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BRANDING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2014 -
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Challenges & Opportunities for 2015 BRANDING MAGAZINE
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Chuck Kent Writer & Contributing Editor chuck@brandingmagazine.com
As an independent online daily brand journal, Branding Magazine represents an insightful source of news and opinions from the industry. A dedicated team of writers strives to keep its readers up-to-date with the biggest and freshest news about global brands, while concentrating on successful brand strategies, corporate and brand identity work, brand development and brand evolution.
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David Brbaklic Creative Director david@brandingmagazine.com
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Challenges & Opportunities for 2015
The Branding Roundtable Trend reports, posts and lists – in branding or anything else – are almost as popular at year’s end as having too many drinks at a holiday party. So rather than a trends report per se, we have tapped into our rapidly growing body of global experts contributing to The Branding Roundtable, asking one leader from each of the branding firms represented to respond to three simple, but telling, questions: 1. What do you see as the greatest opportunity in branding for 2015? 2. What is the biggest challenge in branding for the coming year? 3. Which branding buzzword would you like to see banished from our professional lexicon in the next 12 months?
#07
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Our “16 for ‘15” from around the world include (in last name alphabetical order): Tom Adams, Global Head of Strategy, Futurebrand Jorge Aguilar, Executive Director of Strategy, Landor Associates Jon Bailey, Founder/Chief Relationships Officer, i.d.e.a. brand Carol Cone, Chair, Edelman Business + Social Purpose Scott Davis, Chief Growth Officer, Prophet Vladimir Djurovic, CEO, Labbrand Alexander Haldemann, CEO, MetaDesign Margaret Malloy, CMO, Siegel+Gale Sean McCoy, CEO, HKLM Group Don Peppers, Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group Dominik Prinz, Senior Director of Strategy, Interbrand Michael Savage, Director of Employer Brand, JWT INSIDE Claude Singer, Chief Strategist, Siegelvision Russ Stoddard, CEO, Oliver Russell Rob Swan, Executive Creative Director, Brand Image / SGK Eric Villain, Managing Director, Brand and Customer Experience, GfK Some of our participants replied to all three questions, some to only one or two, and a few combined answers. Regardless of the format of their replies, their insights on the greatest opportunities and challenges in the year ahead are sure to be thought provoking. Please return to the article introducing this Roundtable to comment on any particularly interesting provocations – and to offer your own suggestions as to what buzzwords we can do without. Chuck Kent Contributing Editor and Moderator of The Branding Roundtable
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What do you see as the biggest opportunity area for branding in 2015? Tom Adams, Futurebrand By 1915, many of the twentieth century’s greatest companies had consolidated innovations that drove progress over the following 100 years. Ford had mastered the moving assembly line and mass production of the car. GE was about to introduce affordable sealed home fridges. Coca Cola approved the design of its iconic contour bottle. A hundred years on, as we enter 2015, it’s worth considering which
“Right now, the greatest power brands have is to become more agile.” - Jorge Aguilar, Landor
companies are setting the agenda for the coming century, and the role for brand in helping them to achieve it. Just as their iconic forebears understood, companies that shape epochs articulate and deliver on a clear purpose and deliver an experience that improves peoples’ lives. Whether they are in technology, food, medicine or infor-
Five opportunities to manage brands differently: 1. Shift away from sameness: While consistency in branding is still important, the greatest value is in creating relevant branding that connects with consumers.
mation, the potential for today’s newest corpo-
2. Create beta brands: Marketers are starting to dismiss the notion
rate brands is to make sure they are remem-
that brands are ultimate and final in favor of more fluid brands
bered for why they are here, as much as what
that allow for greater risk taking and learning to support business
they created. And history shows that 15 years
objectives.
into a century is a good time to start! Jorge Aguilar, Landor Right now, the greatest power that brands have is to become more agile. This requires brands to be ultra clear on what they stand for, have a distinct set of principles and values, and hold
3. Be more than a story: Developing meaningful experiences that reflect the essence of your brand at every touchpoint is crucial to cementing customer relationships. 4. Go on the offensive: Brands must constantly take a proactive approach and articulate ways in which they can drive growth and increase profitability.
themselves to those standards in order to ex-
5. Break the rules: Hard-and-fast guidelines that remove all cre-
press their purpose in new ways and quickly
ativity and flexibility are dead. Embrace adaptable principles that
evolve with the marketplace.
fuel innovation and change.
