values. Had there been an earlier intervention, the two initiatives could have been integrated and could have given substantial support to the brand. As it was, both were weakened by the sticking-plaster approach.
Brand management and the four pillars of
specific groups of customers who share the same values. Some consumer businesses make this the centrepiece of their marketing strategy. Body Shop and record store Virgin Records, for example, focus heavily on building a bond of common interest between customers, employees and owners.
Jan Carlzon’s famous concept of ‘moments of truth’ asserts in essence that every contact between an organization and its customers either reinforces or undermines the brand the com- pany wishes to maintain. Behaviour that is merely congruent with the brand is largely unnoticed and has little effect, other than cumulatively to build expectations of what will happen.
Behaviour that exemplifies the brand promise in ways the customer does not expect tends to reinforce it; behaviour that disappoints the customer undermines it. All of which is com- mon sense. What is less obvious, however, is that moments of truth occur all the way along the supply chain. Brand dissonance – when the actual brand or reputation of the company is significantly at variance to the one it aims for – at any point on the supply chain can cause serious problems for the business, as we saw in the chapter on strategies for stakeholder communication.
Key questions here for the IC function, therefore, are:
䊉 How do we help the organization achieve consistency of message about the brand values along the supply chain, when so much of the territory is owned by other functions, such as marketing or investor relations?
䊉 How do we help create a credible link between the brand values and employee behaviours, given that employee behav- iour is usually seen as the province of either HR or line management?
Of course, the IC function could say: ‘This is none of our business, then. We’ll provide practical help, for example in managing campaigns, when we are asked to and leave it at that.’
The problem with such a stance is that it automatically relegates the function to a non-strategic role. To be involved in the crafting and development of strategy, the IC function needs to take a proactive stance that:
䊉 identifies how employees perceive the brand(s)
䊉 involves employees in discussing and planning how to make the brand a reality in the areas they can influence
䊉 monitors internal behaviours against the brand values
䊉 ensures that employees are aware of successes and failures in living the brand.
Trusting interfaces with customers are essential in building customer loyalty. They are also essential in ensuring that employees at all levels live the brand, because the behaviours that deliver the brand promise almost always include strong elements of teamwork and, often even more importantly, inter- teamwork– high levels of collaboration between teams. The vast majority of service quality failures (the negative moments of truth) occur not because of bad behaviour by an individual but because of failures of communication.
Consider the case of a highly successful European home entertainments company. It provides a high-quality product, but its brand was (and, at the time of writing, still is) frequently undermined by an inability to develop effective relationships between the call centre employees, who deal with customer queries and problems, and the service engineers, who make home visits. According to a call centre supervisor, at one stage the call centre staff and the engineers were not allowedto talk to each other. (This company also instituted a policy, whereby the director in charge of customer service refused to respond to phone calls from frustrated customers!)
The result is that customers may wait in all day for a visit that does not happen. In the absence of serious competition the brand dissonance does not matter too much, but in a more competitive environment the interface between the service engineers and the call centre staff would be critical in maintaining competitive advantage.
Trusting interfaces are established, most frequently and most successfully, through dialogue – through meaningful and open, exploratory communication that allows people to understand and value each other. Traditionally, the IC function has not played much of a role here. Communication within the team and between teams has been a matter for line managers.
However, the brand and its associated values provide a basis for this kind of dialogue: a shared problem that demands discussion, collaboration and the development of shared solu- tions. The IC function can and should play a significant part in providing or stimulating the channels for communication within and between teams and in building the competence to generate trust.
Brand management needs effective and efficient systems of sharing information, for several reasons. For a start, the company needs to know:
䊉 how customer perceptions of the brand are changing, espe- cially in relation to competitors’ brands
䊉 how well the brand values are being enacted at the customer interface
䊉 where the employees are experiencing difficulties in delivering the brand.
The first two of these issues are largely outside the remit of the IC function. However, employee perceptions of customer behav- iours and attitudes are an important but frequently neglected source of brand management information. Very few companies make effective use of critical incident reporting (CIR), for example, where employees are encouraged to record instances where customers have shown pleasure or displeasure with the products or service they have received. Instead, they employ armies of market researchers, at great cost, to gather data which is far removed in time and place from the moment of truth.
