The longer we do what we do, the greater our appetite for learning. As our curiosity takes us down new paths (and many a rabbit hole) we share our thoughts and ideas here.
Social Identity - a licence for trust
Future Observatory, the national design research programme for the green transition, defines climate impact in terms of three different levels: symptoms, systems and stories.
While scientists shine a spotlight on symptoms, engineers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers reinvent systems, it is we - the communicators - who must write the stories. Stories that shift perceptions and move us to action.
Thankfully, this most elusive aspect of climate action takes skills we already have. To listen intently, learn willingly, share information truthfully, educate wisely and bring people together around powerful ideas is what we communicators do.
Every business is founded on an idea - the value it offers to the world. Now, we must reconnect with that value, reimagine and rearticulate it through a mission-driven, socially responsible lens.
In her article this month for The Herald Business HQ, ‘Is sustainability going out of fashion?’, Dr Antoinette Fionda-Douglas suggests ‘Many businesses are falling short of their own sustainability goals and hesitating to share their progress for fear of greenwashing’. This lack of progress and high level of cynicism means positioning your influence and impact must stand up to scrutiny.
Credibility comes from understanding expectations in your category and making sure your sustainability message has a good ‘brand fit’. A good fit achieves an ‘84% increase in demand power vs only 24% where a sustainability message exists and the fit is poor’ according to data from research firm Kantar.
Source: Kantar LINK Database | Average Demand Power Contribution percentiles | © Kantar 2024
Locked into the fundamentals of your brand is the key to a credible transition from ‘corporate identity’ to ‘social identity’.
Your brand can signal a new social contract with your communities and environment. In its expression, you can leverage what you need to drive innovation and change.
Purpose, no longer a statement of good intentioned aspiration ‘for a better tomorrow’, is more meaningful, demanding and urgent in its obligation to people and planet
Values - the true drivers of change - underpin your efforts and hold steadfast the connections among colleagues and customers on this journey
New narratives and messaging are inclusive, empowering and evidence-based
And in a media world of misinformation, AI and greenwashing, brand character is more real and relatable than ever
Transparent, accessible and in touch, a social identity is your licence for trust.
Sarah King, at Kantar, suggests in her presentation ‘Why sustainability is central to brand success’ that investment in your sustainability positioning could bring an uplift in long-term brand value (+10% for those who do it well), increase business efficiency, avoid reputational risk and, perhaps most powerfully of all, enable clients and consumers to scale their own impact.
The British Academy in its recent research into the Future of the Corporation goes further. It proposes that businesses must be accountable to their purpose (beyond profit) through reform in corporate law, regulation, governance and reporting frameworks and implement it through reform in ownership, measurement, finance, innovation and investment. They must “find profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet, not to profit from creating problems for either.”
Indeed, the 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code defines the responsibility of the Board to “establish the company’s purpose, values and strategy, and satisfy itself that these and its culture are aligned … [to] engage meaningfully with employees, communities, suppliers and other stakeholders and consider the impact of the company on the environment and society.” Yet, an assessment by the Financial Reporting Council (the FRC) suggests boards “often do not possess the necessary skills, knowledge, experience, and motivation to discharge those duties.”
While the increasing number of B-corps and social enterprises are already mission-driven, can we make it mainstream across all categories and sectors?
Strategists, consultants and creatives in the fields of communication have a relatively small carbon footprint, but an outsized responsibility to support business leaders to make this transition.
Together, we can unpick complexity, confusion and jargon. We delve into the nitty-gritty of what and whose problems you exist to solve. We examine context, stakeholder attitudes and interests. We find consensus around simple, powerful strategies and ideas. And we communicate them with consistency and character through meaningful social identities and the enterprise stories of our time.