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Throughout the year we saw CEO’s stepping up to what
Jon Bailey, i.d.e.a
Edelman calls “the bully pulpit,” taking stands on issues
One of the greatest opportunities for brands in the coming year will be establishing a purpose – a commitment to benefitting the greater good through business. Fact: one survey found that 73 percent of people said they will recommend a company that “stands for something.” However, only 5 percent actually believe companies will deliver on their promises.
critical to their missions. CVS declared it would stop selling tobacco products and, in doing so, would likely take a $2 billion revenue hit. Yet the company saw its future success as a healthcare company and took this bold step, as well as a renaming to crisply define its ambition.
An ever-increasing number of consumers want to invest in, shop at and consume goods produced by companies with a purpose. Brands are rising up to meet that demand: the number of B – or “Benefit” – Corporations is growing by the day, with more than 1,100 businesses in 35+ countries worldwide (including i.d.e.a.). B Corps undergo a rigorous evaluation process to become certified and must meet metrics each year to prove they are walking the talk with their purpose. More and more companies are finding their purpose and affecting measurable change in our communities. It’s a win-win.
- Carol Cone, Edelman
“Purpose will continue to evolve from a niche strategy to one more highly practiced for powerful organizational growth.”
Carol Cone, Edelman Purpose will continue to evolve from a niche strategy to one more highly practiced for powerful organizational growth and culture development.
Starbucks launched their College Achievement Plan, providing free tuition to their partners (employees) knowing that a Starbucks job was only a temporary pause in their
October’s Fast Company story “Find Your Mission” covered organizations from Chipotle to Pepsico and Eileen Fisher who keenly focus their purpose-built brands to elicit avid loyalty from employees to customers, even Wall Street, from clearly stated and practiced missions.
future career journey, while a college degree was critical. As Howard Schultz stated: “If we want our partners to advocate for our brand and customers, then we must advocate for them.” Gaining more than 2 billion impressions in a few days, this innovation was deeply aligned
In an era consumed with massive stimuli – called Generation Flux by Fast Company --- successful companies and brands will thrive on a core reason for being, concentrating not on making money, but HOW they make the money. This means: for Chipotle, standing for Food with Integrity; while Unilever strives to make sustainable living commonplace and CVS stands for health.
with Starbucks long-term support of its people, products and communities. In a world of limitless choices and a cacophony of messages, purpose built companies and brands will provide a magnetic draw for consumers, employees and ultimately with their success, investors. For 2015, purpose is no longer a fad. It is a sought out strategy that prescient
These purpose-built or purpose-evolved companies will rely on compelling missions to unlock their overall differentiation, talent acquisition and retention, organiza-
leaders will embrace. The winners will be relentless in their focus and authentic actions to bring the strategy to life.
tional energy and performance.
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Scott Davis, Prophet
both the traditional and the first wave of digital automated branding, these new internal engagement programs shall create a huge advantage for companies developing programs that empower their employees in using social networks and delivering a real-person messaging.
In this era of infinite expectation and persistent change, absolutely nothing is more critical for a brand than to be and remain relevant. Those brands that have an unyielding commitment to making smart, bold moves, meet customers on their terms, push competitors out of consideration, and even define entire categories – all while remaining unwaveringly authentic to who they are – will win. At Prophet, we don’t believe that a brand’s relevance should be confined to a moment in time. We believe a brand needs to stay vibrant, energetic and dynamic, while constantly pushing itself to earn and re-earn its position and loyalty in the marketplace. In short, we believe great brands must become Relentlessly RelevantSM.
Alexander Haldemann, MetaDesign Adaptiveness. Adaptive design is all the rage, but it goes deeper than mobile. Brands need to become flexible ecosystems that can react and adapt immediately to changes and requirements in channels, technologies and audiences. To manage a brand through guidelines alone is impossible. Brands thrive by adapting their communications to different mediums, not by adhering rigidly to guidelines and rules.
