A Unified Brand: How to Win by Aligning Your Employer and Consumer Brands [webcast]
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LinkedIn research has found that there is a very strong correlation between awareness of a company's employer brand and its consumer brand, and that companies with strong brands in both areas outperform the market. Companies with aligned employer and consumer brands have an easier time attracting and retaining top talent. It's not enough to just have one or the other. A company's employer brand is twice as likely to drive job consideration as its consumer brand, but they have to know who you are first, and that often starts with your consumer brand. This session, hosted by LinkedIn Talent Brand Consultant, Avani Khanna, goes through real life examples of companies doing this well and best practices for creating alignment between your own brands. Learn more about our solutions at: http://bit.ly/2dfuqvm
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A Unified Brand: How to Win by Aligning Your Employer and Consumer Brands [webcast]
- 1. A Unified Brand How to win by Aligning Your Employer and Consumer Brands 1 Avani Khanna Talent Brand Consultant, LinkedIn September 28, 2016
- 2. 2
- 4. Source: LinkedIn data – January 2015 – July 2015 for the top 100 companies with the strongest talent brand on LinkedIn The Rewards of The Connected Brand SALES RECRUITMENT EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT MARKETING 36% increase in stock price over 5 years 84% lift in engagement w/ company content when members saw a job first 6 EE shares = 6 job views, 3 company page views, 2 connections, & 1 follower 65% boost in applications after member saw company content
- 5. 5 « Don’t f*** up the culture! » Peter Thiel They invest in culture
- 6. 6 They tell great stories
- 7. GE
- 8. Trek Bicycle
- 9. REI
- 10. 10 They have C-suite alignment
- 11. 70% of customer brand perception is determined by experiences with people. 11 They activate their employees Employee Advocacy, Neal Schaffer & PeopleLinx, 2015.
- 12. They employ an integrated approach 12 Build integrated media plan for all channels Compare and prioritize target audiences for Corp, TA and Marketing Switch messaging/target based on performance
- 13. Questions?
- 14. 14
Editor's Notes
- We are in a candidate driven world where candidates expect more from the companies they work for. They do research, they take their time, and they seek opportunities where they know the company is invested in their growth. They don’t just look for a job. They look for something that they can be passionate about. Over the past few years, Talent branding has been a buzzword across marketing and HR organizations. And in the past year, we’ve seen that companies who are really succeeding are thinking bigger than just talent brand. They understand that their consumer brand, their investor brand and their employer brand are actually one and the same.
- Companies are starting to realize that their brand is not only the responsibility of the CMO. And it’s not just about driving sales. It’s about hiring and retaining great talent and it’s about keeping investors happy. All of these things have to happen for a company to find success. <CLICK 3 TIMES> <CLICK> The Corporate brand : how multiple stakeholders such as investors or influencers (e.g. government officials) think and feel about a specific company. <CLICK> The Consumer brand : how customers, partners think and feel about the products and services produced by that same company. <CLICK> The Talent brand: how employees and candidates think and feel about that company as a place to work. And these are the audiences impacted by the brand. Brand is often intangible. It is the result of various experiences where your brand comes in contact with an audience. The real challenge is to identify these experiences and make sure they convey the same meaning and that they contribute effectively to the brand essence, or the heart of the brand. Many companies too often focus on only one or two aspects of their brand image. Many ignore employees as brand advocates and relegate talent brand to HR or customer brand to Marketing. People also often assume that a strong product or corporate brand will attract candidates. Not every company must be a leader in all three brand management disciplines. But all companies need to gain a basic command of each, as they discover how to differentiate themselves in the area important to their business. The companies who are doing this well are reaping the rewards.
