In this series on Brand Culture Strategy, we break down the basics over 3 articles:

1. Why your Organisation needs a strong Brand-Culture Connection
2. How to assess your current Brand-Culture Connection strengths and gaps
3. Guidelines to building a better Brand-Culture Connection at your organisation

#2: Guidelines to building a strong Brand-Culture Connection at your organisation

In Article 1 of the Brand Culture Strategy Series, you’ve understood the need for a strong brand-culture connection as the foundation of everything you do at your organisation. In Article 2, you started to assess the strength of your current brand-culture connection.

In the third and final article of the series, we offer some high-level guidelines to building a Brand-Culture Connection Strategy.

1. Assess and (plan to) Address.

Our method starts with taking clients through the Brand Culture Connection Discovery, which typically involves our Brand Culture Strategy Checklist based on the 3 Pillars outlined in article 2 of this series. When we look at the results from the checklist, we can quickly start to see which pillars represent a current roadblock (very often, it’s all 3) and delving deeper in conversation or running through a secondary exercise we call the ‘Brand Expression Quadrant’, we start to understand the priorities for the organisation.

That’s how we build out a plan, which usually involves:

• stakeholder research and engagement to identify perceptions, challenges and priorities;
• leadership strategy facilitations to arrive at decisions about brand and culture messaging;
• internal communication guidance to get all stakeholders involved efficiently and meaningfully; and
• team development to support learning and growth.

But let’s break these steps down a bit…

2. Engage your people and uncover the gems!

Your people working on-the-ground, at every level and in every role, have incredible insights into the brand and culture, if you ask them. They can reveal how the brand and culture are perceived and engaged with (or not engaged with!), where are the gaps, challenges and blind spots, and what needs to be the priority to improve team motivation, effectiveness and culture… to ultimately look after your customers.

Focus groups, town halls, surveys and interviews can be structured to engage your people meaningfully in this conversation. Great communication and question-design are needed here to ensure you engage your staff meaningfully, towards a clear outcome.

3. Bring what you’ve found to your strategy and facilitate efficient and meaningful leadership conversations to arrive at results. 

You should involve everyone in the journey, but your brand and culture direction must be led from the top. It’s well worthwhile gathering your leaders into one room for even one day to tackle brand and culture goals and messaging – if effectively designed, this is time well spent that will create exponential value in all areas of the business in the future.

Review your purpose, vision and values, your culture characteristics, your market positioning and your brand promise… and link all of this to your strategy.

4. Connect everything and everyone!

No siloes here! The messaging and decisions you arrive at from your strategic sessions should now be linked to everything you do and everyone they affect… where does this need to inform your strategy, your business plans and KPIs, your People and Culture programs,  your marketing and communications plan, your sales processes, your project management processes, etc. etc.?

Where does it need to connect for your departments, locations and teams… your customers, your wider stakeholders and audiences?

How to create these connections between messaging, people and planning requires a well-thought-out approach and some careful and timely communications, to bring everyone along for the journey and to create clarity and trust in the change process.

5. Upskill, review, refresh, refocus.

Are your leadership and management ready to lead your clarified brand and culture? Are your teams ready to implement the changes you are putting into place? In steering the organisation’s direction, you must look at where your staff may have gaps in their knowledge and skills and be ready to invest further in them. Where are they being called to stretch? How will you need to provide support to set them up for success? If you are not sure – ask them! They will be able to identify some of the starting points.

Brand-Culture Connection Strategy is not a one-and-done! Revisit and review everything your brand and culture touch, at regular intervals, asking what still works and what needs a refresh.

While business conditions, internal factors and strategy change over time, a strong brand and culture identity should be the constant, guiding light to base future decisions upon.

Strong Brand-Culture alignment is crucial for building organisational trust and business growth… yet so many leaders struggle with this – or have yet to make the connection!

In this series on Brand Culture Strategy, we break down the basics over 3 articles:

1. Why your Organisation needs a strong Brand-Culture Connection
2. How to assess your current Brand-Culture Connection strengths and gaps
3. Guidelines to building a better Brand-Culture Connection at your organisation

#2: Do you have a Strong Brand-Culture Connection at your Organisation?

In the first article of the Brand Culture Strategy Series, we talked about the work we do with organisations on how their people connect with and communicate the company brand, and how they align the culture to that brand, in order to build internal confidence and external trust.

