A common mistake is going to all the effort of creating a brand that perfectly captures who you are, and then doing nothing with it internally. Slowly over time, this will erode your customer experience.
Innovation for example, is a really common brand value, but there are so many times that I’ve gone into a company listing innovation as a value yet when I’ve asked ‘How are you innovative?’ I’ve been met with shrugs and stares. A brand needs to have an internal plan on how to encourage the attitudes and behaviours you’re using to sell yourself.
So how do you embed your brand?
1. Tailor your recruitment
Integrate your brand values into your hiring process as well as performance reviews. Make your recruitment as much about cultural fit as skills and experience.
2. Appoint brand ambassadors
You need to encourage, recognise, and reward on-brand behaviour. Appoint people within your organisation to take ownership of and constantly push and monitor your internal culture.
3. Train your teams
Make sure you go beyond just sending round emails that are easily ignored; learning about your brand needs to be an interactive and integral part of life in your business. Create dedicated onboarding programmes for new arrivals and refresher programmes for existing staff. Don’t make it a chore; help them understand the value in being on brand.
4. Internal brand days
Host events for your staff that bring your brand to life. It doesn’t have to be particularly work focused, just involve activities that represent your culture, ethos and values. Make sure you’re highlighting the links between what’s involved and your brand.
Here’s an example.
We recently rebranded a leading national recruitment company, People Solutions. The new brand was all about their approach, culture and customer experience, therefore the internal aspects of the brand were just as important as the external.
As part of the project we delivered training to their brand ambassadors on how to onboard the rest of the organisation. They then were able to hold their own onboarding sessions covering the mission, vision, proposition, values and tone of voice. This meant before the brand had launched externally, their comms teams were confident creating onbrand communications, their sales staff knew how to articulate the brand benefits to customers, their HR teams understood what to look for in new recruits etc.
The highlight of the project was the internal launch event with 120 members of staff from across their organisation. We started the day by revealing the new brand identity, before taking them through the strategic elements and major changes to the business.
Then the real fun began. We had created themed activities around heir brand values. From figuring out how to dress mannequins for an adventure, to protecting teammates from nerf gun fire, each activity brought a brand value to life in an engaging and memorable way.
You can see a few highlights below.