- We have data that shows that a strong unified brand, one that is driving high engagement with all three audiences, results in siginificant financial results for the company. In a joint study we did with Lippencott, a branding agency, we found that companies with a strong consumer brand and a strong talent brand saw, on average, a <CLICK> 36% increase in stock price over a 5 year period. So investing in your talent brand alongside your consumer brand really pays off. And there are many more benefits: Recruitment is made much easier in organizations that invest both in their employer brand and their customer brand. As an illustration, <CLICK> job applications via LinkedIn see a 65 percent boost when a member has previously interacted with content from that company—say, read an article or liked a status. And it goes both ways: company content sees better response rates when companies have a strong talent brand. We can actually see that the <CLICK> engagement with content sees a +84% lift when members have seen a job at your company first. A Unified Brand also helps to boost employee engagement. and this is Engagement with their company and with their job. Employees will be more likely to share company related content on social networks. And again, the benefits are for the company as a whole. We’ve measured that, on average, <CLICK> 6 employee shares will influence 6 jobs views, 3 company page views, 2 connection requests and 1 follower acquired. So there is a good reason to unify your brand. How do companies who do this well do it?
- Is They invest in their culture. That’s the answer Peter Thiel, Venture Capitalist and PayPal Co-founder, gave to Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, when he was asked : ‘You’ve just given us 150 million dollars. What is the single most important piece of advice you have for us? » Culture and values are simply a shared way of doing things. If the Culture is strong enough, alignment between HR, Marketing, Communications will happen by itself. The brand will simply reflect the company culture as it’s lived and experience from the inside. That’s the first condition for success to guarantee a Unified Brand. Make sure your culture and values are strong enough within your company. Be proud of them. Define them if you haven’t yet. Showcase them internally and externally. And you’ll see how quickly that contributes to reinforcing and aligning your brand. You then need to celebrate and showcase your culture with a great brand story.
- 2. Is They tell great stories. The best brands are built on great stories. Creating a brand story is not simply about standing out and getting noticed. It’s about building something that people care about and want to buy into. Social media are a unique place to tell your story. The challenge is to ensure that your communications, your HR team, and your employees will deliver that story consistently. To facilitate that process and build a Unified Brand: You want to Speak truthfully; your stories need to be rooted in the reality of your brand Share it widely with your employees and insist on why it’s important Having an in-house content coordinator or manager will help when it comes to social media. His or her job should include ensuring that any content shared internally and externally on social media tells your brand story consistently. Now let’s look at a few companies who are doing a great job at unifying their brand.
- Some of you may have seen how GE is telling their talent brand story with its ad campaign “What’s the Matter with Owen.” <CLICK> Unfortunately I cant show video but I have some nice screenshots. It depicts an employee named Owen trying to explain to his family and friends what he does at GE. In these awkward conversations he explains his role saying things like “I’ll be writing code that helps machines communicate.” while his friends struggle to understand. Owen explains how this old school company is actually doing cutting edge things. The campaign has been hugely successful in attracting talent, in fact after this ran, their engineer applications increased eightfold. <CLICK> They recently refreshed the campaign with a new series of ads featuring an employee named Sarah who builds jet engines trying to explain to her family what she does, stating that GE is both “digital and industrial.” Although this is targeted to talent, there is a halo effect on communicating about the GE brand to consumer, investor and talent audiences as well. Now let’s look at a couple of other examples.
- Trek is a great example of a smaller company that’s doing a great job of telling their brand story. <CLICK> This is how they represent their brand on their LinkedIn career page and the header image says it all: WE BELIEVE IN BIKES. Whether you are potential talent, consumer or an investor interested in a brand this will get your attention. Bike people are going to rally around this and it sums up what the company is about. They have a beautiful b&w image showing a group of bicyclists on a hilltop somewhere, looks like the grand canyon—clearly these are the experiences they are trying to enable. “Our mission is to create products we love and take care of our customers.” This is a great example of the kinds of brand values employees and consumers rally around. Investors also like brands with the kinds of values people rally around, because they know that talent and consumers will be drawn to them and that they are likely to succeed as a result. So for those of you listening who work at smaller companies, all it really takes is telling your story to the audience you want to influence. For talent, it’s about Getting in front of them and letting them know what you’re about, what your culture is like and why they should want to work for you. Let’s take a look at more example of great brand alignment, and forgive that it’s another outdoorsy brand but I just had to talk about this one.