Now that you understand the importance of a strong brand-culture connection as the foundation for your organisational strategy, business plans and people growth, how do you know if you have a strong brand-culture connection?

During our discovery phase with a new client, we typically take them through a Brand Culture Strategy Checklist, to quickly identify some of the potential strengths and gaps in how clearly their people and stakeholders see and communicate ‘who we are’ and ‘what we stand for’ as an organisation.

NWC’s Brand Culture Strategy is built on 3 Pillars: Brand Culture Clarity, Brand Culture Engagement, and Brand Culture Expression. Below are some sample questions from our checklist, to get you thinking about how strong your organisation’s brand-culture connection really is.

Pillar 1. Brand Culture Clarity – How clearly is the Brand and Culture positioned?

• Is the company Brand underpinned by clear and meaningful Culture messaging, such as organisational Purpose and Values?
• Do you have clearly defined target markets and audiences, including internal teams and stakeholders?
• Do you have a clearly defined value proposition for each of those audiences?
• How consistently is the Brand and Culture messaging brought together and repeated across all platforms?

Pillar 2. Brand Culture Engagement – How meaningfully do your team members connect with the Brand and Culture?

• Are they clear on what it is?
• Have they been given opportunities to personally connect with it?
• Have they built a clear and communicable ‘Team Identity’ in each team, that is connected to the core brand but meaningful and specific ‘on-the-ground’?

Pillar 3. Brand Culture Expression – How well do your people communicate the Brand and Culture with others?

• Do staff feel empowered to confidently and consistently communicate the brand externally with stakeholders, in a variety of settings?
• Have staff developed their ‘personal brands’ in order to build trust with stakeholders and audiences, as they communicate and build relationships?
• What about your leaders – do they have strong ‘leadership brands’ representing the organisation?

Remember, these questions offer just a snapshot – there may be other strengths and gaps you are not recognising at your organisation! To dive deeper, you can try the online checklist or request a Brand Culture Connection Discovery with us.

Stay tuned for the third and final article in the Brand Culture Strategy Series: Guidelines to building a better Brand-Culture Connection at your organisation.

Introducing the Brand Culture Strategy Series…

Strong Brand-Culture alignment is crucial for building organisational trust and business growth… yet so many leaders struggle with this – or have yet to make the connection!

In this series on Brand Culture Strategy, we break down the basics over 3 articles:

1. Why your Organisation needs a strong Brand-Culture Connection
2. How to assess your current Brand-Culture Connection strengths and gaps
3. Guidelines to building a better Brand-Culture Connection at your organisation

#1: Why your Organisation needs a strong Brand-Culture Connection

At NWC, we focus our work with organisations on how their people connect with and communicate the company brand, and how they align the culture to that brand, to build trust and value across stakeholder groups.

Why does an aligned Brand and Culture matter for your organisation?

No matter what the business or the challenge… success hinges on building TRUST – internally and externally.

Build TRUST internally

Team members who feel connected to a clear and important message about ‘who we are’ and ‘what we stand for’ (your culture) are more engaged at work, produce better results, and are more likely to speak positively about the organisation to their networks, attracting more of the right future employees.

Build TRUST externally

Team members who have the language to talk about the business (your brand) will more confidently ‘sell’ your products and services to existing and future clients or customers. They will make a better impression with all your stakeholders and audiences, strengthening those relationships.

Connecting Culture and Brand: Your Strategic Foundation & Today’s Marketplace

When you combine these two core aspects of your business – Culture and Brand – you provide clarity of communication on ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ – a powerful foundation from which to develop your Organisational Strategy, your Leadership and People Development Programs, your Marketing and Communications Plan… and everything else in the business. Clear, aligned messaging that is meaningful to everyone helps everyone to move in the same direction, while contributing in unique and authentic ways.

To build trust, organisations today need to be responsive to the changing expectations of their stakeholders, including their people, their consumers and their wider audiences. People want to engage with businesses that stand for something – your ability to first clearly communicate what you stand for, and then build structures that enable you to live up to those promises, is what builds and maintains trust in today’s marketplace.

“People want to engage with businesses that stand for something – your ability to first clearly communicate what you stand for, and then build structures that enable you to live up to those promises, is what builds and maintains trust in today’s marketplace.”