References and further reading:
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/programmes/future-of-the-corporation/
https://beira.scot/blogs/news/is-sustainability-going-out-of-fashion-a-look-at-the-future-of-esg
Karine Trinquetel, Global Head of Sustainable Transformation Practice, Kantar, Unlocking sustainable marketing power Webinar Sept 24
https://adnetzero.com/news/why-sustainability-is-central-to-brand-success/
The art of saying less and feeling more
Being equipped with the facts is rarely enough to motivate us to act. It’s feelings that drive our decision-making. Traditional workplaces may have expected us to leave our emotions at the door. But if we shut off our emotional intelligence, we can’t make a single decision at all. When attention is the currency of our age, we need emotion more than ever to cut through and connect.
In our research and workshops leaders often talk with emotion - sincerely passionate about what they do - and in the room they are. Yet their communications typically sound anything but. Are businesses afraid of expressing emotion? Of being too touchy-feely? Or is it that they just don’t know how. The human and emotional qualities of our professional relationships are hard to describe.
In a chilly, vaulted old church on a weekday evening last week, I was immersed in the science of how our brains respond to visual, audio and sensory stimuli. Robyn Landau of Kinda Studios enthusiastically illustrated the potential of Neuroaesthetics. This emerging field (and hot topic) encourages us to consider all of our senses when we create and design experiences. Far-from being wellbeing ‘woo-woo’ (although its application in mental health therapy is compelling), it got me thinking about how we might take a more sensory intelligent approach to the expression of business communication and brand.
In the artworld a trend for highly sensory ‘immersive art’ is becoming mainstream. Groundbreaking ‘conscious’ artist (and Kinda Studio collaborator) Hannah Marshal is creating visceral sensory experiences that transcend word and image alone. Last year, the Financial Times commissioned Hannah to create a sound installation for the #FTWeekendFestival to celebrate their ‘130 years of pink’.
https://www.instagram.com/hannahmarshall_______/p/C6pK_jWIW1q/?img_index=1
Two large scale walls, positioned in parallel, formed a walkway through which a 130 second soundscape played. Guests heard the continuous pulse of the original FT printing press beneath historical voices from the paper’s lifetime layering and weaving over each other
The experience (even just watching it online) is evocative and powerful. It commands your attention and focus, asks that you listen deeply and interpret its meaning and messages for yourself.
Brands can often say too much, try too hard to describe what they mean, and leave little space for the viewer (or listener / participant) to feel something, to interpret it in their own way based on their context and perspective.
Collaborations with artists, craftspeople and makers can have a profoundly authentic and elevating effect on brand communications. There is artistry in saying less and helping people to feel more.
Composer and musician Chris Bradley brought his talent to our brief when he composed a unique sonic identity for our client, Emerald Learning. The process of interpreting brand personality in melody and rhythm brought a new and distinctive dimension to this work. Every time we hear it, it lifts our mood.
So when we write, let’s close our eyes and imagine the spoken word, the rhythm, the beat or an interpretation in music. Let’s think beyond photography and imagine moving image, pattern or shape. Let’s envisage an environment or an experience through lighting, texture and scale. Let’s appeal to the full spectrum of our senses so that clients and customers can bring themselves to the experience and take away a feeling they won’t forget.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
References / Reading
https://www.kindastudios.com
https://www.hannahmarshall.com
Photo by Milo Weiler on Unsplash
Diversity for innovation
Last week I was introduced to the concept of ‘Cognitive diversity’ by a proud CEO brandishing a colourful diagram illustrating the diverse personalities on his leadership team. Leading a business that has disrupted its market for over 10 years, this freshly appointed CEO intends to pay close attention to people dynamics to continue to disrupt and innovate. Diversity from this perspective becomes a powerful and commercial component of business; a catalyst for boosting performance and generating new ideas.
“Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions.” Nicholas Negroponte, Professor and Co-Founder, MIT Media Laboratory as quoted in John Maeda’s Design in Tech report from SXSW 2017. http://bit.ly/2mVkq0x
“...when we are dealing with complex tasks like engineering problems, or tasks requiring creativity and innovation, or managerial issues, cognitive diversity is a key explanatory variable in levels of performance.” Steve Denning, forbes.com http://bit.ly/2ngR5Og
Diversity in business can also be achieved through ‘inter-disciplinary effort’. A theme celebrated this month at a lecture given by Lego’s EVP and CFO John Goodwin. John shared the transformational strategy (and learnings along the way) that helped Lego rise to the second most reputable brand in the world. A vital component of that strategy was a new organisational model that put ‘interconnectivity’ at the heart of the way Lego works. A model that ‘enforces’ cross-functional collaboration. That rewards collaboration over functional measures, promoting ‘team creativity’ with ‘no functional bias’.
