Team Briefing

Origins of Brands

Ownership and Identification

In many respects the original intent of a permanent mark to prove ownership and facilitate identification are no different today than they were in the wild west.  Consistent use of the logo and brand identity are essential ways of retaining intellectual property, goodwill, positioning in the marketplace and hence the overall value of investing in developing a recognisable brand.

More recently, these notions have been applied to what happens inside the organisation and “internal branding” has emerged as a topic of interest to those who are seeking to engage employees in their organisation.

What Is Internal Branding About?

• quality
• identity
• emotional associations
• logos
• slogans
• reputation
• values
• recognition
• consistency
• mission
• unique
• luxury
• reliability
• customer experience
• aesthetics
• design
• exclusivity
• comfort
• differentiating

That’s quite a tough ask of anything.  Delivering on that agenda kind of begs the question  – are you giving and getting all that from your brand? Actually – not all brands set out to position themselves as exclusive or luxury – and many, like the low cost supermarkets and value brands have done extremely well in the recent recession.  The problems emerge when there is a mismatch of perception, the brand promise, customer or employee expectations and what the experience is – and that was what our workshop boiled down to.

In this two part series I want to talk about how we engage with brands, where they add value and importantly, how organisations can use them to engage with their customers and employees. In this first part we address some definitions and a little bit of the mechanics.

To begin with, there is nothing fluffy about the role of design, logos and the aesthetic elements of branding – far from it.  That doesn’t mean we all do this well though – here are a few tips and ideas that may help you to explore your own brand and see where there is room for improvement.

What’s in a name – or a logo?

Logos are used to identify your product, organisation, initiative or service from others.  Done well they can immediately differentiate you via the use of a mark, flag, symbol or signature that can suggest differences in quality, price point, emphasis, values and many other things – all from their appearance and design. Logos have meaning derived from the quality of the entity they symbolise, and not the other way around. Logos don’t need to literally describe all that a company is or does but their job is to make it memorable and recognisable.  It’s a bit like knowing someone’s name and using it with other people – once they have made the association between the two, simply using the name conjures up the identity of the person with out requiring any further explanation.  However, logos depend upon quite widespread exposure to create the intended association within and without the organisation.  It is familiarity that allows logos and branding to achieve its purpose. The logo is the corporate identity and brand all wrapped up into one identifiable mark. This mark is the avatar and symbol of the business as a whole.

What is identity?

In design terms, identity is all the visual devices (including logos) used within an organisation. Often, these are produced in a set of corporate guidelines or style guide, designed to ensure consistency.   The purpose of the guidelines is to ensure coherence, consistency and integrity of the brand which helps to ensure it will be recognisable.  Here are some of the things that typically are included in a style guide:

• Overview of the organisation – e.g. provide some context for users about the organisation’s mission, purpose and values
• Information about logos and use of colour, reproduction in black and white
• Font styles and sizes to be used in different situations
• Page and presentation layouts for internal and external use, on their own or in relation to others; measurements, margins and spacing
• Tone of voice
• Photographic guides
• Templates for layout demonstrating use of master artwork

Many visual devices that make up identity apart from the logo including:

• Letterheads, business cards, etc.
• Marketing communications and collateral (e.g. prospectus, annual report, brochures, web pages)
• Products & Packaging
• Uniforms / dress codes (clothing worn by employees)
• Interior & exterior signs and office design elements
• Anything visual that represents the business e.g. vans, livery flags

All of these things make up an identity and should support the brand as a whole.

So what is branding?

Much has been written on the ‘brand’ and it has become big business for ad agencies over the years who promoted it as a strategy required for success.  The brand is effectively shaped and interpreted by the perceptions of the audience and in that way it can be said that actually all organisations have a corporate image – whether deliberate, well designed, coherent, effective, value adding, accidental or not!

Designers don’t “make” brands but their work can influence the foundation of yours.

You might almost say that a brand is the ‘corporate image’ and as such everything an organisation produces, owns and does should reflect its values and aims as a whole. This notion of consistency and integrity is a core challenge and a driver of engagement with the brand.  Many well known organisations have been extremely successful in projecting and controlling their corporate image.  Widespread audience research suggests that their public perception reflects the image they are trying create and live up to.  Other disastrous examples demonstrate the importance of the brand and public perception. Witness the Gerald Ratner gaff that wiped £500m off the value of Ratners jewellers with his speech in the early nineties:

Gerald Ratner – Crap Branding?!?