When you give your team members the opportunity to engage with and create clear language about your organisation’s brand and culture, and to make it authentically their own, you inspire and empower them to become stronger advocates for the organisation – increasing trust, increasing visibility and ultimately… increasing growth.

Next week: Article 2 in the Brand Culture Strategy Series will help you start to assess the strength of the Brand-Culture Connection at your organisation.

Employee Influencers – people on your team who confidently and passionately represent the business – are the best brand ambassadors you can invest in.

“We map out the territory to bring awareness to the fact that a brand is not just a logo, and everyone is responsible for its communication and welfare.”

How do employees influence?

An exercise that is a favourite among teams I work with is NWC’s Brand Expression Quadrant. This is where everyone gets involved to brainstorm ways the organisation’s brand is expressed through its people. We map out the territory to bring awareness to the fact that a brand is not just a logo, and everyone is responsible for its communication and welfare. Brand is deeply connected to Culture, and in fact, a clearly communicated Brand can strengthen Culture significantly.

Just a few of the ways your employees influence others’ perceptions of your business, internally and externally, include the following touchpoints. Where are the gaps in your organisation’s communication?

• Intranet or internal emails/news bulletins
• Emails to clients, suppliers, contacts
• ‘Official’ and ‘unofficial’ social media content and engagement
• Online reviews on Culture and management, such as on Glass Door, and casual comments on personal social media
• Water cooler conversations
• The ways meetings are run, internally and externally
• Networking at conferences and events

As you can see, there are many opportunities to review and re-energise how your organisation is talked about and demonstrated – how you demonstrate ‘who you are’. While the aim is not to control everyone and everything, there is a lot that can be done to inspire and equip your people to represent your organisation well – and my experience is, most staff members genuinely want to do that – but lack the clarity and tools.

“My experience is, most staff members genuinely want to represent the organisation well – but lack the clarity and tools.”

Employee Influencers: How your business benefits

1. Elevates Brand visibility (and grows the business): The more staff talk confidently and positively about the work they do and the organisation they are proud of, the more the brand is strengthened and promoted for the right reasons… and the more customers through your door.

2. Attracts more of the best talent: Great people talking about a great organisation with their friends and networks – likely, other great people – will mean more opportunities for great hires.

 3. Promotes a great Culture: Giving clear language, signposts and communication tools to staff empowers them to talk about the organisation with confidence, and to live out the brand values every day. It empowers your leadership and management to guide the Culture and bring everyone along for the journey.

4. Retains your top staff: Giving team members a real opportunity to connect with the brand, how their work brings value to the business, and make their expression of the brand their own, fosters pride and belonging. Your top people will want to continue to be part of something they believe in and where they know they are making a difference.

Want to try the Brand Expression Quadrant and learn about Brand Culture Strategy? Book a Discovery.

With enormous disruption already experienced for several years in professional services – from Royal Commissions and increased ESG expectations, Covid-19, WFH and the Great Resignation, to changing business models and the advancement of AI… being ‘different’ as an organisation is now, simply, the ‘norm’!

So how do you stand out as a go-to employer and service-provider in this fast-shifting landscape? How do you demonstrate continued responsiveness to the changing needs and expectations of your stakeholders, and create or continue to maintain an ‘edge’ over your competition?

A responsive strategy that stays true to a core identity is the starting point. To make this work, you also must have clarity of internal and external messaging about who you are and what you are doing.

In the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, organisations are already working with models connecting Brand and Culture to drive Communication, Strategy and Change. In an article by pioneering brand agency Landor & Fitch, the authors state that the traditionally siloed approach separating People & Culture and Marketing departments from the rest of the business (and from each other) is working directly against the pressing need for strategic change in organisations today. “If every business makes a promise through its brand purpose, then employees must be able to connect with this purpose at an individual level and be equipped to deliver on it.” U.S.-based brand consultant Denise Lee Yohn, who in 2018 published Fusion: How integrating Brand and Culture powers the world’s greatest companies, further explains, “Brand-building isn’t just about communicating a message to the outside world; it involves running your business and leading your organization with your brand values.” She states that organisations who use their Brands to shape their Culture and Operations produce more consistent, more sustainable results.