When talking about innovation at Lego, John asked a question we should all ask ourselves… if we we claim to be innovative, are we clear what we are innovating for? With the answer comes focus and alignment. Effort coordinated and streamlined. One purpose or goal that teams get behind and willingly apply their diverse minds, skills and talent to achieving.
But a shared purpose will not make it easy to work together. That takes shared values. When the CEO that opened this story talked with confidence of a new appointment - yet another individual that did not fit any existing mould - he did so because he knew they shared similar values. Values that transcend personality, experience or functional expertise.
We help our clients embrace diversity in all its forms, celebrate the values and purpose that binds gloriously diverse teams together and watch with wonder at the innovation that results.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
The purest investment - aligned culture
You are exceptionally good at what you do. And from the comfort of your full time job you think you can do it better. For yourself. For your clients. For your industry. So you listen to your inner entrepreneur and start a business… Wind forward 10 or 20 [or more] years and you are surrounded by people just like you, exceptional, doing what they do - for you.
In partner-led, professional service businesses today there is a dichotomy. The client wants personal service, from someone they deeply trust. You employ individuals who excel at building these relationships and owning them. But managing your team feels like managing a Premier League football team full of strikers. Everyone scoring goals. When it comes to collaboration and alignment... frankly, it's dysfunctional.
Founders and leaders must complete the transformation from being on a personal mission, to leading a collective of like-minded superstars, to ultimately leaving a culturally aligned legacy business that can contribute to their industry ecosystem in a self-sustaining way, set on a trajectory of long-term growth.
Exit Planning consultant Jean-Bertrand de Lartigue said that culturally aligned businesses are ‘considered as close to a pure “investment” as a business can come… This type of business has the least chance of succession related failure, and is therefore considered the most valuable to a prospective buyer.’
To achieve this there must be a conversation about brand; one of the primary strategic tools for achieving alignment, facilitating collaboration, democratising responsibility and enabling growth. Capturing and systemising what’s made you successful in a clear and coherent brand will help pass on more than just knowledge and skill, but the good will and the spirit of the business. Brand can help build cultures where knowledge can be transferred in the context of shared goals, shared vision and values. Partners and employees are enabled to think beyond themselves - thinking firm first, team second, individual third. New superstars are nurtured, clients are collectively loved and the business can enjoy a future beyond its’ founders wildest dreams.
BEYOND TABLE STAKES FOR CLIENT EXPERIENCE
Do you suffer from survey fatigue? Tired of being asked to rate this or score that? I work in a creative industry, I like asking questions and exploring the answers, and I love a survey. The good ones can stop you in your tracks and make you think.
A few weeks ago an online survey popped up asking what ‘experience’ meant to me. It was a simple question and it intrigued me. Just how do I define a good experience? Or a bad one?
I recalled an evening in a London restaurant where, on the face of it, everything went wrong. A booking mix up, a long wait at the bar and a fire at one of the restaurant’s suppliers meant most of the menu was unavailable. But the Maitre d’ handled it with charm, humour and sincerity. He made us laugh with incredulity that so much could go wrong in one evening. With drinks and dessert on the house, we left with fond memories. We’ve been back again and recommended it to friends. A good customer or client experience is neither about perfection, nor the functional elements of service. A good experience is about how it makes you feel.
Good experiences – both professional and personal - come from positive relationships. By sharing thoughts and feelings with others who believe in and are passionate about the same things. Good service is rational. Good experiences are emotional and become memorable for it.
Reviewing and improving customer experience scores highly on many firms’ agendas right now. Speakers at PM Forum’s Annual Conference this year confirmed that defining a consistent and valued client experience is the greatest opportunity to differentiate.