- REI is one of my favorite examples of a company that made a bold move and a brave statement about its brand. Last fall REI closed all 143 of its stores on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, and paid its 12,000 employees to do what they love most—be outside. Their video told an inspiring brand story to consumers, investors and talent which featured their CEO at his desk, making this announcement. He then says, “we believe a life lived outside is a life well lived. we’d rather be in the mountains than in the aisles.” when the camera zooms out, he’s on a mountaintop. This is such a bold and unique statement about what REI values – being outside -- and how it puts those values into action, by actually giving all of its employees the day off with pay to go do that. Consumers think wow what a cool company, they really care about their people and they aren’t just in it for the money. Talent thinks the same thing, and what a great company culture REI must have: this company really walks the walk. And REI employees became brand ambassadors by leveraging the hashtag OPT OUTSIDE across social media on Black Friday sharing what they did that day, as did consumers. The microsite for the campaign featured a meme generator, which encouraged users to share images and videos related to their own outdoor experiences. This was a huge part of the campaign’s success. The campaign won several top advertising awards and boosted sales almost 10% year over year, 23% for digital sales. Back to employees as brand ambassadors, Employees are a crucial part of telling your brand story. Your story belongs to everyone in the company. Which brings us to the 3rd tip today on roles and responsibilities when it comes to branding.
- Who "owns" branding? Is it solely a marketing function? Then what about employer branding? Is that HR’s territory? The answer is simple: branding is more than just a marketing function; it’s an organizational function. That means that everybody needs to contribute. If those contributors were musicians, you’d have to think of them as a leaderless jazz band; not a conductor-led orchestra. What matters in a jazz band is the optimal combination of players, it’s not who leads. Regardless of the organization design, marketing and HR must work together as equals. Each of them has plenty to contribute. Again, it’s not just about Marketing and HR. To build a Unified Brand, every employee should be invited to contribute.
- Employees can be your greatest asset. You can create a compelling talent attraction ad campaign to help spread the word about your brand. But if you want to build a strong Unified Brand, you should first invest in your people. Brands are created primarily by the experiences with your employees. Every employee, not just the ones that are customer-facing. On LinkedIn, employees networks are on average 10x larger than their company’s follower base. While only 2% of employees share your company’s social content, they’re responsible for 20% of your overall social engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares). They have an incredibly large network, they know your company more than anyone else and the general public tends to trust your them more than your communications teams or your CEO! So, how can the company benefit from it? How can we leverage, employees to support your brand at scale, whether its your talent brand, your company brand or your consumer brand? Be it from a marketing, sales or recruitment perspective? Employee empowerment will help: Encourage employees to be active by liking, sharing, and commenting on company updates Encourage EEs to share their experience and expertise – by blogging on LinkedIn for example. Our new revamped Career Page offers an opportunity to spotlight the employee voice. And it’s a good idea to share corporate social media guidelines to remove the fear factor Education can also help: You can conduct training sessions on how to use social media and why this is important for any professional (not only sales or recruitment professionals) Nominating official brand ambassadors on different teams to carry and relay the message can be very effective And finally technology: One of the ways we’ve been able to do this at LinkedIn, is thorugh Elevate, a platform we launched this year that helps employees to share trending content based on their preferences and areas of interest
- Building consistent campaign creative for corporate, marketing and Talent Acquisition is one thing. Planning those campaigns effectively so that your audience does not get bombarded by very different call for actions is another. Our recommendation is to build a fully integrated media advertising plan by: 1/ considering the various audiences that your organization wants to target, whether they’re candidates, consumers or influencers. No doubt, there will be some overlap. 2/ Then, build an media schedule that integrates all brand management disciplines. When one same audience is targeted during the same period of time, try to prioritize one campaign against the other based on the value for the business. 3/ Finally, constantly monitor the performance of your campaign and possibly switch between brand management disciplines. For example, if you notice that a corporate campaign performs badly with a specific audience segment, consider exposing that segment to an employer branding or a product campaign. Implementing the 5 recommendations we’ve presented today will help you build a strong Unified Brand, a brand that will resonate strongly with consumers, candidates, employees, investors alike. Thank you for joining us today and now we will open it up for Q&A.
- Thanks everyone for attending. At this time we’ll take questions from the chat. If you’d like to submit a question, …..