Inside-out Branding
Contents
Introduction
The pros and cons of branding
Branding and employees
Branding and customers
The Opportunity
Taking the Brands Inside Out
Divestment of customers
Summary
Introduction
The alignment of how a brand is lived and communicated, both internally and externally:

Bringing the same insights, care and attention towards understanding the impact
of a brand on employees as on researching the impact on customers

Building brand identity internally rather than outsourcing it to an external agency

Going public with a brand identity only when it is clear that what it promises is
being lived internally.
Inside-out branding creates trust, meaning and authenticity for both employees and
customers: make the brand the best rather than the biggest.
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The pros and cons of branding
Branding - pros and cons
External showcase for the organisation
Globalisation and capitalism are corporate evils
Avenue to state the purpose and values to all
stakeholders
Encourage people to consume more than
needed
By being explicit, they force the organisation to
adhere to principles, making it honest,
Enhances unrealistic aspirations / make
responsible and responsive
promises that cannot be kept
Represents freedom of choice
Mirror societal values
Rather than empower and inform, they are
manipulative in creating "cuddly capitalism"
Strong brands evoke emotional pro and anti emotions that represent value and purpose
that go beyond the intrinsic value of the goods or service, especially where celebrity
endorsed: “Do I want to be associated with this?”
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Branding and employees
Work connects people to reality and the society of which we are part, and so shapes our
social identity. This makes our identity dependant on how others view our organisation,
so branding impacts our sense of social identity. We have as many social identities as
we are members od different organisations and we use a particular membership to
enhance our self esteem by positively differentiating our group from others along a
meaningful dimension: our sense of ourselves is driven, by an extent, by how others see
us, shapes what we think of ourselves and how we behave. Branding can drive
behaviour:

It can create pride, a sense of meaning and personal indentity

People identify with external brand values that is congruent with personal values

It creates a virtuous circle between external brand values and internal culture

It enables people to choose to work for organisations whose values and
principles align with there’s
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Branding and customers
The power of brands lies in emotional and subconscious appeal to influence our
behaviour by associating products with emotional needs that goes beyond rational
choice. By extension, employees bask in a brand with a good reputation
Over recent years, consumers have had more information about brands to make more
informed choices and at the same time, organisations have had less control over those
brands. The drivers are increased buying power of consumers and a fragmented media;
since consumers are able to exclude the messages of brands that aren’t “theirs”, brands
have to intrigue and captivate to breed a “loyalty beyond reason”.
For the individual, brands are a source of loyalty and a sense of belonging and hence of
relationship. However, if this is mishandled, the “love” breeds mistrust and suspicion with
a feeling of manipulation – a victim instead of a 2-way relationship.
21st Century Brands:

Need to build lasting relationships and bonds between themselves, consumers
and employees by adhering to basic principles of good behaviour. They should
demonstrate authenticity by promoting legitimate values about the organisation
which are not bounded or constrained by actions of product or geography

Need to demonstrate coherence and consistency – the words and music of
media coverage and organisational performance must match or else this breeds
cynicism, mistrust and the destruction of meaning. This need is increased with
the unprecedented access to information, customer sensitivity to corporate
miscarriage and a vocal anti-corporate lobby. If this is mishandled, what
employee would want to work for you?

Need to be local as well as global. Increasingly consumers are “inner directed” –
they want real authentic experiences and connections with their world rather than
the over-hyped, unattainable. This infers a preference for smaller brands rather
than the megaliths. Local and global can be achieved by forging close and
personal relationships with consumers who bring innovation and concerns to the
organisation, which in turn welcomes and acts with responsiveness and
communication: an intimacy.

Need to be lived by employees. In a service economy, they are in direct contact
with consumers: people become the differentiator between brands. Consistent
brand experience must be delivered in terms of both the “how” and the “what”.
Therefore, the values that a brand displays externally must be consistent with
that which the employees experience internally.
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The Opportunity
Consumers should experience an authentic, consistent brand that is responsive and
meaningful to their needs and which resonates with and is delivered by employees who
live and breathe it:

A strong sense of identity, grounded in organisational history and unique purpose
that is differentiated from the competition. Authentic employee values and
behaviours define the brand’s character and personality. The brand states what it
will and will not do through authenticity and goes beyond brand logos, fake
promises or radical, ungrounded changes in direction

Coherence between espoused and actual values. Gaps are easily exposed,
leading to perception by people of being conned, cynicism and mistrust. Spin and
manipulation are exposed by unprecedented information from a media-rich
environment. Jaded consumers will turn to brands that match promise with
reality. Employees need to experience this in their day-to-day activity.

In a service-driven society, people are the product and so brands are about
people rather than about products. The consumer to employee interaction has to
be managed in creating a consistent, authentic brand by creating alignment
between employee and brand values; this is created by employees’ experience
of working with the organisation. The quality of consumer / employee interaction
gives the brand essence and meaning

Brand values must be bland: they must feel like life-chosen principles that are
well defined and differentiated. This is what leads to emotional engagement by
the consumer and employee.
The relationship between brand and employee is built by reinforcing brand values at
each contact point and it needs to harness employees’ insights as they experience it
every day. This means:

The external brand should act as a showcase to pull people whose values
resonate with the brand, conveys a message about the type of people who fir
with the culture and enjoy a positive relationship with the brand. The external
brand gives a clear signal of organisational intent to employees, consumers,
operations and the market.
This means that the organisation must communicate clearly a consistent brand to
make clear the type of relationships employees can expect from the organisation
and how the organisation expects its employees to behave

The recruitment process explicitly recognises and assesses the fit between
employees and brand from the look and feel of adverts, through the experience
of the assessment process to final communication

Differentiation: what products do and don’t do and what markets to compete in
and not compete in is important in creating meaning for employees through their
relationship with the brand. Passion is the key. A simple and consistent external
branding should be mirrored by the communication strategy internally to keep
employees up to date both in terms of short-term and long-term issues.

Use employee insights into brand purpose to create meaningful, differentiated,
internal and external brand propositions that are coherent and values driven. This
is a powerful lever in building credibility and to buy into the external brand and to
increase connectivity and enhance the relationship between employee and
brand, particularly in times of change.
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Taking the Brands Inside Out
Brand position flows from organisational DNA and business strategy and forms the face
of these for both consumers and employees. To achieve differentiation, there needs to
be a consistent and authentic experience of brands for both consumers and employees:

Build brand identity by placing equal emphasis on consumers and employees by
understanding both groups and involving both in any (re)branding exercise.
Sometimes real personalities are seen to life the brand. The Inside Out principle
is applied on a top-down approach

Constantly reinforce internal brand identity internally through communication,
training and recruitment. Brand identity should attract and retain the staff needed
to gel with the promises made externally.

Be aspirational. Define brands beyond the physical properties to embrace
aspirational and emotional qualities whilst remaining attainable and plausible.

When a brand is under fire, take action. Openly address the concerns of both
consumers and employees.
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Divestment of customers
Strategically, it is sometimes necessary to divest customers. There are a number of
reasons why this should happen, but based on this article, it is of paramount importance
that carry out this task is done carefully so that the best interests of customers and staff
are taken care of. Customer divestment is treated as a separate article.
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Summary
Powerful brands promote values and meaning internally and externally. To harness
these, engage in a 2-way relationship that responds and develops over time; where
authentically lived, this leads to brands that are cherished and nurtured by those that
care most – the people that built them. This avoids the controlling and manipulative
features of poor branding. Inside-Out brands can offer genuine choice, promote coherent
values and build a lucid sense of purpose for employees and an authentic experience for
consumers.
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