The greatest ambassadors for your brand are your employees. Therefore, it is vital that they have some emotional connection with its vision and objectives, not just your products and services. They must be able to talk about your distinctive value-add with confidence and relative ease.
But that is rarely the case.
At one extreme, new joiners are often given a whirlwind tour of the brand as part of the barrage of information they receive during the onboarding process. At the other end, company veterans may unknowingly be holding on to an outdated sense of your corporate identity. While both will be relatively fluent in what you do, it is unlikely they would be able to meaningfully articulate who you are as a company.
To be clear – your logo is not the same thing as your brand. Nor is it the mission statement painted on the wall.
In truth, it is an amalgamation of intangibles over which a company genuinely has a great deal of influence… should they choose to exert it. And we at White Marble strongly recommend that they do.
The first place to start is with a series of internal sessions to map out your current state of play. Afterall, you can’t get to where you want to be if you don’t know where you are.
Step 1: Gather your key stakeholders
Attempting a project like this without buy-in from the company’s leaders and decision makers will result in zero traction. They must be involved from the outset. They do not need to sit in on every meeting, but their continuing support will determine the success or failure of this endeavour.
You need to identify the core team of people who have the enthusiasm and skillsets to genuinely contribute to this exercise. They should not all be from one team or division of the company. Ideally, find a combination of voices – introverts and extroverts, new joiners and veterans, client facing and those who are not, etc.
Step 2: Brainstorming
Next, arrange a series of information and feedback gathering sessions. This cannot be achieved in a single, three-hour-long meeting. Putting five people in a room will result in five opinions. There has to be space to challenge, reflect and generate consensus.
Ahead of those sessions, you should have at your disposal:
- Your company’s mission statement – ie what you do and why you do it,
- A breakdown of your clients and the products and services provided to each,
- Your business plan – to ensure priorities are aligned,
- Knowledge of your key competitors and insight into their brands.
With all that information (and likely much more) at your fingertips, the project team can start the process of crafting statements that answer the following questions:
- How do we want people to feel when they use our products and services?
- How do we communicate with clients?
- How are we different from our competitors?
- Why should clients choose to work with us over our competitors?
- What are our values?
- Does our culture reflect our values?
- What is our reputation in the market?
- How would current and former clients talk about us?
Step 3: Iterate
The above is not an exhaustive list, rather a good indicator of where to start. But it is far from a one-and-done exercise. Different parts of the company will have strong, often opposing, views that speak to their specific areas of expertise.
This is not about equities versus private assets. It is about producing statements that give prospects and clients confidence in your company as a whole, not just its constituent parts.
Language choice is extremely important. How you speak about your company internally will be projected externally. It also has to be memorable. There is no point drafting pages of copy to outline your brand identity if nobody is going read it and/or remember what was written.
The goal is to produce meaningful and distinct statements that are as short as possible.
Step 4: Hearts and minds
With your beautifully crafted brand articulation, it is now time to bring the rest of the company on board. The involvement of senior people across the business was the make-or-break factor at the start of this project. Getting everyone else engaged is just as important now.
How you share the message internally and encourage buy-in from across the team is hugely important. Afterall, you can lead a horse to water… Much like the brainstorming sessions in step 2, this has to be an ongoing initiative. It cannot culminate in a single town hall or a week-long programme of ‘fun’ company activities.
It will take time. Longer than you anticipate. And longer than you want it to. This is where an internal marketing campaign is essential.
Step 5: Take it on the road
The consistency of your verbal identity is just as critical as your visual identity to be able to generate cut through and ‘be known for something’ in the market.
Once individual members of the team are comfortable and confident speaking about your brand, then it is time to embed it across the company, so that it is present - in one form or another - in every client interaction.
The goal is for clients to be confident you will deliver on promises and commitments. They will have awareness of your corporate values, not because they are posted on the website, but because they are felt/experienced every time you engage with them.
Bring in the experts
These projects are hard to do from the inside, where you have hierarchies, politics and power players to manage. Success can be more easily achieved by working with a third party, like White Marble.
We bring deep knowledge of the industry and can engage directly with stakeholders. Socialisation, engagement and alignment efforts often run more smoothly when working with a partner.
Reach out to White Marble and we can talk you through our experience working with clients on their brand strategy.