Relentlessly Relevant brands recognize that innovation in their offering, experience, content, messaging and even alignment with like-minded brands, helps to make them indispensible.
“In 2015, the opportunity for brands will be to reimagine their customer experiences and to deliver on that promise.”
So what does that mean? It means that companies have to stop just saying they are “customer obsessed” and actually commit to uncovering breakthrough insights that give rise to fresh, new ideas for how, where, and when to engage and win with customers. It means being nimble and responsive in creating opportunities for authentic engagement, and of delighting customers at every turn. And it means being ruthlessly pragmatic in bringing strategies to life.
Margaret Malloy, Siegel+Gale
Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand
In 2015, the opportunity for brands will be to reimagine their customer experiences and to deliver on that prom-
The biggest opportunity in branding for 2015 on a global level is the internal engagement of brand employees to live the brand on social networks. This trend has already started in the B2B environment with examples
ise. With disruptive brands reaching mainstream saturation in 2014, and with more to emerge in 2015, the focus on customer experience is now paramount. Why have these disrupters captured the mind and market share of
of brands like Philips turning their employees worldwide into branded content curators and social network ambassadors. This opportunity in branding is ready to emerge now as the maturity of social networks, platforms and digital habits has created a new media reality that is putting each person at the center. Coinciding with the growing need of authenticity, trustworthiness and social responsibility, and the decline in efficiency of
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the public? They are achieving success through the ability to identify (even anticipate) consumer pain and resolve it by creating friction-free, often surprisingly delightful, experiences for customers. Brands, of all ages and categories, must take a cue from these disrupters, becoming more mindful of how customers are ultimately experiencing the holistic brand.
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Sean McCoy, HKLM Group I am of the opinion that the role of the internal brand will be the greatest opportunity of 2015 and will likely also remain a key challenge for client and the industry as a whole. I see it as a great opportunity from the point of view of the dire need to re-engage people, given some of the global economic challenges that we have experienced across most markets throughout the world. This has caused employee fatigue, high levels of disengagement and in some instances, severe breakdown of trust in the traditional employee-employer relationship. The op-
“The biggest challenge and opportunity in 2015 is what I like to call ‘Brand Democratization.’”
portunity to reverse this, or at least begin the journey of reversal, is beckoning and the impact of brand engagement and improved internal/external brand alignment is large. There is clear evidence of this across sever-
Dominik Prinz, Interbrand
al markets in Africa at the moment [where
I believe what will both be the biggest challenge and opportunity in
HKLM operates] – also a definite indication
2015 is what I like to call “Brand Democratization”.
of an improved service culture in a bid to be more globally competitive and to gear many
What it is? Basically, an organization’s willingness to let go of the
businesses in the region for growth.
desire to control every single step of the customer journey. Instead, it dares to be more playful with its brand experiences - and actually al-
Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group [The big opportunity for brands in 2015 is to] become the leader in trustability, or proac-
lows the customer to shape a large portion of it. This is, of course, especially difficult for large brands out there which are often still used to think in consistency and brand guideline compliance.
tive trustworthiness, in your category. This
But we increasingly see younger and more agile brands celebrate
would mean always acting in the custom-
great success with a looser strategy. Warby Parker, for example. Take
er’s interest, even when it costs money to
the brand’s retail experience: whether it’s 3,500 square foot garage in
do so. The way JetBlue credits your refund
NYC, or a an old school bus refitted to be a traveling store and party
automatically, or Amazon warns you before
location for their customers: Warby Parker has fun experimenting.
you buy a book you’ve already bought from them. [Moderator’s note: If you’re not famil-
If done right, “Brand Democratization” creates much deeper engage-
iar with Don’s book “Extreme Trust,” which
ment, more excitement, and a bigger sense of brand ownership for
explains this trustability concept, it is well-
people. So every brand, big or small, should explore ways to make the
worth reading. By the way, this is not an af-
brand experience more participatory and co-designed by the people
filiate link.]
it’s ultimately for.