Critical incident reporting, by contrast, is inexpensive, con- tinuous and immediate.
The IC function can also help identify problems in delivering the brand, from inadequacies in training, resources, supervisory leadership, or policies that conflict with the brand values.
Creating forums, where employees can discuss such issues and suggest practical remedies is not just about continuous improve- ment; it is about constantly adapting the brand delivery process to the environment, both internal and external. To make this process work at its best, marketing information from external sources must be packaged into forms that are meaningful and actionable by the employees. Take a practical example. Staff at a building society were given information about the monthly variations in customer satisfaction. When satisfaction levels fell, top management expected the staff to discuss ways of presenting a more friendly, welcoming face to customers. The staff, however, placed the blame on additional backroom duties, which meant that there were less counter staff, which in turn meant longer queues and less time to be chatty with customers. An attitude of
‘it’s not our problem’ soon developed.
By contrast, a competitor asked employees what information from marketing would be helpful to them in suggesting and making improvements. The staff in this case identified that the time customers came into the branch was an important factor.
Accurate information about satisfaction levels at different times of day enabled them to design and implement, with management approval, work schedules that addressed the issues directly.
Top management communication behaviour should be influ- enced by the brand, because the leadership needs to be seen as the living embodiment of the brand values. A few organizations measure the brand behaviour of leaders from top to bottom of the
Corporate brand Product brand Employer brand Employee brand
Key questions Clarity Clarity Clarity Clarity
How clearly do people understand what the organization ‘stands for’?
How clearly is the customer promise explained to employees?
Do people inside and outside the company have a consistent and positive perception of its behaviour as an employer?
How clearly do employees understand what behaviours are expected of them? Do they accept these as appropriate?
Trust Trust Trust Trust
Where do we most need to develop trust between people and functions?
Do employees themselves trust the product or service? (Do they recommend it to other people?)
Do employees believe the company delivers on its promises to them?
Do employees feel supported by each other and their managers in living the brand values?
Information Information Information Information
What do people inside the company need to know to live the brand values?
Are employees sufficiently informed about customer expectations and concerns?
Are existing employees frequent and effective recruiting agents for the organization? Do they have the information they need to compare this employer with others?
Do employees receive (and give) meaningful and accurate feedback about performance in living the brand values?
that top management are truly committed to the brand values?
employees believe top management is about the product brand?
channels to alert top management to concerns about the company’s
performance as an employer? Are these concerns
demonstrably listened to?
management
consistently recognize and reward
employees’ efforts to live the values?
Brand ownership Top management Marketing Human Resources Line management
Role of internal communication
Stimulate dialogue on how to put the corporate brand into practice
Measure performance internally against the corporate brand
Raise awareness of the product brand Help make it meaningful to
employees in terms of their own roles
Help HR build and sustain dialogue with employees and measure changing perceptions
Help build dialogue between employees and all the other brand owners
organization as part of the overall management of culture change, but brand consciousness in the organization demands constant reinforcement from what top management says and does. When announcing a new investment or an acquisition, how does this support the brand promises? How do the visible signs of the organization fit with the brand? Walmart and IKEA, for example, both built their brands around frugality, from top management behaviour (economy-class travel) to very modest headquarters building and regional offices.
The role of the IC function here is one of intermediary between top management’s good intentions and the reality of the perceptions of internal audiences. If employees perceive that top management does not walk the talk, or does not really take one or more of the brand values seriously, exhorting them to live the brand is a waste of effort. Internal communication can provide the measurement and feedback processes, help create opportun- ities for the leadership to talk from the heart to small groups of employees and ensure that the messages that come from the centre do not conflict with or confuse the values. (A classic case of the latter was the town council, which on the same day issued a newsletter from the CEO outlining a policy of empowerment, to support service values, and a memo from the finance function reducing the level of spending managers could authorize without permission from above.)