Aug 16, 2010

Internal branding use the marketing device named “employees”!

Companies have become painfully aware that sending the right message to their employees is just as important as making a good impression with customers, vendors and its investors. It is widely believed that financial rewards can be realized from a reputation built on the organizational solidity which a brand can provide. Internal Branding is generally understood as “a program for encouraging employee behaviors” that must align with the company brand strategy. 
It’s an old branding definition that it provides an identity to a manufacturer. The modern point of view is as a brand adds value to the products or services a company offers by imbuing them with emotional, social, and even spiritual resonance. Branding adds a spirit and a soul to what would otherwise be a robotized, automated, generic price-value proposition. If branding is ultimately about the creation of human meaning, it follows logically that it is humans who must ultimately provide it. 
Moreover, a successful Internal Branding cannot merely be imposed on employees, who are in turn rendered passive, powerless, and organizationally peripheral in forwarding the message to the public mean customers. Rather, firstly employees must totally believe in the brand’s higher vision, one that goes beyond the product or service being sold. They not only go along with the program but passionately advocate for this vision. Must see it as a means by which not only the company but they themselves can become self-actualized. In short, the brand must be so powerfully appealing that not only the organization but individuals within it find self-fulfillment in aligning themselves and their behaviors with it. 
Further, Advertising and marketing are losing their impact now-a-days because what is for sale is increasingly not the product or service. The marketplace moves so quickly to copy winning formulas that quality, relatively low cost, and even excellent service have become a price of entry for most of the items. When it becomes impossible for a product to compete on the basis of its functional benefits then brand becomes all important. Brands have equity because they permeate generic products and services with a unique soul. They offer the buyer a sense of meaning and identity. 
As brands are ultimately accepted as so personal so it is impossible to communicate them by advertising alone. For that matter the thing to remember is the classiest logo, the funniest TV commercial, the most accessible website, even the cleverest product placement cannot replace the human touch. Organizations of all kinds are catching on to this reality. They understand that only people can brand products effectively and that success requires a branded corporate personality that is stamped, replicated, and irrevocably marked on the inside of each and every dedicated individual whose name is on the payroll.
Ironically, the idea can work but before that certain things should be implemented on the workplace like attracting highly qualified employees and training employees to communicate a certain desired message. What is necessary from top management to do if they want ideally Internal branding to execute are as: Clarity of objective, Commitment with each consensus whatever employees do, Communication throughout the organization, Culture modification as new changes needed in the organization, and most crucial Compensation especially with employees at the time of wrong decision making. The entire factors contribute collectively on large scale of “Internal Branding”. 

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