Today it is possible to measure the connection between brand performance and employee performance, and to spot the customer touchpoints most affected by employee behaviour. Philippe Lebard looks at how this can be achieved.
You may have a well-established brand identity and clear brand promise – but do all of your employees consistently act to deliver it? Recent surveys showed that whilst 39% of business leaders believe that their employees ‘live’ the brand, over 90% of employees don’t believe this is the case.Misaligned employee behaviours are not just unfortunate for the company, they are commercially dangerous. They can mean that the brand messages are not believed, and so the company is not trusted. They also mean that the millions that you spend on marketing and communications may be substantially wasted. This problem can be avoided, and brand-consistent employees can become a critical, hard-to-copy competitive advantage. To be confident of it requires top management commitment to an explicit process of brand activation, to ensure that every touchpoint with your customers and business partners positively delivers the brand promise.
Employees can make or break a brand. They don’t all come to work planning to undermine the brand, but they face many obstacles that prevent them from actively supporting it. They may be under-informed about their companies’ brands and under-encouraged to support them. Too many of their activities are brandblind. In our 63 years experience of strategic consultancy, much the same obstacles exist regardless of industry sector or company size.
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