Internal Branding: Why Marketing to Employees Means Business
By Martha C. White
Siebel Systems has prided itself on having the most high-tech CRM software on the market. But there came a time when the company had to confront the chinks in its own customer relations management. The software wasn’t the problem; allowing the product to eclipse people—a major component of any company’s success—was.
Worse yet, it wasn’t just the customers who perceived Siebel as a tad impersonal. Siebel employees did also. As a result, the technology firm finally went about redefining its brand to both internal and external customers.
“We changed the focus from product to people,” says Andrew Salzman, vice president of corporate marketing. Warm and fuzzy by comparison, the new brand image goes beyond software and acknowledges the importance of partnerships and relationships, he asserts.
Accomplishing this required more of Siebel than merely altering its marketing materials to reflect the new message. To make the transition work, the company had to get every single one of its 5,200 employees to think of themselves as members of a customer-centric enterprise.
Although companies today are all schooled in the necessity of marketing to consumers, many flounder when it comes to communicating a brand message to arguably their most important audience: their own employees. Known as internal branding, it’s a hot topic getting attention in office suites and boardrooms across the country. Companies like Siebel are starting to realize that internal branding can make or break you. As Salzman puts it: “This isn’t fluffy stuff; this is stuff that affects the bottom line.”
Christi Gibson, executive director of the National Association for Employee Recognition, says her organization is constantly fielding calls from members who need to know how to create and sustain an internal brand. Moreover, the American Strategic Management Institute made internal branding the focus of several presentations at a recent seminar it held.
All the buzz about internal branding is far from mere hype: Research demonstrates that engaged employees contribute to the bottom line of their workplace. (See “Ask the Experts,” page 13.) Companies that are willing to invest the time and resources in creating and sustaining an internal brand their people can align with will have a competitive edge that even the growing pressure of commoditization can’t diminish. Salzman and other branding experts assert that any company can accomplish this—and reap the rewards.
Marry Internal and External Brands
You wouldn’t try to reach your full spectrum of customers with a one-size-fits-all brand message, so you can’t expect your internal stakeholders to adopt a message meant for customers. Recognizing this, Delta Airlines, which has been working to establish a cohesive brand identity internally, has created an employee version of their consumer marketing message. “Good Goes Around” has been reinvented internally as a section of the company’s motivational umbrella program, Delta Rewards.
The key is to make the two marketing components related but not identical, says Theresa Howell, manager, employee recognition and rewards. “We’ve started to marry those concepts...to show that what we do internally is just as valuable as what we do externally,” she says. The consumer message for “Good Goes Around” emphasizes service and the customer-employee relationship. The employee message focuses not only on that customer interaction, but also on building and strengthening relationships with fellow staff members. “Recognition is an opportunity to spread this [concept],” Howell notes.
Without aligning the external and internal brands, the process resembles the Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant: marketing, HR, corporate communications and others all come to the table focused on only their particular link to the brand. But ultimately, consumers only see one brand, and a poor internal brand image will contribute to poor external brand perception on their part. On the other hand, employees engaging in behavior that reflects the brand promise will leave a positive impression with customers.
Crossing Internal Silos
To ensure that all company departments are able to buy into the internal brand identity, Delta is developing an integrated approach from marketing, HR and performance management that will strengthen the employee value proposition, Howell says. “They’re only somewhat powerful in their own world,” Howell notes. “If we can aggregate them, we have opportunities to be more engaged within the organization.”
Howell’s goals are already becoming reality. By opening the lines of communication between marketing, HR and corporate communications, she has been able to piggyback her motivational initiatives off of existing external programs. For example, a corporate sponsorship program overseen by marketing yields dozens of free tickets to a variety of events. Howell uses those tickets as spot rewards for employees who demonstrate behavior, such as exemplary customer service, that reflects the brand message.
Executing an internal branding campaign is not without its pitfalls, however. Resistance and territorialism have a tendency to crop up. Veterans like Siebel’s Salzman and industry pros like NAER’s Gibson strongly recommend bringing in a professional, third-party facilitator to avoid office politics and keep one department from dominating the process.
Just as all departments must be involved in an effective internal branding initiative, all employees must also be included.
“Corporate reputation starts with the employees,” says marketing consultant Rob Urban, president of Abronrbu Communications. “They interact and relate with customers, other partners and stakeholders.” To instill the overall importance of the brand, draw a connection between individual and departmental goals and the overarching objectives of the company, he advises. If you can show employees how buying into the brand directly benefits them, that’s half the battle.
And eventually, that victory of a united workforce mobilized under one brand banner can be felt through all levels of the organization and beyond the front lines, notes Brad Matthews, president and CEO of corporate culture consulting firm ChangEase. “Achieving an organizational culture where everyone recognizes their relationship to the customer, the company and each other enables the organization to deliver on its promise to the customer,” he says.
