Non Profit Branding- Whether You Are the Tail, The Dog or The Big Apple

NOTE: This month's focus is on
Branding Q and A. All Q's welcome- Jody

QUESTION:

I work for a division of a large, national non-profit organization. Do I need my own Employer Branding materials for recruitment marketing purposes, or should I just use the same materials as our national organization?

ANSWER:

While there's no one answer to your question, here are 4 considerations that can help you decide on your best course of action.

1. Organizational Alignment- How integrated is your chapter with the national organization and other member chapters from a talent management point-of-view? Are benefits, policies and services centralized? Do lateral opportunities and career mobility paths exist? Consider your answer and go to step 2.
   
2. Brand Reputation and Tools- Let’s take a tip from Occam and presume the simplest path is the best. Consider whether or not there is a downside to piggybacking on the national brand. If you answered “yes” to question 1, and your national parent already has strong, positive brand awareness and great recruitment marketing materials, then alignment is advised. If there no alignment and there are some skeletons hiding in the closet (a story of embezzlement, bamboozlement or other) then cut the cord and go semi-solo.
   
3. Unique Differentiators- Your answer may not be A or B, but rather A & B. In creating the employer brand architecture, you may find that there are some common elements to your culture and unique drivers as well. In that case, go for a brand-blend and highlight the positives of the co-brand and the unique benefits inherent only within your chapter.
   
4. Competition for Talent: Are you competing for talent with your parent organization? If so, suit up and separate. You’re already competing for talent with other companies and non-profits in your area code, and I presume that compensation will not be the tipping point in candidate’s favorable decision to join you. Now what? Go back to number 2 and build your brand on your unique differentiators. The word differentiator is key.
   

Consider this ad campaign created by BRANDEMiX for Legal Aid Society of New York. In it, the city, not the organization, is the star. Talented professionals will always have choices of where to devote their time and/or money, but there is only one New York City. And giving back to a city that gives so much, and has been through so much, is powerful and pleasure-ful incentive that no other chapter could duplicate.

Complex Employer Branding of Large Organizations- The "Nobody Gets It" Syndrome

NOTE: This month's focus is on
Branding Q and A. All Q's welcome- Jody

QUESTION:

I’m trying to create an employment brand for a company that houses several well-branded independent brands. What are your thoughts on that? It seems unrealistic to maintain so many different brands in an employment space, however, we’ve been totally ineffective trying to collect the group under the segment name – nobody gets it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to attract and retain talent in a segment with so many personalities!

ANSWER:

Unfortunately, it’s a prevailing conundrum -- one that we've heard before. People tell us that their organizations are too entrenched with big-named sub-brands to really benefit from one holistic branding effort. Of course, nothing is further from the truth.

The good news is that in reality, you can pick from 3 strategic approaches. Each with their own risks and rewards. To help guide you through the process, think about how the company operates from a Talent Management perspective. If there is trending evidence that rewards mobility throughout the brands, ie critical inter-brand experiences are required for progressively more senior opportunities, then option one is the best choice.

Option 1: Master Brand- unite all sub-brands (and all their employees) under one cohesive, motivating, strong brand.

This approach hinges upon finding the fundamental similarities, and success factors of employees (and the employee experience) across all sub-brands and creating a brand architecture that leverages them.

This isn't about tangible similarities like "they all pay well," but rather the cultural, psychological similarities that exist (if any).

For example, "all successful employees are out of the box thinkers and share a passion for pushing the creative envelope." Conduct research to find the core insights on which you can build and operationalize an authentic and unifying brand (culture).

Note: It’s critical to do qualitative research, regardless of how well you know the organizations, because connecting all sub-brands will require very keen insights that will not yet be apparent to the naked eye, ie not functional similarities. Furthermore, involving executives and employees in your brand discovery process is actually a great way of generating buy-in at the onset. How can anyone not get it if they were a significant part of making it happen?

Option 2: Sub-brands
You may find that there are no cultural themes that extend throughout all the brands.

