What's Your Budget for Failure?

The year was 1994 and something called a job board was being
launched- specifically CareerMosaic, named after the web browser credited for
popularizing an old thing called the Internet.

In a meeting with top executives, Bernard Hodes, a brilliant marketeer and the CEO of the agency that bore his name, shared his rationale for creating the pricing structure for his new category of recruitment advertising.

"We’ll price the postings as a $100 add-on with any newspaper ad” he said. (At the time a 1” by 3” classified ad in the NY Times on Sunday was probably about $1,500.) He continued, “Who doesn't have an extra $100 to experiment on a new media?”

Unknowingly, he was establishing a precedent for what is today a $6+ billion business. (Factoid- CareerMosaic was eventually sold to headhunter.net which was eventually bought by CareerBuilder, as of today one of the 2 giant oaks still standing.)

However, equally important was his underlying reminder that everyone has a budget for failure- aka experimentation ... a lottery ticket fund that smart people can sometimes leverage into big payouts.

I call this a budget for failure because that way if the outlay fails to generate a positive return on its investment, at least you can take solace from having known it in advance.

For me, it is the amount of money I set aside for a potential bad hire- someone who doesn’t meet my exact requirements but has a kernel of an idea that might take me new places.

It's important because the BRANDEMiX brand is a culture of ideas and execution.

Also included in my failure budget is an amount I can spend on something I’ve already tried that didn't work out. That’s also important to our brand since one of our brand pillars is “solutions that leverage technology.” In the fast changing digital world, though experience is a great teacher, it is not necessarily a great predictor of future outcomes.

Lastly, my budget for failure includes spending time and effort (time is a dollarized investment, effort is not), on new business pitches that are outside of our core capabilities. At BRANDEMiX, we are a culture of continuous learning and we often learn from succeeding at new challenges.

In case you haven’t yet drawn the connection, my budget for failure is also part of my plan for success. Without funding for my failures, I am unable to succeed at delivering my brand.

Who’s Steering Your Corporate Ship?

A leader is a tone-setter, responsible for bringing people together and setting a model of attitude and behavior. It’s the reason social movements form around charismatic luminaries, and the greatest football teams always have headstrong quarterbacks. Without a CEO who lives and embodies the brand, customers will not buy into it.

So if a CEO is the figurehead of a company’s brand, who is the figurehead of a company’s employer brand? You might guess HR or Marketing, when in fact it is again, the CEO.

Whether you subscribe to BRANDEMiX “1 brand” theory of corporate strategy or not, any branding initiative, regardless of target audience, needs to be inspired by the CEO. Employees will not rally around a brand unless a company’s culture and personality are defined at the top.

Without top down inspiration, the brand can flounder like a ship lost a sea.

So what’s HR’s role? First Mate.

HR must take the captain’s orders and radiate the brand out to the labor market and to the internal employees. Just as marketers have insight and knowledge about communicating to consumers, HR should understand better than any department how to talk to jobseekers and employees.

Figuring out the brand is the easy part – you already have it – communicating it is the creative part. It takes a constantly evolving understanding of the people you’re talking to.

As HR people do we spend enough time understanding the attitudes and behaviors of jobseekers, and more importantly our own employees? When’s the last time you did employee focus groups? Have you surveyed jobseekers? More importantly, how have you implemented any findings into the usual course of your communications? Answering these questions needs to be HR’s responsibility as part of the CEO’s marching orders for the brand.

Marketers have always relied on their ad agencies for this insight and expertise in communicating with consumers. Now HR has a secret weapon too.

The Naked Truth About Branding

Branding, which started as a way to distinguish products from generic alternatives now it has the exact opposite effect.

It’s been the fancy, eye-pleasing exterior that marketers have delivered but what's happened to the connection to the actual deliverable?

In other words, are too many brands all wrapping and no gift?

Ironically, today’s trendy response to the surfeit of superficial branding, is to go sans brand. Absolut has created Naked Absolute- a vodka bottle without a marking on it to “put the focus back on what’s inside” and Starbucks has built an unbranded coffee house in Seattle to bring back the authenticity of a community gathering place.

Yet I contend that people still care about content – what’s inside still matters. We still want products that work and brands we can trust, but they’re so cluttered out by gift-wrapping that we’ve been left numbed and craving authenticity.


If you agree that it's what’s inside that counts, then that’s where your employer brand should come from.


If you use your brand to build an authentic corporate culture that employees believe in, then your brand will always be grounded in your values and will always have intrinsic meaning- and you’ll have no choice but to deliver an authentic experience to consumers, shareholders, donors and alum.


For decades, companies have relied on ad agencies for their keen insights on talking to consumers, but, when it comes to branding, employees should be regarded as a significant target market- the way consumers are. They make or break the brand.


Ask BRANDEMiX how to make your employer brand more than just a pretty ribbon.

1st Annual BRANDE Awards Competition Now Open for Entries.

1st Annual BRANDE Awards Competition Now Open for Entries.
1/7/2010

NEW YORK, NY. (January 1, 2010) –BRANDEMiX , the nation’s premier independent Employer Branding consultancy, is proudly sponsoring the 1st Annual BRANDE Awards- in recognition of companies demonstrating Employer Branding excellence that have yielded true business results.

The 1ST annual BRANDE Awards highlight programs that exemplify the key principles of effective Employer Branding including building authentic brand architecture, promoting it across a variety of internal and external audiences, and leveraging it with any current corporate branding. Most importantly, the Employer Branding must be surrounded by solid goals and metrics and linked to a true business or process improvement. Entries will be judged on excellence in strategy, execution, results and creative. The BRANDE Award Web site is located at www.brandeaward.com and the deadline for free entry is February 28, 2010.