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Claude Singer, Siegelvision
While corporate values have largely been absent from the historical purchasing consideration set, the purpose-driven consumer movement – led by Millennials – increasingly wants to know what a brand stands for – and what it is against – so that they can align their purchasing and loyalty with brands around shared values.
Branding — however defined — does not exist in a vacuum. Speculating on the future of branding requires seeing branding within the broader context of our times. The world is in a heightened state of anticipation — waiting for resolution to Middle East violence, Ukrainian instability, China’s growth path and America’s energy production, among other question marks.
You want a customer to feel good? Then make them feel good about what you share beyond the transactional experience. Values add a new and dynamic component in the cost-benefit equation of value. It’s a great opportunity to differentiate – and a challenge as well.
In this swirl of uncertainty, vibrant commercial brands offer reliability and reassurance. Successful not-forprofits offer the promise of action for good. These brands can bring sighs of relief in an era of intense doubt.
“The opportunity for branding in the future lies in realizing that the traditional, linear ‘brand funnel’ is no longer relevant.”
But this is also a time of unrelenting change — and therein lies a paradox: While promising certainty, organizations must be able to adapt. They must appear as buttresses against storms while continuously shifting in the market’s gusts. How can an organization promise both certainty and adaptability? The answer comes back to a strong sense of identity. Just as human beings who know themselves have an advantage over people who put up a false front, so organizations who know who they are and what they do have the best chance to project stability while moving with the times. They can create reliable value that is shaped and reshaped for changing needs.
Eric Villain, GfK I believe the opportunity for branding in the future lies in realizing that the traditional, linear “brand funnel” is no longer relevant, particularly among Millennials. The use of the internet for information gathering and shopping as well as the proliferation of social media and plethora of “personal connections” (how many Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections do you have?) circumvents the “funnel concept”. That is, people are made aware of new brand/products much more quickly than before and may go straight to ‘purchase’ on the strength of a “friend” recommendation, bypassing ‘familiarity’ and ‘consideration,’ i.e. “brand equity transference.” I feel, however, that while marketers have been using the friend network to promote sales, they are yet to effectively use social media to build lasting brand equity and loyalty. Hence, the opportunity and challenge in 2015 is for marketers to re-ignite brand building and also learn how to build strong equity and loyalty using social media as a medium whilst not forgetting other mass media touchpoints.
The conclusion is inescapable, and the trend for 2015 is clear: Organizations of all stripes and sizes will be vulnerable if they don’t do the self-analysis and build their brands on a candid understanding of their enduring strengths. They will need to probe deeply into themselves for a clear fix on their identities. They will need to observe the adage: Know thyself. Otherwise the 2015 marketplace will know them as losers. Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell I believe corporate values will move from the realm of motivational posters in corporate hallways to become a full-fledged component of the customer value proposition in 2015.
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“Maintaining relevancy in a climate of dynamically changing cultural influences and values is a huge challenge for brands presently.”
What do you see as the biggest challenge in branding for 2015? Eric Villain, Gfk I believe that the greatest current challenge facing branding is that marketers are using advances in media buying such as programmatic buying, and focusing ROI metrics to drive immediate sales and not taking the time (or use these mediums) to understand what it means to actually build brand equity that is rich with purpose, imagery and personality and results in long term relationships with people. The use of new tactical communication and related norms, averages, data bases, and ROI metrics has made us forget what it takes to build a brand. Brand building takes hard work and time and is a combination of art and science. Essentially, the interim step toward building long standing, meaningful brands is missing in many branding efforts, possibly producing mediocre, price-sensitive brands with no real equity or ability to sustain a premium price.
Rob Swan, Brand Image
Rob Swan, Brand Image / SGK
“Measure twice, cut once,” my dad always said. Even the most deeply seated brands can stand to have a look under the hood. In this way, strategic plans for meaningful activation of these stories can help brands flow more easily and, more importantly, authentically and believably (relevantly) over those rocks.
Maintaining relevancy in a climate of dynamically changing cultural influences and values is a huge challenge for brands presently. Traditionally, equity has been established in times of more glacial change in the landscape of consumer values and competitive threat. Time is a great (and often overlooked) brand-building tool. Given time and salience in the consumer mindset, great brand stories can take root and firmly establish themselves to stand the test of time – if managed right. Look to Coke as an example. Today, brands don’t have that luxury. Stories have to have the ability to fluidly flow over the rocks that the digital age seems to consistently produce in our culture.
Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell The challenge for brands is being transparent, accountable, and authentic in communicating the brand story and a clear sense of purpose. How do you communicate a brand’s values and attach them to products and services in a way that’s a turn on for the customer, rather than a turn off? For many brands, it’s tricky. Of course, it’s not all about brand values. For a large portion of the market, values will be evaluated when other considerations – such as price and convenience, are at or near parity. But in a world where most products are commodities and product development moves at breakneck speed only to be quickly eclipsed by the me-too, immutable values can become a long-lasting competitive advantage.
The consumer and their values essentially have become a moving target. Plus, social issues and change events can jump up from behind a bush anywhere in the world, also influencing the dynamic. The key to winning in this context, I believe, is better proactive planning and plotting of brand stories and character in the foundational stages of development - and of course meaningfully considered product and services offerings and innovation.
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Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group
Margaret Malloy, Siegel+Gale
[The threat in 2015 is] the rapidly spreading “Amazon ef-
The challenge for brands in 2015 is also maintaining a
fect,” meaning that customers no longer compare their
laser focus on brand experience, however they may re-
experiences with your brand to the experiences they have
imagine it. With the proliferation of new platforms and
with competitive brands in your category. They compare
devices, it is easy for marketers to become distracted.
it to the experience they would have had with Amazon.
The vehicle to deliver on better customer experience is
And usually they’re not happy.
simplicity—creating remarkably clear and unexpectedly fresh experiences that customers will appreciate, and
Sean McCoy, HKLM Group
employees will proudly stand behind. It is of the utmost importance for brands to empathize with customers, ad-
The challenge of course lies in getting executives to fully
dressing their most critical needs at each touch, and to
understand [the internal brand] and commit to it, both
embody using clear design and language.
in terms of resources as well as leadership. All too often this is seen as a cost rather than an investment or
Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand
is little understood and delegated elsewhere into the organisation or worst still, totally ignored. As businesses
The biggest challenge is the new mindset and under-
strive for a deepened sense of purpose and higher lev-
standing of how branding works that is needed to em-
els of people engagement, the leadership commitment,
brace the idea of a “living” brand actualized through its
support and involvement is paramount to reversing the
organizational behavior from the monolithic corporate
fortunes of the internal brand.
communication up to the sum of individual expressions. The efficiency of dogmatic brand positioning that seems set in stone for the sake of consistency is going to become less and less operative. The new mindset and understanding of branding should integrate the necessity of a more flexible, evolving expression of the brand as well as tools to control it dynamically. The study of subcultures in the organizations based on expression in the social media will become key and represent the biggest challenge to come for brands and branding consultancies Scott Davis, Prophet In the coming year, brands will face the biggest chal-
“The challenge… lies in getting executives to fully understand [the internal brand] and commit to it…”
lenges when thinking about how to fully integrate digital transformation into the overall customer experience. In order to truly transform and grow better businesses, brands will have to embrace co-creation, make friends with big (and small) data, be authentic and be useful. Building brands in a digital world is no longer an option but a requirement if you are building a brand that is truly
- Sean McCoy, HKLM Group
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However, artificially separating your overall digital strategy and customer experience strategy will ultimate lead to a fragmented experience and confused customer. The easiest gut-check when thinking through your brands strategy is how you personally engage with brands, whether it is an airline, retail store, hospitality or even a BTB brand. In our personal lives, we seamlessly go back and forth between digital and real world experiences: Checking in with our digital apps or scanning a particular purchase while going to the gate to board a plane or while in the checkout line at the store. Digital is interwoven in our daily lives and this should be the norm for how companies build seamless experiences going forward.