Clients are overloaded with information and choices. They have a wide range of influences and are becoming more discerning with higher expectations. They are looking for more transparency, more authenticity, and a more human (less corporate) exchange.
Delivering a positive experience at every client touchpoint is paramount to continued business success. How? It starts at home and the responsibility is democratised. Every employee must play their part in conducting business in new and more relevant ways, supported by a unique culture to enable and guide them.
For smaller businesses, this tends to happen organically, and founding partners define a culture and experience based on their own character, ambitions, personal principles and values. But what happens when a business grows? How scalable is culture?
A framework becomes vital for growing businesses to crystallise beliefs and values; this is a shared narrative to align culture and experience.
This is not about rules, cultural autocracy or conformity - it is about shared ideals and empowerment. Employees must feel informed, equipped and motivated to adapt to changing marketplace trends and client needs.
How can you build and grow a culture where employees can think innovatively, embrace new technologies, adapt business models and transform service delivery?
Ask yourself: Does my business culture have strong foundations? Are they understood, shared and invested in by leadership, partners/managers and employees? Are they driving a consistent and positive client experience? Will our cultural foundations hold firm as our competitive environment changes?
Below, we’ve shared some useful principles to help develop and strengthen the cultural foundations of your business.
Be self-aware to stay relevant. Corporate self-knowledge is the Holy Grail for effective people, brand experience or service strategies and management. Seek out, listen to and learn from internal and external feedback to stay relevant.
Share your ambition. Shared purpose and ambition is key to effective teamwork and loyal, long-standing client relationships. If you are striving together and moving in the same direction, you’ll make progress.
Adopt values that add value. Values in the professional services sector tend to default to the elementary components of any professional relationship: integrity, professionalism, quality. Even innovation, openness, and passion can feel nebulous if they aren’t personalised or qualified.
Consider: In what ways do we innovate? How open are we? How do we manifest our professional passions? To create and sustain a differentiating culture, values should be expressive, inspiring and unique to the experience you deliver.
See it, hear it, feel it. Make your culture visible and you make it valuable. Publish, celebrate and share your best cultural qualities through personal profiles, insight and opinion, education and events. Adding this human layer brings personal reference points and emotional quality to your firm’s identity and profile.
Go beyond ‘table-stakes’. How do you want your client to feel? When you understand your clients’ expectations and you are confident that your baseline service is covering their needs, then venture beyond the basics. How can you make their lives easier, make it easier to deal with you? How can you better understand their choices and to arrive at the best decisions together?
Achieving differentiation in professional services is tough. But if you can unite and inspire your people through a shared sense of purpose, aligning values and behaviours to build a culture that adapts and achieves, you will go a long way to succeeding.
Creative accountant? Yes please...
In Miami and London last month we ran workshops for some of the US and UK’s major accountancy players. When mapping out the competitor landscape, an exercise that typically features the ‘usual suspects’, we quickly found focus on the analysis of creative and advertising agency brands. The ‘professions’ are keen to shake off their traditional ‘suited and booted’ persona, see an end to ‘pale, male and stale’ stereotype, and try some more creative attire for size. But care should be taken to put substance before style.
‘Nobody wants a creative accountant’ so the saying goes. Well, now we do… In the face of automation and A.I. the professions are set on an accelerating journey of transformation. From bread and butter compliance to more diverse and consultative business support services. Business models are changing. New service lines added. New skill sets required. ‘We’re not accountants anymore’ one workshop participant stated conclusively. The Big 4 (and others) have already diversified their models to incorporate or set up parallel businesses in legal, HR, security, technology, data & analytics, marketing and creative services.
“The Canadian science-fiction writer William Gibson could well have been speaking of technology in the professions when he said: ‘the future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”― Richard Susskind, The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
In this ‘post-professional society', messaging centred on ‘deep and personal relationships’ and ‘partner-led service’ though still relevant are just not enough. A survey conducted by BDLN network confirmed that while professionals assume that trust and personal relationships rank uppermost in clients’ minds, clients themselves put commercial insight and sector expertise at the top.