In that case you can identify and embrace the individual cultures of each of the sub-brands. Certainly this is the consumer's view of the world -- -- so it makes some sense to build off the individual identity that each already has.

You would then go through the exercise of defining the employer brand for each property, and showing the stakeholders at each how to "use" and maintain the brand. Defining the brands isn't the hard part, it's finding the right people to make it work on the ground level for each brand, so it's not up to you to do this for all of them. You'd need to identify the right stakeholder for each to take the brand and make it happen.

You might also find that there are key pillars of the brand architecture that are shared, and tie things together tangently. I suspect this will be the case.

Option 3: Change Management

Start from the beginning, whereby you identify the traits that you (and management) would like to extend across all brands, and start hiring according to the new brand ideals. Slowly over time your brand would grow stronger.

The important thing to remember is that whichever option you move forward with, the fundamental operational alignment to the brand will bring about the change you wish to see.

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Are You Too Booked for a Social Life?

Based on the growing number of invitations I receive to veet-ups (webinars), meet-ups, workshops and conferences, I know that social media marketing has captured everyone's attention in a big way. We have truly embraced the concept of creating dialogues with our fans, and relationship building with our key interest groups.

I say above that "we have embraced" but it really isn't "us", is it?

Have you "down-sourced" the project to the summer intern you hired? Have you "out-sourced" it to your agency partner?

Search a job aggregator and you will find a handful of Social Media Marketing Directors, Strategists and Managers but more frequently, interns.

It is not surprising that we are unwilling to commit dollars to the ownership of communications that we can't measure the value of, but at the same time, the stewardship must be held by someone with vested interest in success of the program.

Your agency/PR partner can help you with the learning curve and messaging but actions need to happen within the company, not outside of it. The voice needs to be framed authenticity, and a person we can engage with. That person needs to be a permanent member of your team.

Your intern may be gone in September but your Digital Brand is forever.

Join the conversation and the Linked In group Your Digital Brand.

Are you Strong Enough for HR Branding?

You’ve tackled all the tough challenges and branded every communications initiative both inside and out: Employer branding, branded intranets, training portals, microsites, social network marketing, branded internal and benefit communications- you even have a smart-phone friendly career site.

And now, this summer, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water (ocean, pool, lake or other), I propose the super-branding challenger round –

HR Branding: The brand that is You and Your Department.

Here’s why it requires expert strokes—

• You will be swimming in strong currents- serving the needs of 2 masters, as employer and employee advocate.
• Due diligence in brand crafting means creating dialogues- you will need to be open to honest feedback from executives, employees, line managers and other fish, both big and small.
• Sustaining an authentic HR brand for the long haul might require making significant operational changes that pull you outside the safe waters
• Synchronization- make no mistake- this is a total team effort

If you’re still up for it, dive in.

Creating an Internal HR Brand

The Rules

1. Lay the Groundwork

• Define objectives, communications channels and audience needs

2. Ask (or have us ask) The Questions

• Who is HR?
• What Should Employees “Feel” when they “See” HR?
• What Should Candidates “Feel” when they “See” HR?
• How Can HR Best Support Their Goals?

3. Point to an End Goal

• A brand is a promise- what’s yours? Whether you create an HR mission, vision or charter, you must embody that promise to each person within your organization

4. Engage Employees

• The more they become a part of the process, the greater their commitment to your efforts

The Prize

Review step 1- what were you looking to accomplish?

Perhaps you want to create a unifying purpose to your HR team at large- have them thinking felling and acting as a brand. Or maybe instill a greater understanding within employees and executives of the important work you do.

Through the application of the same methodology employed by marketing professionals, your Human Resources Department will become the Brand of Choice for talented employees and potential employees looking to become a big fish within your organization

VIDEO STRATEGY! WHAT'S YOURS?

Last year, when I attended the Convergence Conference roundtable panel on "Video as a Catalyst for Conversation”, the moderator promised that “just like everyone now has a blog strategy, soon you’ll need a video strategy.” The audience shuddered, a clear sign that they had not yet adapted a blog strategy.

But the numbers do speak for themselves.

