Branding, marketing and communications professionals spend countless hours on the definitions of their brands. They labor over nuances in personality descriptions, color variations, logo application and headline treatments. They analyze and strategeize about audience characteristics, product and service packaging, and competitor claims. They study customer and prospect needs and, with exacting precision, craft messages about their own products and services' ability to deliver against those needs - and to do so better than anyone else in the marketplace.
All too often, entrenched in their marketing silos, they overlook the most impactful and obvious component of their organizational branding - their authentic organizational culture.
Organizational culture is the experience created through collectively living out of the organization's deeply-held values - the good and the bad. Internally held values are the invisible driving force that guide and direct the efforts that create the external experience. And, they are the centerpiece of all great brands.
In the end, there is no escaping your culture and authentic organizational values. After all the planning, strategizing and carefully crafted execution is complete, you will take your parade through the center of town - and the people will recognize who you really are and what you really value. Whether it is in alignment with who you tell them you are or not. The organization's identity - as defined by the values it lives by - will always become obvious to the marketplace (and sometimes painfully so).
Just ask BP what happens when you build a brand image based on a value of caring for the environment and your operations people subsribe to a different set of values.
Or consider the irreparable damage done to Eliot Spitzer's reputation that was built on strong ethics when he was found to be engaged in his own ethical misconduct. These are two clear cases of reputations being built on what the marketplace wanted to hear as opposed to what was true about the brand.
Your brand will ultimately be judged by who you are as defined by your authentic organizational values - and on the alignment between your authentic values with your actions and your words.
A beliveable and sustainable brand has to be founded on the reality of the culture creating it. If you want to evolve your brand to higher levels of performance, you need to look at evolving your organizational values to higher levels of integrity. That will give you the foundation for defining and living your own great brand.
Then, when it is your turn to parade through the center of town for all the people to see, they will see an organization that can be counted on to deliver a quality experience that matches its masterfully crafted promise of its brand. Isn't that we are all aiming for?
Susan Waldman is partner and director of strategic services at ZilYen
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