What Great Brands Do

Chapter 1 Lecture | Great Brands Start Inside

What the book mean?

“Great brands start inside?”

Sam Palmisano

• If you don’t develop greatness among your employees, your employees are unlikely to deliver greatness to your customers.

• Modifying IBM’s culture was critical for Palmisano in 2002 because IBM’s industry and market position were both undergoing significant change.

• “ValuesJam”

“When your business is primarily based on knowledge, [then]

people—rather than products—become your brand. Just as our

products have had to be consistent with the IBM brand

promise, now more than ever, so do our people.”

Outcome

Three new interpretations of IBM’s founding beliefs:

• Dedication to every client’s success.  

• Innovation that matters—for our company and the world.

• Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.

Inside

• Clever advertising and a freshened-up logo will prove to be pointless exercises if cultural problems within the company prevent the company from delivering on its new promises

• One of the fundamental ways an organization resets and strengthens its brand is through strengthening its culture

Inside

• True cultural change at your company hasn’t occurred until all your employees, whether top leaders or field workers, are using your values to inform their daily behavior—with customers and with each other.

• “Invertising” not enough

• “head + heart + hands and feet”

• Employees need to know company values in their heads, feel inspired by them in their hearts, and then put them into action with their hands and feet.

Employees who are engaged with the brand:

• Connect to customers more effectively because they understand the value the company produces and delivers to them.

• Connect to each other more fully because they are united by a common objective and common set of values.

• Ultimately, connect to the brand’s higher purpose and find that their work holds more meaning and importance to them because they see their own roles in the broader mission of the organization.

Your brand can’t just be a promise; it must be a promise delivered.

The Brand Toolbox

• An explanation of your brand strategy along with background and rationale so that everyone can understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and definitions of key terms so everyone grasps the meaning behind the words

• Principles and guidelines for delivering brand values and attributes at key touch points between your brand and the outside world

• Sample applications for how the brand should be expressed and delivered

• Guides that walk people through important decisions, along with outlines that map processes so that people learn how to do things on brand

Five Tips for Building a Brand Culture

Five Tips for Building a Brand Culture

1. Define the Organization’s Internal Culture

Find what makes your organization unique, cultivate it and celebrate it. People can usually tell whether you are putting on an act or being genuine. Help your employees understand your business’s unique story and make it their own.

2. Tell Your Story

Forget the dry employee manual —though it’s important; Rather than focusing on just rules and regulations, a “culture book” often dives into more of the intangibles that elaborate on what an organization is at its core and how it became what it is now.

3. Walk the Talk

Remember: Actions speak louder than words. Every interaction is an opportunity to affirm your brand in the eyes of your employees and customers. Your brand is a promise you make to your customers; your culture is how your employees deliver on that promise.

4. Encourage Input

Don’t limit input and idea generation to management meetings; give support staff an opportunity to contribute their thoughts and ideas too.

You never know when a young or inexperienced employee may surprise you with something brilliant.

Allowing staff to participate boosts their self-confidence, making their work experience better will enhance their interactions with customers and prospects.

5. Share the Love

Cultures that recognize the contributions of employees will be stronger, truer, and longer-lasting than cultures where behavior is forced by top-down decrees.

If there is not a strong sense of “team,” it can undermine your culture very quickly.

Employees who feel the love are more likely to inspire similar feelings among your customers.

Culture Building Activities

• The idea is to get employees excited about working on the brand

• To help them identify decisions and behaviors aligned with the brand’s message.

• To go beyond routine employee communications with interactive group experiences

• Help connect people, brand purpose, and values in fun and memorable ways.

Extend Your Brand-Building Culture Externally

If you were to conceive of your brand as a source of light, you’d want that light to shine as clearly and brightly as possible to show the outside world all the value the brand offers.

Stakeholders

Converting Culture into Customer Experience

So, you’ve gotten all your inside taken care of. Now, can you live up to it with those outside your organization — your customers and clients

More sophisticated customers

-People are becoming more knowledgeable and discriminating about their spending decisions.

-Swayed less and less by slick salespeople and cool promotions

-Form their brand preferences more and more around what they actually experience when they do business with you and your company.

Video

That’s all

Video