What’s the point?

Whether you call it employer branding, employment branding, or just plain branding, your CEO still only wants to know how it can save money or make money for the company.

Branding, just as any other strategic endeavor, should make your company more profitable. It’s about bottom line business results not an intellectual pursuit.

So let’s back up for a second. How does branding, and more specifically, employer branding improve the bottom line?

A brand makes attracting new customers and holding onto current customers cheaper. Hence profitability. Branding does the exact same thing in the employment sphere. It makes attracting talent cheaper and inspires turnover-cutting loyalty. Suddenly HR looks like a moneymaker.

Branding does same thing whether the target is customers, employees, or other. So what would your CEO say to that?

“Why does our company need more than one brand?”

The answer, of course, is that you don’t. The finer points of how the brand is communicated obviously differs from consumers to employees, as do the specific value propositions, but the core of the brand does not. It’s the still the same personality, the same voice, the same values.

HR is merely one of many stakeholders in an organization’s overall brand. It’s their role to communicate the brand in a compelling way to current and potential employees. Similarly, the CFO’s role as a brand stakeholder is to communicate the brand to the financial community. Marketing communicates the brand to consumers. PR communicates the brand to the media. But you never hear terms like “financial brand,” or “PR brand.”

Does HR really need its own term for this responsibility? I can deal with it if you can, so long as we don’t lose sight of the fact that it refers back to the same brand that everyone else in the company is talking about.

Your CEO would be so proud to see everyone working together so harmoniously on one brand. If everyone is striving for profitability then having just one brand is only natural. Just ask Phil Knight or Steve Jobs. Nike and Apple, two of the most desirable places to work, don’t do “employer branding.” They don’t have to. Their brands are so well integrated throughout every department that employees and consumers alike are attracted magnetically.

For more perspective, call BRANDEMiX.

The Great Debate

It appears that this unified point-of-view on branding has created quite a stir in the HR community. There’s a fascinating discussion taking place right now as to the validity of a holistic approach to branding (brand for talent and ere.net) and the traditional practice of creating different buckets. While some comments are harshly opposed to my stance as presented in this blog, this is a very worthwhile debate. Given what you know about branding, I think you’ll see where their stance falls short:

http://community.ere.net/blogs/jodyordioni/2009/12/brand-vs-employer-brand/#comments
http://www.brandfortalent.com/blog/whats-cooking/how-do-employer-and-customer-brands-connect/

Keep It Simple Stupid

Believe it or not, branding is supposed to make things easier…for everyone.

What has become the science of pontification was once the art of simplification.

Remember that a brand is really just a shortcut. When we see a logo, we can make assumptions about the product that bares it. If you don’t know anything about aspect ratio or refresh rate you can just buy a Sony television because you know it will be quality. If you don’t want to spend your weekend comparing the price of Frosted Flakes at every grocer in town, you can just go to Wal-mart because you know they’ll have the lowest prices anyway.

Imagine a world with no brands and only products. You’d have to laboriously balance the pluses and minuses of every product for every purchase. You could have no preconceptions or expectations. You could make no assumptions. You’d have analysis paralysis every time you went to the deli.

Sadly, this is what job-hunting feels like a lot of times. You’re forced to form an opinion of a company based solely on the few tangible benefits listed in a job posting. A brand should replace this process of rationalizing and help create an emotional connection (or not) with the company and the culture.

However, too often employer branding is used as just another rational benefit – another “plus” on the old strengths vs weaknesses scale. Your employer brand is not just another reason to believe. It’s the reason to believe. It’s the higher order that supersedes all the rational benefits. So if you spent the time, money and effort to develop a brand, but continue to base all your communications around the same old rational benefits, then you’re spinning your wheels.

Google’s recruitment Youtube video says nothing of pay or benefits – it talks more about the cafeteria and the culture. This is with good reason – for many technical positions, Google pays less than Microsoft does, but Google is the heart’s desire for young engineers not Microsoft. Google has taken the side-by-side comparison out of the equation replaced it with brand.

Or, look at the recruitment ads for Southwest Airlines, one of the strongest employer brands. Absent are the bulleted lists of good reasons to join the company or an “about us” paragraph touting the company’s prestigious history. Instead they seduce you with brand identity.

Your brand should take the guesswork out of joining your company. It should let people put away the scale and listen to their gut. Just as shopping for clothes is as much emotional as it is rational, so too is shopping for a job. So allow your brand to pull its weight. Allow it to make things easier for jobseekers. Allow it to simplify your communications. Allow it to simplify your recruiting strategy. And if you don’t have a brand, call BRANDEMiX.