So, how should firms position themselves for the future? And how do they bring their existing client base along with them? How do they access the clients of the future and deliver services fit for their needs? This takes creativity. Building firms with resilience, with increased agility, deeper contextual awareness, more data, more specialist insight, elevating the contribution of the ‘human experts’ over soon-to-be automated tasks. Firms with a stronger sense of purpose, more distinctive and active values and a more diverse workforce that experience the freedom to bring their ideas to the table and act on them will prevail. And only with this substance in place, can a brand communicate all this in a way that talks directly to your audiences, with all the character that lives within your business, through all the channels that matter to the people you want to work with.
A shining star in professional services for me is Mishcon de Reya; a London legal firm with a brand that feels distinctly human. Thanks to the appointment of leading advertising agency executive Elliot Moss in a business development director role in 2009, the firm has built a brand that elegantly disrupts its sector. Elliot indicated that doing so takes time and ‘calculated bravery - a real appetite and internal advocacy was needed for bold strategies.’ Elliot talks of ‘doing less but going big’, citing a focus on specific initiatives that delivered a three times return on investment.
As Mishcon de Reya illustrate, creativity and disruption are not always about bright colours, quirky imagery and head-turning headlines. It’s about understanding; who you are and who your marketplace needs you to be, then thinking boldly and innovatively about how you can work with that understanding to achieve new things. So shake off the traditional perceptions, expectations and garb. Be brave, be bold, be calculated and be creative. Embrace the post-professional world and flourish.
Business by design
Design-led business outperforms by 228%
That’s the headline statistic reported by the US Design Management Institute (DMI) when they conducted a study of 15 businesses that institutionally understand the value of design.
It’s easy for those of us with a design background to evangelise about the power of design thinking to transform business (it’s why we do what we do), and it’s always been our jobs to persuade business of the value it can bring. But the DMI statistic was released two years ago, and what we’re seeing is that since that time the trend towards being ‘design-led’ or ‘design-active’ is being comprehensively adopted by some significant brands that are leading the way. We’re entering a new era where the strategic integration of design is creating a whole new corporate attitude. An era where business, technology and design are no longer separate entities.
What do we mean by ‘design’?
Firstly, let’s tackle the slippery interpretation of ‘design’. We’re not talking about typefaces and colour palettes here… Design is a mindset, a process for making the right decisions to bring you closer to your audience/s. It’s a process that's honest and human (based on real insight), empathetic (it demands deep understanding) collaborative (it’s a team sport), predictive and inventive (it helps you see new connections to shape new outcomes) and analytical, iterative and adaptable (it keeps watching, thinking and it keeps on giving). But most importantly, evidence of this mindset is becoming a base expectation with your customers and clients. They expect to be listened to and understood and will judge your interactions with them on how much you use what you learn to shape their experiences.
‘Design-led’… what does it take?
Global agencies like IDEO and Frog have, since the 90s, employed 'design thinking' (divorced from product or communication execution) to solve problems and bring innovation to companies like GE, Disney, 3M, HP... Now companies (large and small) are taking the design thinking conversation seriously themselves. In his article in Harvard Business Review last September, Jon Kolko (VP of Design, Blackboard) said of ‘design centricity’ “…companies today must contend with unprecedented technological and business complexity and that design can help simplify and humanise complex systems”
So, how can you simplify? How do you humanise?
Create emotional experiences (not just rational/transactional)
Work together. Contributions from diverse perspectives will make outcomes richer
Proof of Concept – use models and prototypes to examine complex problems and identify potential solutions
Test and learn. Iterate. It’s the creative way to risk-manage
Pursue singularity and focus. Editing is one of the most impactful tools in the design tooklit
Design from the top?