The challenge of connecting to a broad range of employees was met head-on at Siebel. “We needed to provide examples of how to adapt the corporate framework in a way that retained [the message] while making it relevant to different stakeholders,” explains Salzman. For example, Siebel’s sales force was schooled to emphasize the company’s commitment and expertise in CRM solutions rather than only focusing on product specs.
Siebel has gone even further by rolling out a program to actually certify employees in brand expertise. “We looked at senior customer-facing executives and made sure those folks were thoroughly conversant in elements of the brand strategy,” Salzman says.
Make Employees Champions of the Brand
The group of roughly 300 employees went through an intensive two-hour online training program followed by a formal certification. Now, this core group is in a position to encourage those who report to them to embrace the brand message. As “brand champions,” they can also show employees how the brand is relevant to their specific division or department.
“If all 5,200 [employees] are able to articulate to any stakeholder who we are and how we can bring value, that’s pretty valuable,” Salzman says. “That means the receptionist who picks up and routes calls can talk to somebody and maybe generate leads.”
While it’s important to gain buy-in from employees at all levels, it is especially critical to get the top ranks involved at an early stage. These execs are the people who have to define and articulate the objectives and vision of the branding initiative to the workforce at large, so it’s important to get the inhabitants of the corner offices on board as soon as possible.
“[Brand principles] are usually demonstrated in addresses from senior management. Having senior management, including the president of the company, [on board] is very important,” says Bernie Koth, executive vice president of Wynford, an internal marketing and motivation company. Conversely, if the C-level isn’t willing and able to commit resources and their own face time to the project, it will most likely not succeed.
“If this is coming down from a CEO, it’s going to go smoothly,” says NAER’s Gibson.
Just as a marketing campaign relies on multiple touch points to deliver the goods, an internal branding campaign also has to include a variety of elements. Many of these are motivational in nature; they incentivize employees to buy into the brand promise.
“Accountability is linked to incentive programs,” says Jean McNulty, conference program director at The Conference Board. “You have to give some incentive for employees to follow through, and that can be any number of [rewards].”
In the case of Delta, the branding initiative is actually part of the airline’s enterprise-wide rewards and recognition program, Delta Rewards. Structuring the program this way ensures that employees grasp right away the idea that mastering the internal brand and being able to share and deliver it to their customers is a task that yields rewards.
“It’s anything designed to motivate and inspire,” says Allan Steinmetz, CEO of Inward Strategic Consulting, about the tactics companies use to reinforce the brand message. He is one of several branding experts who emphasizes that the message has to be repeated many times, and in different formats, before it will be absorbed.
Doing It Right
Be prepared to devote resources to planning, execution and reinforcement. Steinmetz shares his three-part rule: Allocate one-third of funds to research and planning, one-third for execution and one-third for reinforcing an internal branding campaign. “Companies make the mistake of investing money as a one-shot deal,” he says. Even corporations who know enough to repeat their external marketing messages often fail to realize when it comes to communicating with their own constituents, he observes.
If all of this sounds expensive, that’s because it usually is. Make no mistake about it, experts say, successful internal branding takes time and money. It’s not a one-time announcement, speech or banner.
“They have a party or a contest and call it a day and think they’re done,” says Dennis Hahn, consultant and executive vice president of ID Branding, a branding and corporate culture consultancy. “That doesn’t beget any real understanding. If you’re trying to indoctrinate it, that isn’t enough,” he says.
To make sure your investment pays off, experts recommend surveying attendees before starting an internal branding initiative to have a benchmarking metric. Regularly conducted focus groups, surveys and questionnaires can all be used to gauge employee awareness.
Siebel Systems looks to customer satisfaction ratings as one way to measure the success of its customer-centric internal rebranding. The company also tracks an extensive set of 50 key performance indicators to determine the effectiveness of its campaign. “They’re aggregated by different areas, and you’re in a position to provide hard, specific tangible examples,” Salzman says.
Companies that are able to master internal branding see the impact where it matters: the bottom line. Human resources consulting firm Watson Wyatt proves this in its 2003/2004 Communication ROI study, which shows that good internal communication systems yield higher value.
The study shows that companies with the most effective internal communication practices—a metric that includes being able to define and get buy-in on big-picture initiatives like branding—provide a greater return to their shareholders.
Steinmetz of Inward Strategic says companies have seen a wide variety of positive outcomes from developing an internal brand. “General results are a more dynamic workforce and the culture is a lot more conducive to improved productivity,” he says, adding that employees are also more likely to be supportive of difficult business initiatives such as layoffs, since they’ve been brought into the loop and understand the reasons behind the actions.
In the Final Analysis
Siebel’s Salzman says that customer satisfaction has steadily increased since Siebel implemented its people-first branding. Revenue has also increased, and although Salzman recognizes that many factors can contribute to revenue growth, he feels the branding effort definitely played a part.
“We saw a difference in deal velocity and deal closure and how long it takes to close a deal, as well as the size of our pipeline,” says Salzman. Those metrics point to Siebel’s ability to better track, qualify and turn leads into sales, according to him.
The bottom line: Successful internal brand management ultimately shows up in, yes, the bottom line.