“There continues to be tremendous interest in the area of “Employer Branding” says BRANDEMiX Founder Jody Ordioni. “However it’s true connection to real business results has never been thoroughly indexed. This shortage of data perpetuates the myth that Employer Branding is just another “HR-thing” or “design element” that doesn’t create positive business outcomes or significant return on investment.”

The BRANDE Awards are open to all organizations and individuals (agencies and other 3d party service providers can submit on behalf of their client) involved in the process of developing or managing Employer Branding programs.
“What truly distinguishes the BRANDE Awards from other competitions is that the BRANDES are judged by cross-industry experts in Strategy, Marketing, Business and Human Resources. As a way to generate interest and create a baseline for future competitions, the 1st Annual BRANDE Awards will be free for submissions.”

Online entries can be submitted from January 1, 2010 through February 28, 2010. To find out more, please visit http://www.brandeawards.com. The 2010 BRANDE Award honoree will be announced in late spring at an award luncheon held in New York City.

http://www.brandeawards.com]

About BRANDEMiX

BRANDEMiX is a woman-owned marketing/communications firm dedicated to Employer Branding in support of business initiatives. Bridging the traditional gap between marketing, advertising, internal communications and Human Resources, BRANDEMiX creates consistent, relevant and brand-aligned messages across all print and interactive channels, forming a line of sight from strategy to employees, investors and consumers. Clients include many of the Fortune 500 as well as non-profit organizations in education, healthcare and social services. Learn more at http://www.brandemix.com .

Happy Holidays

What Would Your CEO Say?

BRANDING AND THE BOTTOM LINE

Branding, just as any other strategic endeavor, is about bottom line business results.
A brand makes attracting new customers and holding onto current customers cheaper.

Employer Branding does the same thing. It makes attracting talent cheaper and inspires turnover-cutting loyalty. Suddenly HR looks like a moneymaker.

So what would your CEO say to that?
“Why does our company need more than one brand?”

The answer, of course, is that you don’t.

The finer points of how the brand is communicated obviously differs from consumers to employees, as do the specific value propositions, but the core of the brand does not. It’s the still the same personality, the same voice, the same values.

HR is merely one of many stakeholders in an organization’s overall brand. It’s their role to communicate the brand in a compelling way to current and potential employees. Similarly, the CFO’s role as a brand stakeholder is to communicate the brand to the financial community. Marketing communicates the brand to consumers. PR communicates the brand to the media. But you never hear terms like “financial brand,” or “PR brand.”

Does HR really need its own term for this responsibility? I can deal with it if you can, so long as we don’t lose sight of the fact that it refers back to the same brand that everyone else in the company is talking about.

If everyone is striving for profitability then having just one brand is only natural. Just ask Phil Knight or Steve Jobs. Nike and Apple, two of the most desirable places to work, don’t do “employer branding.” They don’t have to. Their brands are so well integrated throughout every department that employees and consumers alike are attracted magnetically.

Whether you call it employer branding, employment branding, or just plain branding, your CEO still only wants to know how it can save money or make money for the company.

For more perspective, call BRANDEMiX.

Who Wants to Work for Tiger?

Recruiting through Disaster- 7 Ways to Improve Your Employer Brand.


Maybe your firm was recently rescued from the abyss by the US government. Perhaps your CEO was photographed having breakfast with Bernie Madoff. Or your boss, one of greatest sports figures who ever lived, the face of your brand, has been caught playing in cars and courses he doesn’t belong in.

As your best laid recruiting plans crumble, current employees might linger longer at interview lunches and critical openings go unfilled. The open EXIT door seems to beckon even you.

But don’t despair. Though your task may seem impossible, armed with a plan, you can assuage a publicity crisis and accomplish recruiting objectives with a bit of skill, planning and diligence.

Here are 7 things you do:

1. Be honest and authentic. The chances are, it was a lack of honesty in the first place that got your organization in the mess, so now it’s time to come clean. Be candid and transparent about your situation and you’ll have a good shot at earning back the trust with current and potential employees.

2. Hold town halls, focus groups and monitor web chatter. The conversation is happening around you so get in on it. Take two Advil and get a firm grasp of exactly what potential and current employees think of your company and see what the damage really is.

3. Dust off your employer value proposition. Get back to the basics of communicating your fundamental differentiator as an employer. Theoretically, your intrinsic value as an employer is still intact so take the focus away from ancillary distractions and drive home your core value proposition through recent actions and examples.

4. Fight the battle on your own turf. Ubiquitous social networks mean more opportunities for social humiliation. Armed with insight, mitigate the issue by providing details and counterpoint on your website or vanity landing page and post comments and links to drive traffic to that page.

5. Revisit your workforce plans. One positive to situations like this, is that it gives you carte blanche to rethink certain strategies or processes. Do you still want to hire the type of employees you did 2 months ago? This could be an opportunity to bring in new blood and grow in directions you never before considered.

6. Refresh all your online recruitment messaging. Last week’s job postings won’t help you through yesterday’s disaster. Build brand equity quickly and inexpensively with current messaging that show people you know what they’re thinking, and what you think about it. The opportunity for swift change is the beauty of our digital world.

7. Create and promote an employee recognition program. Recognize and publicize the talent you have, and show the world that human capital still remains your strongest asset. Featured professionals will appreciate the kudos and can become the face of your recruiting efforts, featured in blogs, videos and printed materials. Potential recruits will be reminded of the brain pool they have an opportunity to be part of.

While we can’t always plan for future disasters, a properly executed disaster recruiting “plan-in-the-can” when your Tiger tanks is as easy as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.

8. Call BRANDEMiX