Doug Powell, Design Principle for Education & Activation at IBM voiced, in a 'Design Matters' podcast, his frustration at designers who think they need an MBA to converse confidently at an executive business level. He asked the question why someone with all the intellectual and practical skills and experience to think differently and make new things real would want to study the models for traditional linear business thinking. So, I wondered, how many Chief Executives/founders and entrepreneurs are out there with a design background? John Maeda’s presentation ‘#designintech’ (reported in WIRED) provides a snapshot from the Tech industries alone:
“…since 2010, 27 companies founded by designers were acquired by bigger companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Adobe, Dropbox, and LinkedIn. Of the cumulative-funded VC-backed ventures that have raised more money since 2013, 20 percent have co-founders who are designers. Last year, for the first time ever, six venture capital firms invited designers to join their teams”.
Mark Parker, CEO at Nike, who in his 10-year tenure has doubled Nike's sales, began his career as a designer. And of course, who could forget Airbnb’s infamous Rhode Island School of Design graduate founders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky.
So, could design leadership have a consistent place at the corporate top table? Could we imagine a world where the C-suite incorporates a Chief Design Officer? That world is already here. Welcome… Jonathan Ive, CDO, Apple; Ernesto Quinteros, first enterprise-wide CDO, Johnson & Johnson; Sean Carney, CDO, Royal Phillips …
“We have a specific advantage that no other function has: we own the tool to transform an idea into a reality,” Mauro Porcini, chief design officer at PepsiCo says. “The ability to prototype and story-tell, to get to market with a product, a service, or a brand. This is something no other function has. We only need to think like partners. In any corporation there are silos, but we can be connected from the bottom of the pyramid all the way to the top, and drive solutions across the organization.” AIGA, ‘advice-for-future-design-leaders’
Design Integration
Corporate businesses are investing in design talent, building or acquiring teams to inject design thinking into every level of their organisation.
IBM are building the largest design team on the planet and is on track to appoint 1,000 design professionals. It’s launched IBM iX – global design studios focused on user experience - “We think bigger than an agency and more creatively than a consultancy, with the power to integrate the whole system. We are a next-generation services company, dedicated to creating transformative ideas that get our clients to the future first”. GE have built a 70 strong design team at their software HQ. Capital One has acquired user experience specialists ‘Adaptive Path. Accenture acquired ‘Fjord’ – a leading service design firm. Barclays is the biggest employer of design talent in London. And agency ‘Oliver’ is implementing a successful strategy to plant agency teams within client organisations.
No longer is a design position on an in-house team second fiddle to an agency opportunity. In-house teams are being empowered with the data, insights, expertise and investment to make an impact and be recognised for it. However, the design process needs commitment, dedication to process, collaboration with other functions, and a creative environment and culture to flourish. To be successful, this new approach must be about more than just the appointment of creative individuals or creative teams but the holistic adoption of the ethos of design thinking and culture as the engine to drive innovation and change – enterprise-wide. A culture of questioning, a dedication to research and dialogue to find answers, a culture of testing and prototyping, of evidencing and validating, of making things real and most of all making sure it matters to customers and clients.
Design in your business
So I invite you to consider, what investment do you or should you make in design? What is the maturity of design in your organisation? Where could design thinking add value?
If your leadership, management and employees are not thinking like designers … then perhaps they should be. What would the future look like if they were?...
Solid as a rock
Our long-time friends and collaborators Ingrid and Nada at agency Luminous, London, invited us to contribute to their publication 'Brand Matters'... Edited by Luminous’ co-founder and creative partner, Jon Towell, the publication is a collation of thought-leadership articles on the theme of ‘Nowhere to hide: the changing face of corporate brand’ written by a number of experts in the areas of corporate narrative, values, culture, creative, employer brand, sustainability, digital content and measurement.
Fiona's article features here:
SOLID AS A ROCK
There’s a new team pushing your brand agenda: your employees. And they are a tough act.
If employer brands were sticks of seaside rock, then ‘employee’ is the word that should run through each and every one of them. But in real life, how do you place employees at the heart of what you do, and what are the benefits of nurturing your employer brand?
Even casual use of social media soon has your people benchmarking your business’s purpose, strategy and culture against other businesses, as well as against their own ambitions and principles.
