Brand Heart: Are You Bringing Your Brand To Life In Your Work Space?

Hearing someone say they work at Google seems to have the same effect on every listener regardless of their industry background…Wow!

 

Google Green Dublin

 

It’s a true testament to the Google leaders that they have created a reputation of being such a desirable place to work, but lets face it, it’s not just because of the type of work carried out there. With unique, fun, quirky, often bizarre office interiors, which include slides, video games and ski-gondolas, Google lead the way in a trend to change the traditional view of what a corporate office should look and feel like. There is method to the supposed madness.

 

 Google Office Slide

 

Google, Facebook, Airbnb and so many of the newer global companies, along with a few of the longer established, understand that the culture and physical experience of your company is a huge part of your company brand. They understand that it is the people and living experience internally behind the brands that help to dictate how the brand is perceived externally.

 

 Google Ski Lifts

 

An office is far more than walls, desks and computers. It’s a recruitment tool, a second home and a place to inspire those who work within. If a leader’s job is to get the best from their employees then part of that responsibility is creating a space that motivates people to make the most of shaping and growing their brand.

 

 Facebook Office Pan

 

If you care about company culture and authentic brand experience then the office space matters. It is an important part of how the employee views their work. But flashy spaces, open plan offices and bean bags are not for everyone. A place without quite spaces can be just as ineffective as grey cardboard cubicles. There are certain elements however that will provide triggers to employees and customers alike about the company culture that may need to be addressed.

 

 Facebook Office Photo

 

• Collaborative Space

You don’t have to be a creative company to have a need for a collaborative space. If people arrive into the office, go to their desk and stay there until the end of the day then the company is not maximizing the benefits that come from employee interactions between the company thinkers and innovators. A dedicated collaborative space that can be used for informal interactions can make employees more comfortable to contribute, to share opinions and develop new ideas.

 

 Google Hq Zurich

 

• Brand Ambassadors

Employees are your brand ambassadors. Creating an office space that reminds them each day of what they and the brand are trying to achieve can be a powerful motivator.

 

Mindvalley Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

 

• Reflect Your Core Brand Values

If sustainability is an important ‘value’ underpinning your brand, then this should be communicated using internal triggers as well as external communication. Using and promoting recyclable materials within the office for example ensures that those working to build the brand understand that the company genuinely believes and lives by the values they promote. You are authentically living that brand value and reinforcing it everyday in what you do.

 

Education First Lucerne Switzerland

 

• Recruit The Best

Google and Facebook offices are designed not only to serve current employees, but to attract the best talent. They use their office space to communicate the type of culture they promote internally and to attract ‘like minded’ people who can fit within that culture and become part of the brand family. Both understand the needs of the people that work for them and have been hugely beneficial to the organisation, as employees reciprocate with high levels or productivity and efficiency.

 

 Vocus Beltsville Maryland

 

• Create Customer Cues

PR and advertising can support a strategy that communicates a brand’s vision and values, but that can be destroyed at the workplace if the office space doesn’t align with the promise of your brand message. If your brand communicates a sense of community or creativity, but your offices are comprised of people working separately behind closed doors what kind of message does this send to your customers? Internal triggers and experiences can make a significant external impact. Even reception rooms and meeting room names can tell a story that reflects the brand. Think about your customer’s brand journey. How would your offices influence the customer’s perspective and experience of your brand?

 

 Airbnb Conference Room Mushroom Cabin In Aptos California

 

Company culture is not something that can be created from blueprints. It is something that is shaped by the people working within. Leaders can influence it, they can coax and enable the desired type of brand culture but even the well intentioned leader can inadvertently establish dysfunctional workplaces by creating a workspace that is at odds with the brand values and messages the employees are working to shape.

 

Google may have developed a reputation of a fun, goofy place to work, but what it really signifies is a deep understanding by its leaders, that the environment can play a significant role in creating the balance needed to promote problem solving and creativity in an industry that demands both.

 

If you can’t glean clues about the brand or the people behind it from walking in the door of the office you could be in trouble. Get your office ‘on brand’, and it could play a valuable part in supporting your innovation, productivity levels, marketing mix and consequently profitability coupled with long term success.

• What do you think of some of the world’s ‘coolest’ offices?

  

• How does yours compare? Is it ‘on brand’ or congruent with what your brand stands for?

 

• Does your office space encourage collaboration, innovation and creativity?

   

• Does your office space reflect your brand culture?

 

 

Brand Commoditization : How Safe is Your Brand?