The best brands succeed in creating an emotional attachment – but the emotion intended is not usually anger, disappointment or embarrassment!

In the next part we look at how branding works in relationship to engagement with customers and employees.

Liz Moody

The manager’s own insecurity can prevent them from letting go. Perhaps if one is new to a role, or has been given extra responsibilities there is a tendency to feel the need to demonstrate that everything is under control. This can result in micro-managing and some managers never move beyond this. Managers with a tendency to micro-manage employees can eventually perpetuate this situation because, over time, staff become conditioned to relinquish responsibility to their manager. In another blog I discussed how staff adapt to patterns of behaviour they observe in their boss.  This downward cycle of behaviour makes line reports increasing less accountable and in turn managers respond by feeling that they simply cannot then delegate with confidence.

Promoting accountability for their own performance amongst employees and encouraging achievement requires active, constant action by managers. The manager as coach is a very current concept and this style of management encourages involvement of staff in setting their own goals and objectives and so in turn increases ownership. This is especially so where employees have freedom to decide how they will achieve these – i.e. designing a strategy for accomplishing the task or project in hand.

As a coach manager therefore, the role includes sharing information on, for example, how the company is performing, what is happening in the wider operating environment, and from where opportunities and challenges arise so that employees’ awareness is raised, the boundaries are clear and the specific feedback helps them frame their plans and execution of their work. Providing such clarity and the freedom to generate new ideas and solutions helps support engagement AND ensures better alignment of effort. For managers the process of sharing and exchanging ideas also provides invaluable insight into how staff think, the information they draw upon, their values and how they relate to others and the organisation itself. By providing direction but not answers, employees’ confidence in their own knowledge, skills, experience and ability to take decisions grows.

The trade off between delegation as opposed to taking more and more on oneself is one between a perceived, if not real, increased risk of failure and this assumes a manager has greater competence, knowledge and experience.  This is not only unlikely but also undesirable.  The ability to take risks without punishment or blame is a critically important factor in engagement and in particular encouraging employees to willingly step up to the mark. It requires a culture supportive to recognise and accept that often from failure and criticism, we learn almost as much, if not more, than from our successes.

Through taking responsibility employees feel more valued and engaged with the business – they have more of a stake in it. Better engagement tends to reduce turnover and increase motivation. More ownership and focused effort on specific goals means managers are freed up to deal with the key results that they are employed to achieve. With everyone focused on the right level of activity and performance, better, more consistent business results – or in short a higher level of performance, is achieved.

Whatever the statistics, and however long we remain in recession, my view is that we are going to see more and more people starting up businesses of their own and increasingly using their employment in large corporations only to gain experience, get training,  make contacts and accumulate funds until they can get out and do their own thing.  I think this is partly about a shift in society and partly a function of how large corporations and organisations operate now.

Review some of the literature and surveys around and they will often point to the reasons why people start their own business, besides the necessity to create income. Founders cite various reasons, amongst them:

1. To be their own boss or feel more in control of their own time now and in future
2. To take advantage of a perceived opportunity that their previous organisation cannot/won’t move quickly enough on to exploit
3. To work with people who are similarly motivated and not be held back by others who are not
4. To earn more for one’s efforts
5. To feel more valued and fulfilled
6. To do work that is more in line with their own personal values and ethos
7. To find a way to create a better lifestyle

The implication is that these things are less possible when working for a large organisation or someone else. But why?  Is it a result of what happens in large organisations – their structures, systems, the culture that exists, management style or something else?  Perhaps understanding what people seem to seek by starting out on their own holds the key to improving engagement levels.

For example, can managers delegate more authority and responsibility to increase the control employees have over their own work? Do they tackle with rigour the disengaged before they have the chance to undermine the engagement and motivation of others? Can performance be effectively recognised and rewarded?  And so on….

It’s Down To You

One beauty of working for yourself is that there is an immediacy about it – you know that whatever successes you have are down to you. You know that the decisions that need to be taken are yours to take and so on.  So perhaps rather than looking at gimmicks and initiatives around engagement, we need to start with the idea of what it is that makes work worthwhile for employees, beyond the obvious need to earn a living and for some, reducing the risk of otherwise running out of money to support the lifestyle we want.

Perhaps more consideration of the personal ambitions and expression in jobs, recognition of the social need for interaction and relationships to others and maintaining a healthy balance between life in work and life at home.  Better understanding of what work represents for employees might be the answer to not just better engagement but higher performance.