Electronic chit-chat lets your employees see your business as others do and they compare notes as to levels of transparency, and meaningful and ethical practice. Today’s talent looks for flattened hierarchies where the entrepreneurial are encouraged, career paths are non-linear, there’s rapid job rotation (along with flexibility) and accelerated leadership. Expectations are high. Meanwhile, opportunities from organisations vying to be a better professional and personal match regularly arrive in their inboxes.
So it is that leadership, far removed from its ivory towers of just 10 years ago, is progressively exposed. With heightened organisational transparency and a focus on culture as a marketable attribute, strategy can no longer be confined to the boardroom.
Your employees demand to know about your corporate brand. They want to believe in it and they want to actively play their part within a culture that supports them. A sophisticated employer brand provides them with this opportunity.
The relationship between the employee and employer – between leadership, managers and the wider employee community – is changing, putting new demands on the way enterprise grows and manages its employee communities.
Companies with embedded employer brands...
Experience up to 18% higher levels of productivity*
Find employees are 59% more likely to innovate*
Increase the likelihood of employees acting as advocates from an average of 24% to 47%**
How to engage employees with your brand
Get your corporate brand in order.
Translating your business strategy into brand strategy is key to communicating and embedding your purpose and ambition, positioning culture and values across your organisation. Your brand strategy’s objective is to achieve alignment across all your stakeholder experiences in support of your desired commercial outcomes.
Listen to your employees
To increase and improve alignment and engagement it’s necessary to listen so as to deeply understand the status quo. Do all employees understand the direction of the company? Do they know how their best work contributes to company goals? Do they feel inspired by your strategy? Does it talk to their own personal ambitions? Do your culture and employee experiences align with the experiences you deliver to your customers and clients? Gathering and curating individual perspectives provides a pool of credible and authentic points from which you can build your employee experience story, and craft your employer brand message.
Create a coalition
Brand leadership has typically been the role of marketing. Today, however, brand must be co-piloted by a cross-functional team. Forming a brand coalition, where leadership, marketing, HR, recruitment and internal comms functions work together, is uncharted territory for many businesses accustomed to working in functional silos. Using this coalition to share and join up ideas, share skills, knowledge, experience and data, and take collective action will reap rewards in commercial efficiencies, and result in a more robust, defensible and sustainable brand reputation.
Build your employer brand
Your employer brand already exists. It’s what your business feels like to work in on its best day. Communicating this powerfully, consistently and competitively – in a way existing employees can take pride in and prospective employees find attractive – is achieved by translating your brand framework into a language and tone that speak directly and personally to employees. This typically means defining your employee value proposition (the benefit of working with you in one sentence), a short employer brand narrative (one paragraph that captures what is special about your company or community) and employee-specific messaging reflecting your brand themes (the characteristics you want to be known for). All this can be expressed creatively through a bespoke design framework and communication strategy, transforming your internal communications and talent-attraction activities.
Embed your employer brand
Nurturing relationships inside your organisation requires continuous effort. Author of ‘Exceptional Talent’, Matt Adler, describes retention as ‘a process of continuous re-recruitment’. Listening, gathering feedback, making informed decisions and sharing the outcomes is the relationship glue that gives your high-performing employees the motivation to stay with you for the long haul.
Published July 2018
http://www.luminous.co.uk/blog/brand-matters/
*MCA Brand Ambassador Benchmark, Ken Irons – Market Leader,
Corporate Leadership Council
**The 2013 Towers Watson Change and Communication ROI Survey
SARA FITZSIMMONS RECEIVES HER MBE
There were many moments in 2017 when working with SiMBA that we struggled to hold back a tear. SiMBA, founded by Sara Fitzsimmons, is a charity that supports bereaved families through miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death. In the last 10 years, SiMBA has supplied over 9,000 Memory Boxes, created 8 support groups in Scotland & developed a return to work program.
Susanna, supported by Kat from Studio Thought Process, and Plum Films, worked with Sara to reimagine SiMBA's memory boxes and provide medical professionals with the information they need to ensure that the experience of receiving a SiMBA memory box is meaningful and cherished.