A question to ponder this week… What would your customer’s identify as the number one reason for buying your brand?

 

If the answer is ‘low price’ or ‘convenience’ your brand could be at major risk of becoming just another commodity brand; a very risky position for any brand to be in.

 

When it comes to commoditization, no industry is safe.  Whether you produce consumer products or supply professional services, when your customers can no longer differentiate your offering from that of your competitors it puts the company’s success and profitability in jeopardy.

 

Commoditization is a never ending reality in business today. No matter how hard a successful brand works to be different, their competitors are working equally hard to replicate it.

 

Markets are awash with ‘me too’ products. Customer choice has never been greater online and offline. Brands need to be very proactive in reinforcing their differentiating factors to their customers i.e. the reasons why their customers should choose them. But without a truly unique product or service that process is becoming more and more difficult.

 

 

Is Your Brand At Risk?

How easily can you quantify the differences between your products and services from those of your competitors? Think then about how easily your customers and prospective clients can make the same distinction? What’s your big why for your brand? What does it stand for?

 

When the tangible differences between competing brands diminish, the danger of commoditization grows. But all is not lost. Many brands enjoy a sustainable longevity in their market, despite aggressive copycatting, and do so by identifying the broader value offered by their brands.

 

Articulating the extended intangible values of your brand creates a tougher opposition for competitors. Replicating a product is easy, replicating a brand identity is not.

 

 

5 Ways To Safeguard Your Brand Against Commoditization

 

1. Brand Values

The first step for any company in safeguarding against commoditization is to use internal knowledge to identify the company’s broader value. Take time to consider the intangible benefits of your brand, the perceived benefits to customers, and the desired emotive response when someone experiences the brand. Think back to the very beginning and refocus on the brand identity. What were the core values that established the brand?   

 

 Steve Jobs Apple

 

Apple’s strength lies not just in innovation but on a dedication to producing a high quality product. Their product prices are amongst the highest on the market but their willingness to lose a portion of market on price reaffirms their dedication to their core value of quality and establishes their brand identity in the mind of the consumer.

 Customer Experience

  

2. Relationships

Tangible elements are easy to replicate. Strong brands succeed in developing strong relationships with their customers. Leverage face-to-face interactions and social media to learn more about your customer and start a dialogue that fosters a meaningful relationship that extends beyond the brand experience. 

 

3. Leverage the Corporate Brand

The corporate brand often has sustainable equity. Leveraging the corporate reputation and trust can deliver broader value to product brands and help shape a comprehensive offering to customers that extends beyond the product service attributes.

 

 O Egg White Eggs Icograda

 

4. Package Design

Innovative packaging that creates an aesthetic beyond function can help increase perceived value to the customer and enhance market share. The O’Egg brand focused on package differentiation to turn a commodity product into the pre-eminent egg brand in Ireland. 

 

5. Brand Experience

When a product or service is easily replicated, innovating brand intangibles can strengthen the position of the brand and protect it from the threat of commoditization.

 

 Apple Customers Queue Ny

 

Think differently about your business. Change how its’ perceived. A unique service area, outstanding customer support, or special loyalty rewards can set your brand apart.

 

Starbucks’ strength grew from creating a brand experience around a commodity product. What set the brand apart were the various elements that nurtured the customer’s experience of the brand; from the service setting, to the coffee ordering system, to the interactions with staff. They changed the way the world ordered coffee.

 Starbucks Commoditization

  

Global giant that it is, Starbucks is now under threat because the brand experience has become the commodity and the Starbucks focus has drifted to profit margins and market growth rather than extending customer value. The brand is currently in the process of returning their focus to their core value, putting the customer’s coffee experience at the heart of their operations again.

 

 

One of the biggest problems that lead to a weakening of brand equity is a lack of awareness in the company of the causes of commoditization. 

 

Businesses end up spending valuable resources on updating products and expanding product lines without having a real understanding as to what their customer’s really need and value.

 

 Customer Service

 

• When was the last time you surveyed your customers or researched your market properly?

 

• Do you really know what’s happening at grass roots level in your market?

  

• Do you need a brand audit?

  

In short, how safe is your brand?

Company Culture: Your Brand’s Strongest Competitive Advantage

Company culture may be the most vague aspect of brand management but carefully controlled and nurtured it can provide your brand with a sustainable competitive advantage that even your strongest competitors cannot replicate.

 

Company culture is a culmination of the behaviors, attitudes, relationships, core brand values and environment within a business. Simply put, your company culture can be viewed as “the way we do things around here”.  The manners in which these components are managed make your culture what it is.

