Creating an Employee Brand

[beresford moyle rosser]

Hi there.

Greetings from a rather stormy beach on the West Sussex coast!

I was wondering if anyone has used brand development methods to create a brand image for themselves or for a work team? My colleague and I work very well together as a team within the organisation we work for - British Airways. We would like to develop ourselves as a 'brand' so that people at work will know that when they engage us they will receive certain qualities and standards of work. But, how to develop and plan a brand image? What are the steps we need to take to formulate the brand and then let it be known?

Any ideas or suggestions would be gratefully received!

Many thanks.

Berry

[Anja S]

Hi Berry,
greetings from the stormy Dutch beach :)

What a great idea!

I think a good way to get your creative juices flowing is to think of a logo. If you and your colleague where an actual company, an actual "famous" brand - what would your logo be? What would it look like; what would people think of, when they see it?

I think when you brainstorm for a logo and what it should incorporate and *why*, you will automatically think of your values, your personalities and your uniqueness along the way; and what message you want to send out. Maybe it's the wrong way round, I'm no marketing or branding expert :) but I always think engaging your left and right brain makes you doubly creative!!

I'm curios what exactly you and your colleague are doing within your organization? Plus, I'm really interested how your organization will react to your branding and how you came up with this idea?

Keep us posted,
Anja

[David Zinger]

Hi Berry,

I love the current focus on employee branding but have a slightly different take on the topic. I believe Your Brand = (Strengths + Value + Visibility) x Engagement. You can read a post I wrote on this here. There is a second post going in a slightly different direction, here. I hope this is helpful, let me know your thoughts.

David

[Alison Quest]

Hi Berry

Firstly I'm jealous! I've just moved from East Sussex coast to noisy, dusty, dirty London!! I miss the beach - stormy or sunny!!!!

Here are my thoughts for what they are worth!

I think it would be really good to ask your key internal customers/stakeholders/clients what they expect...what's most important to them and then rank where you are now. What they expect can form the essence of your brand and then your team building/development can focus on collective thinking and engaging around ideas to improve delivery around what is important to your customers/stakeholders clients. You can record/measure what is important and where you are now - and then at a later date...find out if you are improving and indeed if the same things are important...

I'm not a massive fan of developing "internal, functional" brands....British Airways is the brand...just good to figure out what that means in terms of behaviour/delivery/service etc for your team. the image should come through every time someone in your team interacts with anyone they come into contact with in the world of work (well....and outside too if they are to be true brand ambassadors!!!). What do you think??? Would love to hear your response!

We've developed a really fun, engaging card-sorting exercise which really helps tease out what is important to people and gets very rich discussion and reflection happening - in small focus groups or large workshops. Thus avoiding the very unengaging and over-used survey!!!

Let me know if you fancy a coffee...just to say hi and chat...and I'll be on that train to Sussex faster than you can say employee engagement!!!

Take care

Alison

[Kurt McDowell]

I like both posts by Anja and David, and they are both on the right track. Our company "brands" every internal communication we provide for our clients. By branding, we mean asking these questions, "What thoughts, emotions, feelings, competencies, should our brand represent?" "How should our employees view us when looking at our brand?"

David is correct in pointing out what the brand represents, but adding the unique identifier (logo) helps employees attach an image with feeling. Remember, when the mind receives new information it tries to associate this information with a previously learned pattern or behavior. Creating this new "pattern" and associating a desired feeling or behavior with it can often double or triple the success of your communications. You are utilizing multiple sensors.

Branding has been so effective for us that we've created a full-service graphics division for branding, logo creation, and cartoons. Cartoons work great!