In contrast, the concept of Brand-Led Culture is only just starting to make an appearance at Australian boardroom tables.  ‘Brand’, ‘Culture’ and ‘Strategy’ can be elusive concepts for boards and leadership teams, and a less-than-clear or siloed approach to these areas can cause major gaps and roadblocks in business growth and sustainability.

This does represent a potential edge in our geographic region for organisations who want to be first-to-the-table with a strong Brand-Culture Connection that fuels their Purpose, Vision and Strategy, engages team members meaningfully, builds a strong employer brand, and creates loyal and vocal customers… all of which promotes growth, visibility and relevance for the organisation.

Where do you start? Breaking down the ‘puzzle pieces’ that tie the elements of Brand and Culture together is where I find most board and leadership teams need to start, to first understand how these crucial parts of the business work with other essentials, like the Company Strategy, Leadership Strategy and Employer Strategy, and how different departments connect, like Operations, HR/People & Culture, Marketing, and Sales.

As you connect the puzzle pieces, working with a strategic framework such as NWC’s Brand Culture Framework, including tools for involving team members in meaningful ways, creates a robust plan for enquiry, engagement, strategy, implementation and evaluation that springboards real and sustainable change in the business.

It is true that the world we now operate in demands that businesses demonstrate a clear articulation and proof of authentic purpose and values… a ‘why’ and a ‘how’ to direct ‘what’ we do… to move our people… to connect and build trust with our customers and stakeholders. This is why organisations are rushing to book in Purpose and Values sessions for their teams.

But it’s not enough to do a day (or even a week!) on ‘Purpose & Values’. While expertly facilitated discussions and experiences can move staff in the moment, and certainly generate some meaningful insights, typically these intangible outcomes get shelved after the retreat, where they start to gather dust.

3 key components to ensure Purpose and Values explorations actually create change

1. Understanding the Brand-Culture Connection: Change happens when a strategy is put in place to encompass all aspects of people and brand communication that are embedded within the company’s culture – and this first requires investigation to bring these existing communication ‘touch points’ to our awareness, in order to analyse how aligned and effective they are. In other words, to know all the ways in which we tell others the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of what we do, and to see how much we are saying the same things to all audiences, in all contexts and platforms.

2. Balance of inspiring leadership and shared perspectives: Change also is dependent on bringing all team members along for the journey, allowing them to be cognisant of the company vision and strategy, and providing opportunities for them to make the overarching Purpose and Values their own. This requires great leadership that inspires people to move with them, as well as a delicate balance between shared Purpose and Values, and time to reflect on individual motivations and philosophies. It is possible to connect the two.

3. Connecting all functions of the business with a united message: When different departments, offices or teams do not share confidence in a united brand message, the best of intentions for Purpose and Values are lost. Instead of siloed departments, leadership and management that is disconnected from the rest of the staff, HR teams running ‘programs’ that aren’t ingrained in culture, sales departments trying to do their own thing and marketing teams that are largely ignored… the strategic planning process needs to bring all these efforts together in a connected web.

In my work with organisations on their ‘Brand Culture’, or how their people express the brand, I typically look at three levels of brand messaging: what the company brand stands for, what each team says about who they are, and what the individual’s personal brand communicates. These three levels of brand should work together – by which I mean they do not all have to say the same thing, but should connect with each other in meaningful ways.

In my work I am always trying to answer these two questions:

1. How confident and clear are people about who they are in business and what they bring to stakeholders?
2. How are people seen (or are they seen?) by important others, such as prospects, clients and wider teams?

Understanding that a brand is not just a logo, a company website and some advertising, but that it is really about people – both internally (staff) and externally (clients, investors, prospective employees and other audiences) – is key to taking an authentic and powerful approach to brand strategy and by extension, culture.

What is a team brand?

In a previous article describing the Team Brand experience with Westpac, I used the example of one BDM team I worked with to explain how focusing on your particular team’s brand can make you stronger. We explored what made this BDM team so great – their capabilities, passions and strengths. We also looked at their sense of purpose, team objectives and values and connected them to the overarching company values. But we didn’t just look internally – we took it a step further and described in clear language how this mix of qualities the team brings creates value for outside stakeholders (such as clients, referral sources and other teams within the bank).