 

 

How Does This Support Brand Development?

Many of the strongest brands have a product offering that is similar to that of competitors in the market. What gives them their greatest competitive advantage however is that while competitors can replicate the product, apply similar marketing techniques, and headhunt their staff, they can never fully duplicate their company culture. A company culture is the one truly unique sustainably competitive advantage a brand can have.

 

A winning culture can be a real point of differentiation, but it must be managed, driven, and reinforced in order to truly see results.

 

 Team Culture

  

 

What is the Culture Within Your Company?

Many companies aim to strategically shape the culture that exists within their organisation, but even companies who have never heard of company culture already have one in place.

 

The question is, is your company culture strengthening your brand or holding it back or, worse still, undermining it? A good place to start when developing and understanding your corporate culture is asking your staff and customers what they think of the company; the good, the bad and the ugly. What you need to take from that exercise is what elements of the existing company culture that you like and your customers like, and what needs to be eliminated.

 

 

What You Do, Not What You Say!

The core values you identify for your brand will shape the behaviour of your employees and provide the guidelines they need to best serve the brand. If providing the best customer service possible is a core value of the brand then employees know that they are expected to do their best to achieve this value through all customer interactions.

 

Remember, it is not enough for your brand to have strong core values that are clearly articulated to stakeholders if they are not acted upon. It is what you do, not what you say that counts. It must be a fully integrated and intuitive part of your brand’s signature way of doing things.

 

 

What Is It That Your Company Values?

In order to create a corporate brand culture that yields results you must first identify what is it you value as a company? How to you live and authentically demonstrate the importance of these brand values to your stakeholders?

 

If you want to delight your customers then what is the reward for your employees when they achieve this?  Think of it this way. If your company culture values customer service and your core value is to delight customers, then what happens if two supermarket employees each make sales of equal monetary value but one offers to carry the customer’s bags to the car. Does that employee receive a reward for going out of their way to delight the customer? Or more to the point, is the other employee penalized for not doing so?

 

 Team Hands

 

Reward your staff for embracing your company’s culture. Don’t just review employees based on measuring results, measure their behaviour and what they try to bring to the work environment.  Encourage, support and acknowledge those that not only promote but act on your core brand values.

 

If you want to create a sustainable corporate brand culture than staff recruitment should aim to find employees who fit within the existing brand culture and whose values are closely aligned with the brand.

 

Zappos famously offer potential employees $3000 to leave the company during their initial training to make sure those who choose to stay do so because they believe in the brand and not just the financial benefits of the job.

 

 

The Role of The Leader

The most critical influencer on the development of a corporate culture that supports strong brand development is the leader. Leaders understand that their brand’s identity is shaped through touch points between their customers and their organisation.

 

Leaders cannot possibly anticipate every possible touch point that could influence perceptions of the company’s brand, and advertising can only get you so far, but they can set the example as to the attitude and behavioral cues for the corporate brand culture.

 

Strong leaders understand that in a sustainable winning company culture, the behaviours of employees are intrinsically linked to relationships, informed by attitudes, built on a foundation of core brand values and suitable to their industry environment. By managing these cultural components a leader can create a company culture that supports strong brand development internally.

 

 Southwest Airline Staff 

 

Southwest Airlines embrace a company culture that nurtures staff first and customers second. This may seem counter intuitive but by giving employees the tools to make decisions, by building a culture where people feel respected and valued, Southwest Airlines understood that these values would also be reflected in interactions with customers. Their corporate culture has created an environment where employees want to deliver the best customer service in the business. 

 

 

As Zappo’s CEO Tony Hseih states; “company culture and company brand are two sides of the same coin. Your culture is your brand.”

 

 

• Does your corporate culture nurture your brand and provide a competitive advantage?

 

• How do your core brand values support your corporate culture?

 

• Do you as a company leader understand your role in the development of your company’s brand culture?

 

• Do you need to engage in a Brand Discovery Programme™ to re-evaluate your company culture and brand values so you can reinvigorate your brand’s offering to make it stronger, more relevant and more profitable?

 

Building the Voice of Your Brand to Give You a Competitive Edge

Understanding What Makes You Different

How is Coca Cola different from Pepsi? Why would you choose to fly Virgin Atlantic over Aer Lingus? When a product or service is not completely unique in the market how do you communicate your “significant difference” to your customers in order to give them a compelling reason to choose your brand over your competitors?

