This post, featured in this month's Escouter magazine, was written by Emily Stevenson from Advorto and Sarah Lenton from Evviva Brands.
The most basic thing we can drill into ourselves about branding is oddly enough what actually sounds like the most logical; your brand is more than just your logo. Your brand encompasses all aspects of your company, ranging from your commercial brand and its value through to the experience that you provide for customers and candidates alike. Your brand identity is about the fabric of your business.
A good brand will always be more successful than a bad brand. A larger and well-known brand will always sell better than a completely unknown brand (although this does not mean that the larger brand is necessarily the better one). In recruitment terms, you have a headstart if you have a good brand. There is less attraction work to do if you have an established and recognised brand that speaks for itself – people who want to work in computers will flock towards Apple as they will assume that’s the best place for them to find the best work. In some countries, it is literally all about the brand and the prestige that working for that brand brings. In the UK, this is also true to some degree – you might be more likely to interview a candidate who has a big brand name, like Virgin or Unilever on their CV, over a candidate with small companies listed that you haven’t heard of. Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean that that candidate is better than the other but some people may choose to trust in a reputable brand having good employees and in that is demonstrated the recruitment value of having a good brand.
As with recruitment value, the commercial value of a good brand will always be the more successful. However, what about something like two brand giants such as Pepsi and Coke? Now personally, I will choose Pepsi every time – like all die hard Pepsi fans, I’m fairly sure I could even smell the difference between the two across a crowded room! But on Pepsi cans/bottles, it describes the drink as ‘a cola flavoured drink’ – does this mean that Pepsi is always going to be the one that isn’t Coke? Does it mean that their brand will always be second to Coca-Cola? Personally, this will never be the case for me but it’s interesting to think about. And obviously, Pepsico is an absolutely huge commercial giant, with fantastic brands across the consumer industry - I am just touching on one that I most particularly favour!
I’ve been talking about values of brands once they are fully established but what about the bit before this – how do you build a brand? I found the best example given to me was to think about it like a house. You have to sort out the inside first, as that’s the bit you’ll be living in and then once that’s sorted, you can turn your attention to the outside and gardens. Essentially, you have to make sure your brand is suitable for your employees and focus on your employee experience before you even think about your candidate experience. You can try and project an image to candidates and the market but if it doesn’t match the employee experience, then it’s never going to stick. If you’re creating an illusion of your company to match the things that your candidates want, putting together a message and then marketing it and it’s not you, your employees will know. Your brand is who you are, not who they want you to be.
Work out the specifics of how your brand will work – it will set a standard and your employees will then know exactly what you expect. If you are clear on what you want and what you value you as a company, you will inspire brand belief in your employees and they will believe in what they’re doing and therefore, the company will work better. If you need to change your brand, you need to address the reality of the message and make sure it is accepted by your employees. Once you’ve got your inward staff onboard with your messages, then you can start sorting out your external recruitment (or the ‘front garden’ of your house!)
When you are looking outward, you are looking at the candidate experience. In last month’s issue, I talked about branding in the candidate experience. Consistency is the key to ensure a good candidate experience with your brand, consistency of your brand. Articulate to your candidates what it means to be you and work for your company – if applicants are clear on what it means to work for your company, you will hopefully only get people applying who feel that they will fit in with these values.
As a small company, it’s often difficult to compete with bigger brands, even if you are actually better than them! However, with consistent branding (and perhaps clever marketing of this!) there is no reason that you shouldn’t enjoy the same amount of development and growth. Taking the smoothie company Innocent as an example here – started out as a very small company with a very clear message: we don’t take life too seriously. They had messages on the bottom of their smoothie bottles, their ingredients included interesting items including one-man tents and exact amounts of fruit, (such as 1¼ bananas) making them stand out from all their competitors on the shelves next to them. Their website, their packaging and eventually their television commercials were all consistent in this message and consequently, Innocent are now a very well respected brand with huge recruitment value and ever growing commercial value.
Regardless of commercial value, recruitment value, branding through social media or articulating your brand successfully, at the end of the day if you take one thing away it should be that the brand is who are you now. Not who you wish you were or who you think others would like you to be.
