small, across a host of sectors, multinational plcs or not-for-profit - shows there are similar challenges. Our guiding principle throughout is: Inform, Inspire and Involve.
Here are just a few points of best practice |
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| How do we get everybody to identify with the whole organisation rather than just their part of it? |
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Involve people in brand definition. |
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Inform them of the strategy. |
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Show how all the parts of the business connect. |
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Ask them to identify their individual and their team’s role in the whole. |
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With Arriva Trains Northern, BP plc and Sovereign
Holidays, our programmes included formal and informal communication: workshops, forums, interviews. |
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Our research into best practice, with organisations like Pret a Manger, John Lewis and The Royal Navy showed that one of the most effective methods is old fashioned Team Brief process. We have worked with several clients to implement an effective cascade and train managers in how to communicate effectively. |
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| How do we put our brand into action, to reach and retain both employees and customers? |
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Make sure everybody understands not just the list of brand values, but what this means for them and the people they serve. |
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Our experience with clients like Cambridge Assessment (University of Cambridge) shows that workshops and forums are the best technique – involving people directly in the definition of their role in the brand, and in planning the actions that will deliver it better. |
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This pays returns in far higher levels of commitment |
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| Once we’ve gained people’s commitment, how do we sustain the brand long-term? |
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The follow-up to workshops is important: for leadership figures and heads of department to reinforce the work by example, and by pulling together the action plans. Visible support of leadership is often the single most important factor in employee engagement. |
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Best practice is to put the principles of the brand into action in reward and recognition schemes, and in personal objectives and assessment. |
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Two great examples are the UK retailer John Lewis and Pret a Manger, now an international operation. Both companies state their commitment to a great experience for employees as well as customers; they communicate clearly what is expected of employees, hold them accountable, and reward and recognise achievements in a transparent manner. |
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And the easiest and most popular way to do this? Simply for senior management to say ‘thank you’ when employees go out of their way to uphold the brand’s ethos and purpose. |
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| Is it worth the effort? Certainly. In our experience, investment in an internal branding programme may be relatively modest compared with external advertising and promotion, but the returns can be far higher. Asked why he won the English Civil war, Oliver Cromwell said |
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| "My army won because they knew what they were fighting for and loved what they knew." |
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History may see him as hero or villain – but he understood the power of internal branding! So does your army know what it’s fighting for and love what it knows?
If not, come and join us at the seminar with Isabel in July. |
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Isabel Collins, Founder and MD of IC associates in London and a specialist in internal branding, has been working closely with grow on a number of projects recently.
Anthony Ryman, MD of grow says “The collaboration has extended our service and the international scope of the agency even further; with a high level specialism in brand strategy and how to build a brand inside an organisation .”
Isabel says “It’s very interesting to work on such significant international projects with grow. The challenge with branding is to make it have real meaning inside an organisation – not just a pretty logo, or a bland set of ‘our values’, like a laundry list. This means getting inside the culture and connecting with the individuals inside the business, to create a powerful sense of what the organisation stands for – and that is how those values turn into value.” |
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