So, it was a happy tear that sneaked our of our eye when we heard of the acknowledgement of Sara's pioneering work with the award of an MBE. Very, very much deserved.
Thanks to the families who shared our stories with us.
Thanks to the partners (STP and Plum) who dedicated their time to this worthy cause.
Three ways to build your brand in a crowded marketplace
[Featured in CA Magazine from ICAS]
For a long time professional services firms went to market with me-too messaging based on an all too common set of attributes. With a strong economy and plenty of corporate activity generating opportunities, keeping clients happy was quite enough to retain good business.
And then the world changed. Accountancy, legal and consulting firms began to find themselves in fierce battles, competing for RFPs and cutting fees just to retain their trusted long-term relationships. Budgets tightened after the 2008 mortgage meltdown. Widespread bankruptcy and exposure of fraud in the financial industry all combined to affect the reputation and buoyancy of professional services firms serving this industry.
The impact of these external forces resulted in significant change including:
Redundancies, restructuring, outsourcing and mergers
Immense competition to win, retain and grow business
Employee engagement challenges around reassurance, recruitment and retention of talent
The most common set of attributes identified as important for professional services firms are: client focused, relationships, global services, results-driven, quality and integrity. If this list looks dangerously close to what you stated as your differentiating factors at the last partner away day, then it’s time to think about this….
Would any corporate executive who didn’t believe a firm to have these qualities consider appointing you?
These are the ‘must-haves’, just as there are ‘neutrals’ that neither create a positive nor negative from a brand perspective. Your brand needs be hinged on a differentiator. On what it is that you do that is true, compelling and relevant to your audiences.
If it’s about survival of the fittest then demonstrating specialisms, skills sets, professional standards and attitudes to clients and services has never been more important. But it is by defining your purpose, your unique proposition, your culture and values that will help identify the pillars of a differentiated brand experience that can tangibly guide every action and interaction with your firm.
These three areas can help you think about how to create your differentiated brand experience:
1. Start with ‘Why?’
We’ve all heard Simon Sinek. But have you really defined why you exist? Purpose beyond profit? What is it that you aim to change, or make better in this world? Do your team share this mission? Do they believe it? Can they see their part in it?
It’s not only Millennials looking for a meaningful work-life balance, and caring deeply about their contribution to society. In September last year, LinkedIn surveyed 26,000 users across 40 countries and found that more Baby Boomers (age 51+) and Gen X (age 36-51) prioritise purpose over titles and paychecks than Millennials.
2. Drive a distinctive culture
How does it feel to work with and/or for you? Have you asked your people? Have you asked your clients? Do you dedicate resource to developing, nurturing, supporting and protecting your culture? How often do you celebrate your culture by sharing exemplary stories, told by your teams?
A strong culture is an important marketable attribute. It signals and sets expectations for consistency in the client experience. 70% of brand experience is determined by ‘people experience’* and 41% of customers are loyal because of good employee attitude*. So it is by acknowledging and celebrating your culture and aligning the employee experience with the customer experience that can significantly and sustainably improve customer and employee loyalty.
3. Be personal, meaningful and credible
Your brand plays a pivotal role in delivering the business proposition to your audiences. And delivering your differentiating message in considered, well-crafted communications secures your position in the hearts and minds of existing and prospective clients and employees.
Brands live in image and in words. Visual and verbal. Physical and virtual. Broadcast and conversation. Developing a coherent brand means aligning service, behaviour, environment and communications. And the success of any brand is a curious mix of how it performs functionally and impacts emotionally.
Coordinating your people, your environment, your entire digital estate and all printed communications can be a significant task. But it’s a task made much easier with your brand strategy in place. Making sure the correct content and tone of voice is suited to the right media and target audience and having a range of flexible visual ‘brand furniture’ and messaging frameworks is the foundation for communicating a successful differentiated brand.
By Susanna Freedman, Director, Brand Insiders
Sources:
*MCA Brand Ambassador Benchmark, Ken Irons – Market Leader, Corporate Leadership Council