According to a recent comScore Video Metrix service, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched 30 billion online videos during the month of April -- that's 3 times the amount viewed in 2008.

But another statistic from Flowtown told me that 77% of small and medium sized businesses have not embraced video as a form of marketing.

Here’s why they should. The chart below, from the Wall Street Journal shows that after viewing a video ad on the Internet, 55% of 501 adults took action.

The hard part now is how to use this knowledge to your advantage. It’s a simple answer: call someone in to help. Aren’t you already doing too much at work. Who has time to think about your video strategy?

A media consultant (I know a great one) can help you

* Define your audience
* Plan your distribution using appropriate internal or external partners
* Add some control to the scary proposition of unleashing this on the world.


No one has all the answers, but emerging as an early embracer (it is too late for that) will help your brand for a very small investment of dollars.

And besides, doesn’t everyone want to be a SuperStar?

Greatness Is Timeless

Almost 13 years have gone by since Dr. John Sullivan blew me away with his article entitled "How To Hire The Next Michael Jordan."

I read it in Fast Company in 1998 and I was reminded of it last week as I was conducting an Executive Interview with the President of a Company. He said he was concerned about his bench strength and worried about his team's scouting capabilities.

Fortunately for me, this is 2010 and we have the internet and I found the article and re-read it and laughed because it still sounded new. That is a bad thing.

Here are just some of the insights.

From Coincidence Hiring to Continuous Hiring

What are the chances that the best person you're seeking to hire is reading a job posting or newspaper or even looking for a job on the one day that you've selected to advertise. It's a coincidence if you find someone. Hiring must be continuous.

 (I have adopted this mantra and paraphrased it until I now believe I invented it.

 )

From More Money to "WOW"

Michael Jordan was underpaid. Engaged employees will work for less because of their passion and belief in what they're doing.



From Interviews to Future Views


13 years ago John said that interviews were over-- just tell the applicant what its like and make sure they'll be a good fit. I call it culture-recruiting.

Find people that fit your culture by branding to your culture all the time.



Anyway, there are so many jewels here that it's worth taking a fresh look. I wish I still looked that good after 13 years.

On The Beach and Out of Home

If you were anywhere near New York last weekend you know how beautiful the Memorial Day weather was. Lying on the beach reminded me of this great blog of Summer '08, and thought I'd dig it out, dust it off and share it for the new readers of BRANDEblog.

If you were enjoying this beautiful beach weekend with me, you may have seen the cloud formation in the sky that spelled GEICO.COM and gone "OOH". OOH is an acronym for Out of Home- the classification of advertising so called because, unlike print or tv, it reaches the consumers when they are out of their homes.
According to the NY Times last Friday, Madison Avenue is having an out-of-home experience. "The ardor to reach consumers outside the home — and outside the realm of traditional media like television — continues to grow among marketers. They hope to fight back against technologies like digital video recorders, which make it easier to avoid conventional advertisements like commercials.

The category once referred to only billboards, posters and signs but now includes expansion into places like airports, offices, malls, schools and health clubs. Industry forecasters are predicting a growth rate of more than 12% a year for the next 5 years.

I've been following the trend carefully, since I am frequently called upon to develop advertising strategies beyond print and online. But even I was pleased and surprised at how the category has expanded and the opportunities to build a tactical buzz across specific geography have never been so creative, inexpensive and hopefully effective.

Considering opening a gym? How about chair advertising such as this for VIP Gyms?Regular BRANDEBlog readers are already familiar with advertising in and outside of malls, movie theatres, barber shops or on coffee cups. But here's just a partial list of OOH media that BRANDEMiX can now include as part of an integrated advertising campaign to increase brand awareness and make some noise.

ATM machines • Driver's Ed cars • Spotlight Ads • Gas Pump Toppers • Taxis • Valet Parking Lots • Sand sculpture • Street Decals ... and for the brave.. Wrapped Port-A-Potties.

If you want to know more, call us.

Oh and speaking of noise, those sky-typing GEICO planes created an out-of-home experience that was 8 miles long.