 

Understanding what makes you authentically different and being able to communicate this succinctly to your customers is the key to creating strong brand equity. In fact giving your brand a distinctive, different and memorable voice is one of the most effective tools in gaining a competitive advantage in your market and building lasting customer loyalty.

  

 Pepsi Live For Now

 

Pepsi are currently in the process of re-shaping their brand identity in an effort to clearly differentiate their brand in the market. In 2011 Pepsi’s new president decided to find out what makes Pepsi different to Coca Cola. It took Pepsi 9 months to come up with an answer! Their analysis found that Coke is ‘timeless’ while Pepsi is ‘timely’ which in a nutshell means that Coke represents permanent happiness while Pepsi embraces excitement.

 

Identifying what makes Pepsi different has given the brand leverage to shape a clear position for the brand within their market. Understanding who they are and what they represent has enabled them to articulate their brand message to target consumers much more effectively because they are now armed with a brand message that communicates what makes Pepsi unique.

 

Pepsi are now shaping this revitalized brand identity through all their brand collateral including tagline, imagery and advertising campaigns etc. With a clearly defined brand strategy they are now consistently reinforcing what makes them different from their competitors throughout all their marketing campaigns.

 

 

Finding Your Brands Unique Voice

For many companies, identifying the very essence of what authentically differentiates their brand, be it product or service, from their competitors can be challenging, yet the untapped secret often lies within the heart of their business. It is the people, the corporate or brand culture, the internal core values on which the foundations of the brand has been shaped, that are often the greatest assets to a company endeavouring to build strong brand equity.

 

These elements are intrinsically unique within each business and can’t be readily replicated by competitors because the fundamental brand proposition is shaped, nurtured and developed through the internal character and strategies of the company and the people within it. The key is knowing and understanding which aspects of your brand “character” and “story” need to amplified in a way that matters to, and resonates with, your target audience.

 

If you want to develop strong brand equity to grow your business profitably then you need to start by getting a clear sense of who you are, as a brand/company, what you represent or stand for, what makes your company brand different.

 

When you can answer these questions you are in a better position to understand how to give your brand a unique and compelling voice that stands out from the crowd, resonates with your target market and ultimately builds your brand equity, giving you a competitive edge and increased profitability.

  

Virgin Urinal Ad

  

Have a Clear Sense of Who You Are

Virgin is a leading example of how to develop a brand with a voice so clear that it transcends industry and market boundaries. Their expansion through multiple channels has been very successful because Virgin has a clear sense of itself and consistently communicates their brand values to their target audience, while injecting their brand culture into everything they do.

    

Virgin Adverts 

 

From its inception Virgin embraced a ‘challenger brand’ status. Regardless of the industry, Virgin aimed to differentiate themselves from their competition by not playing by the rules. Virgin’s brand equity is founded on their brand’s ability to challenge both consumer perceptions and industry assumptions.

 

How has Virgin managed to succeed in industries as diverse as insurance and airlines, mobile phones, radio and rail? They succeed by consistently building on their brand values of delivering value price, high quality, cheeky fun, innovation and great customer service to every market they enter. They behave like the impudent, yet endearing smaller company that engenders customer affections when in fact they are a global brand power house.

  

  

Virgin has been able to consistently leverage its brand across multiple channels because it has so successfully developed it brand voice to “own a place” in the minds of its target audience.

 

Look how Virgin has been repeatedly able to enter new business arenas with a bang and shake up the existing status quo. The voice of the brand is clear and consistent throughout all the marketing strategies of the various brand/business ventures – a voice that tells the story of a brand that is fun, innovative, a maverick in its field, but equally synonymous with being consumer-centric and providing a quality service. Consequently, Virgin’s brand personality is highly visible in every market within which they operate.

   

   

What Does Your Brand Say to Your Customers?

If your product is not unique to its market, then your ability to distinguish your offering from that of your competitors lies in creating a remarkable and strong personality for your brand.

 

Your brand personality, together with its simple idea, brand story, way of doing things, the brand world it creates and the special relationships it engenders are the defining elements which will attract your target audience and compel them choose your brand over that of others in the market and consequently help you build a much more profitable and sustainable business.

 

Do you have a strong “voice” for your brand ?

 

• Do you know key strategic do’s and don’ts for your brand behaviour?

 

• Do you have a clear sense of where you stand in the market and what works best for your brand?

 

• Do you have a great product or service but are struggling to say what makes you different?

 

• Do you know the “magic ingredients” for your brand which makes it irresistible to your target audience?