The Shrink and The Sage

Let’s start with the FT magazine article by Antonia Macaro and Julian Baggini (aka the Shrink and the Sage) who are a psychotherapist and philosopher respectively. Their article asks the question about what we can do when life loses its meaning.

The “answers”, for some lie in religion, spirituality or existentialism. The upshot is,  I guess, that rather than look for meaning outside of one’s own life, we should look at the meaning in our lives – i.e. what we can put into our lives that is meaningful. Phew – that’s a bit deep and definitely stretches my knowledge of philosophy etc.

Crossing Continents

Anyway, on to Radio 4.  “Not a lot of people know this” to paraphrase Michael Caine, if you exclude the thousands that listened to the “Crossing Continents” programme aired to describe what happens in Senegal. The population there is 90% Muslim. Amongst them there is a significant, and growing group (40%) that belong to “Mourides” , a movement that stresses the importance of a strong work ethic.

The fact that this movement is gaining stature and influence by virtue of its prevalence among the higher echelons of the country’s political positions, poses an interesting question for me. Where does engagement come from and what does this very strong and pervasive value mean for Senegal’s economy?  Can you imagine it being said that in our society everyone wants to work hard, irrespective of their occupation, in the name of some higher force or belief?  It certainly isn’t the usual sentiment of the Daily Mail and I would say that if asked many people would say they only work for “the money”. But is that really true?

In my reading of  Studs Terkel’s book, “Working – People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do” it struck me that there is something in this concept of “meaning in work” that is linked to how we, as human beings, see our performance at work vary over time.   Where there is something meaningful to achieve it makes it that much easier to get up in the morning and give one’s best. We can all point to people who hate their jobs, even when well paid.  We also probably know people that love their jobs, event when not well paid.  They could do something else, they maybe have done something else but when it comes down to it when the work loses meaning, something else in us is lost too.

Are Managers and Consultants To Blame?

When the lean consultants come in, and the six sigma managers are finished with their cost-cutting exercises, when the teams have been dismantled by outsourcing parts elsewhere, and the human service elements have been replaced by automation or self service, and managers warned to guard against “job creep” to keep the wage bill down; and tasks are centralised in the centres of excellence…. and so on…..   isn’t it possible that we have also dismantled some of what it means for the employees?  Isn’t part of what engages them these same things that provide interest, fulfilment and satisfaction for many employees? The interaction, the relationships, the ability to respond and create and take ownership and responsibility etc.?   Once you go through the above, the next wave of consultants coming in are the ones telling you about how you need to engage staff!  So you need more “job enrichment”, create more social interaction, more recognition etc.   The implication and underlying assumption is that managers can manage and control this.  I disagree.

Perhaps the Shrink or the Sage will debate this further at some point – it sounds like their kind of thing after all.  I was introduced to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and many other writers on motivation, many years ago and they have stuck with me.  I often see organisations trying to manage people as though money is the main consideration.  If like the Mourides there really is a “higher purpose” available from work, then shouldn’t we understand it as it must impact on employee engagement.  Think about it!

I didn’t know Studs Terkel existed until he died in 2009. I certainly didn’t know I had so much in common with him! I have often pitied people who seem to regard work as something to get through and a necessary evil. I’m not like that.

It was actually my husband who read me an obituary of Studs’ life and work as a social historian and commentator in the USA. Terkel wrote several books, one about the Great Depression, and he closely followed the trade union movement in America. And so, when I was researching the fascinating and complex phenomenum of employee engagement, I was surprised and delighted when Studs cropped up again.

Most Of Us Spend So Much of Our Lives Working

I believe that as most of us spend so much of our lives working, we should surely be able to make what we do as fulfilling as possible. I say we, and I guess by that I mean not just the employee, but those of us who manage and run organisations that employ them. I fear that like so many other bandwagons and fads, people jump onto employee engagement as though it is something that can be controlled. It is I belive, a much more “mutual” concept than that. Like a relationship, or communication one person cannot do all it takes to make it happen!  This doesn’t seem to be recognised by many managers, and dare I say consultants operating in the field or organisation development or specifically employee engagement. Engagement isn’t something that you “do to” people.

My interest in employee engagement is from a number of perspectives – I am researching it, writing about it, consulting and coaching in it. However it has become increasingly important to me personally. What is the point of work if it doesn’t achieve anything? In performance terms that means adding value and in personal terms that means providing some kind of fulfilment. The day a job stops providing these I am out of there.