There are rich rewards that come from developing clarity and confidence in your particular team’s identity, and this works not only for teams of business development managers or advisors (such as accountants, lawyers or financial planners) who are responsible for growing the client base. I’ve worked with team brands in a variety of industries and involving all kinds of roles within the business – because everyone in the business needs to connect with the three levels of brand.

3 reasons to build your ‘Team Brand’

1. UNITY: When you develop a team identity, you feel like you belong to something meaningful and your motivation to move towards a common purpose and collective goals increases. Building unity through team identity is particularly powerful for new teams.

2. VISIBILITY: As you communicate your team brand you are seen by target audiences for your differentiated value; you are given more recognition, referrals and opportunities through the wider organisation and through clients and other audiences; you begin to be ‘top of mind’ as a go-to for your targets. Visibility of your team brand also attracts and retains top staff.

3. TRUST: When you get clear on language around ‘why our team’ and ‘what we offer’, you bring confidence and clarity to your communications and this builds trust with others. You establish credibility with consistent messaging that demonstrates what you stand for as a team, and others see that. Your assured approach opens doors for you to help you do your job more easily now, and develop your leadership abilities in the long term.

Team branding is something that is not typically addressed in robust ways within organisations, and this means lost value. Over the last couple of years, I have developed and refined a specific approach to assessing and developing team brands that is proving useful to organisations across industries, from banking to veterinary clinics! A good starting point is a half-day workshop with one team, who can lead the way for your other teams to develop their sense of identity in connection to the overarching company brand.

As 2021 ended and 2022 began, I noticed an increase in enquiries across Australia on how to brand your business to appeal to top employees, and how to be visible to them in a highly competitive landscape.

The Great Resignation appears to be happening across industries, even those where staff are especially motivated by an intrinsic sense of purpose and service in the work they do. Employers can no longer rest on their laurels but must do more to stand out and appeal to the best employees. In a Covid-challenged environment, the experience of work has changed significantly, with restrictions on how people work together and deliver outputs, and this needs to be considered in employer strategy too.

For example, in law:

“The combination of lawyers wanting a change, together with law departments expanding with roles they previously hadn’t needed, has created a flurry of recruitment activity in-house.” – The Corporate Counsel Show, Lawyers Weekly January 2022: ‘Why In-House Recruitment is so busy right now’

In working with clients on employer brand strategy, I use several questions to guide their thinking, including:

• Is it easy for prospective employees to get an understanding of what it’s like to work at your organisation? Are you directing the online message (where people will look first!) – e.g. employee stories demonstrating culture, belonging, purpose and enjoyment at work; strong, visible personal brands that demonstrate confident staff and career and personal development opportunities at your workplace.
• How empowered are your staff to be brand ambassadors among their networks? Your staff know others like them; how equipped and motivated are they to represent the brand with enthusiasm? Have you given them opportunities to develop their confidence, clarity, and tools around communicating the brand?
• Does your thinking about employer brand messaging exist in a silo? It is not just the realm of HR; you must have a clear core brand informing all departments and ensuring marketing, HR, admin and wider staff are talking to each other. Everyone needs to be clear on the core brand values and messages, from which your ‘Brand Culture’ and your employer brand stem.

Your central messaging for your Employer Brand should come directly from your culture. In other words, if the culture isn’t right, a shiny wrapping won’t hide that for long! While there may always be areas of culture that need work, it’s helpful to identify areas in which things are going well, in order to develop powerful and authentic brand messaging for recruitment.

For example, your messaging may centre on one or more of the following:

• Career development and leadership opportunities
• Culture and connection at work prioritised
• Purpose and values as central
• Demonstrating up-to-date, fresh approach, moving with the times
• Who belongs: Demonstrating diversity, equity and inclusion
• Clear approach to keeping staff safe: Covid; psychological safety; mental health and wellbeing
• Signalling respect of individual needs e.g. WFH, flexibility in work styles, open communication

Most importantly, for authentic employer brand messaging that attracts and retains the right staff, you must involve your current employees. What do they see as the organisation’s guiding purpose? What values do they think about and try to uphold? What matters to them in their careers and their time at work? What do they feel proud of; what do they feel connected to?

While these are challenging questions, it can be surprisingly simple to start to gain clarity on brand messaging and involve and connect staff – both current and future – in a real way. It begins with structured enquiry and commitment to include everyone in the discussion.