Carol Cone, Edelman The challenge to embracing a deep and compelling purpose looms large. Uncovering it is a journey onto itself. A hint for brands is to return to their original reason for being. Search deeply. A gem will be there. Bringing that to life as a critical lens for decision making is next. It’s very hard to execute. I fear with the focus on purpose brands there will be lots of beautiful words and manifestos, but uneven execution of their mission in action. Jon Bailey, i.d.e.a This opportunity [to establish brand purpose] comes with its own challenges, namely the potential for pushback among the C-suite and shareholders; oftentimes it’s hard to see how purpose fits within profitability. Even more common is the tendency to think of brand purpose as “cause-related marketing” – a short-term strategy tying your brand/company to a cause and trying to drive sales via that relationship. Many see purpose as secondary to business when, in reality, it should be front and center.
“In order to truly transform and grow better businesses, brands will have to embrace co-creation, make friends with big (and small) data, be authentic and be useful.” - Scott Davis, Prophet
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“The biggest challenge for branding as a discipline is to demonstrate the continued relevance of classical brand strategy.”
Jorge Aguilar, Landor Associates Technologies, markets, and social platforms change every time we blink. Nothing is clear-cut, and there’s an insanely limited time frame to act and respond. Strategies developed to connect with consumers become obsolete in a flash and need to be rethought – and rethought quickly. Just look at Facebook’s algorithm change and how that has completely thrown brands for a loop. To compete and succeed, brands need to be developed and
- Tom Adams, Futurebrand
managed completely differently today. They need to be more fluid and flexible, ready to change course, quickly adapt to new mediums and technologies, and constantly seek opportunities to get ahead. Tom Adams, Futurebrand The rise of real-time communications and seamless brand ecosystems driven by personal information and technology has put even more pressure on organizations and brands to be consistent and authentic. Reputation issues for companies or brands across sectors in the last year have often emerged from a gap between an official ‘position’ and the experience in reality – from the quality of a product to the behaviour of leaders. This is made even more likely as new brands emerge and grow rapidly in frictionless digital distribution channels. The biggest challenge for branding as a discipline is to demonstrate the continued relevance of classical brand strategy – from positioning to identity and architecture – whilst simultaneously ensuring that this is genuinely brought to life through peoples’ behaviours, service design and products themselves. As agencies proliferate and more and more disciplines legitimately claim to do ‘branding’, there has never been a more important time to integrate the established techniques of 20th century brand strategy with the new realities of 21st century delivery in every aspect of a brand experience.
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Margaret Malloy, Siegel+Gale
What branding buzzword would you like to see disappear in 2015?
In 2015, a buzzword that should go away—or rather, be properly defined—is “curate.” It is fine to curate things and ideas on your Pinterest board or Twitter feed, but one who curates is not necessarily a “curator.” In order to be a curator, it presupposes there is a professional knowledge. This is an important clarification, and one which I hope becomes more considered in the coming year.
Tom Adams, Futurebrand I think ‘big data’ has run its course and – like ‘digital’ and ‘innovation’ before it – has started to obscure meaning, rather than provide it. This is mainly because it is a description of aggregated information, rather than an explanation of what it offers us or how it should be used. Jorge Aguilar, Landor Associates The branding buzzword that needs to go away in 2015 is “digital branding.” As evident in Landor’s 2015 trends forecast, the boundaries between online and offline no longer exist. We live in a digital era, so branding by definition must be multichannel and connect with consumers at every touchpoint, making this phrase redundant and obsolete.
“The branding buzzword that needs to go away in 2015 is ‘digital branding.’” - Jorge Aguilar, Landor
Scott Davis, Prophet The term “digital brand building” should be killed. However, building brands in a digital world should not. I am also not a fan of arbitrarily labeling all Millennials and Gen Y’ers as one big segment that have the same behaviors, attitudes and brand perceptions and, thus, treated as one big segment. While we are at it, lets go after all moms, as I am sure they are all the same.
Sean McCoy, HKLM Group I would like to see the elimination of the use of the term “stakeholder” – as critical a definition as it is, it is a very poor, over-used and politicised expression for something so important.
Vladimir Djurovic, Labbrand
Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group
Customer centricity. Why? Not denying that surpassing customer expectation is an aspect that should be taken in account when conceiving and managing the branding of company, but customer centricity is not the starting point and the reason to be of brands. Brands have the responsibility not only to amaze customers but firstly to conceive responsible reasons to be.
The buzzword I’d like to eliminate? “Native advertising.” This is a deceptively innocuous term for what we really should call “sponsored content,” or perhaps “clandestine advertising.” Dominik Prinz, Interbrand If Santa grants me one wish this year, it’s the abandonment of the word “Millennials” by the branding world. It’s the most overused and least understood buzz-word, at the same time. There is no way we can meaningfully jam people born over a lifespan of roughly 20 years into one segment and make sense of it – and we need to stop trying. People are bit more diverse (and complicated) than that. And that’s a good thing.
Alexander Haldemann, MetaDesign Brand Guidelines. In the future, guidelines will be flexible documents that evolve over time. Brand ambassadors will be the new answer to communication needs of target audiences. While guidelines will always be around (just like dictionaries) a more practical and fluid system will be implemented for consistency.
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Michael Savage, JWT INSIDE
Claude Singer, Siegelvision
You may find this shocking given my job title (Director of Employer Brand), but I’d like to see the term “Employer Branding” put out to pasture in 2015. The term and its associations are outdated, limiting and undervalue its true worth.
Branding buzzwords that should disappear in 2015? I’ve always winced at the term “content” — which reduces amazingly rich expressions of human life to the level of commodities shoveled around by distributors. It is my hope that, rather than using the general term
“Branding” immediately frames it as a marketing pitch to an external audience of candidates, or an effort to manage a reputation. And “Employer” immediately pigeonholes this as a recruitment exercise wherein organizations match their career offering to a list of the same-old candidate needs (i.e., compensation and career development). This old-school approach is not what this generation of companies or candidates needs or wants.
content, people will specify what’s being distributed — news, comment, chat, documentaries — whatever it might be. Of course, exception would be made for the first pages of an actual book — “table of contents” — whenever that quaint medium is employed. Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell Well, right now it’s a tossup between Big Data, Blurring
JWT INSIDE’s 2014 research study confirms that a vast majority of employees and candidates want to work for companies with a clearly defined purpose (an inspirational cause) and a culture clearly aligned with their values. These two things drive attraction and retention of talent, and produce the highest productivity of organizations – enabling employees to achieve even bigger things. Culture is the engine that powers it all.
the Lines Between Physical and Digital, and Thought Leader. Me, I’m more of a Little Data guy, have remarkably clear eyesight when it comes to the difference between a brick and a click, and as for thought leader – I guess I’ll riff on an old R.E.M. song – most of what passes these days for thought leadership actually falls into the category of Thought Leader Pretend.
Culture is your purpose, values, practices, people and place all combined and working together (Harvard Business Review). The way you tell that story to your candidates and employees and empower them to participate in it is much more than just “Employer Branding.” It inspires and propels today’s workforce and businesses to reach new heights.
Rob Swan, Brand Image / SGK
So let’s write the obituary for “Employer Branding” and usher in a new era of “Culture Carrying.” Have you defined your purpose, put your values and practices on display for your candidates to see? Have you aligned your workforce behind your purpose and cause and built a culture that’s enabling them to succeed? That’s Culture Carrying. Not a campaign. Not exclusively for recruitment, it’s invaluable to every organization that dares to embark on the journey. Now excuse me for a moment, I
dangerous to the culture of ideas which, in the end, is
The word I’d like to take out to the shed is “No”. Risk aversion is a real and present danger and, all too often it seems, great ideas are left behind or avoided for the sake of self-preservation. It permeates into creative cultures as we anticipate negative responses in our collective imaginations before they even come. This is really what we should be trying to nurture and grow more than ever before. “Maybe” is much better... we have the ability to prototype scenarios and rapidly validate them like never before, thanks to the net. You’ll find that creative partners will stretch with you – and maybe find something awesome.
need to go order new business cards!
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NEXT MONTH on The Branding Roundtable:
Rebranding and Change
Moderator:
Independent Brand Strategist, Writer &
Chuck Kent
Contributing Editor, Branding Magazine
Branding Roundtables you may have missed: Brand Co-Creation Purpose-Driven Branding Employer Branding How Branding Agencies Brand Themselves Brand and Customer Experience Verbal Branding
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