Avoiding Flakey Brand Shit

How will you avoid brand strategies as flakey as the PC character who is confused on who he is suppose to be?

The other day, I heard a colleague refer to a brand document as "flakey brand shit". At first, being a brand enthusiast, my heart sunk and I began to think, "how could someone refer to a brand strategy document as 'flakey brand shit' when it's this document that defines how a brand will position itself to stimulate premium pricing, attract top talent & create brand evangelists (both internally and externally)?"

But then it occurred to me - ya some brand documents ARE "flakey brand shit" because they lack genuine purpose of what the organization is set to accomplish. There is no meaning to motivate the organization's talent to act on the brand's strategy because it remains irrelevant to their day-to-day roles. Therefore, the fluffy altruistic words in the document become flakey and meaningless, because those who are responsible for executing the strategy daily are unable to translate the brand into tangible actions. This causes the document to go unread and be quickly forgotten making staff focus on the only other thing they know to - the bottom line, resulting in short-term thinking and trade-offs that jeopardize the long-term customer relationship.

So, how do we avoid creating "flakey brand shit" and start motivating the organization with the brand strategy?

Like I've said from the beginning, it starts with purpose! This purpose shouldn't come out of thin air. Rather it should be rooted in what the organization is and has been doing for years - usually stemming from a core competency, but then asking "why does what we do matter?". This allows the brand to get to the heart of what it is enabling and contributing to society. Do not ground the purpose in a specific industry or product/service offering, as you will limit your brand's relevancy in the long-term.

Once this is established and relevant to what the brand has already been doing for years, then it's time to disperse it throughout the organization. The marketing and brand teams are not the only stakeholders the strategy should be geared towards. Rather, every functional team should know & understand the brand strategy - actually, they should believe in the brand strategy, rather than just know it!

Jean-Yves Minet, from Wolff Olins, has a great definition of what a brand is that describes this concept well:

Brand is a tool that sits at the heart of your organization and helps you drive every decision you make about your offer, your capabilities, your culture or your image...to be powerful you need to have a strong idea behind your brand.

That strong idea, which I refer to as brand purpose, must be meaningful internally and externally to translate into something relevant! Meaning they need to understand and believe in the brand to be able to adequately deliver on the brand promise.

So, to effectively communicate the brand strategy to the organization, it must become tangible in order for the internal talent to know how to act on it. This is best done through stories. Robert Simons, a Charles M. Williams professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, says "if managers cannot tell stories about how the values relate to their work, then the values aren't valuable". So, he feels that you must find examples of internal talent using the values to make decisions that deliver on the brand strategy, and then take the opportunity to tell those stories to the rest of the organization. This will make the brand strategy tangible, making it easy for employees to know how to deliver the promise on a daily basis.

So, my colleague was right in referring to a brand strategy document as "flakey brand shit" as they can easily go that route if not given authentic/genuine meaning and communicated internally in a tangible & relevant way!

How will you avoid creating "flakey brand shit"?

Future Files Part 3: Meaning will attract & retain future talent

Note: Image from TOMS' Facebook page - this is them on a recent shoe drop in Argentina

This is the last of the 3 part series inspired by Richard Watson's Future Files book.

In the section on trends influencing 'work', he refers to the macro aging population trend. When this trends collides with the reduced birth rate, we see a dramatic increase in labour shortage! This shortage increases the importance to attracting and maintaining a strong work force to remain a competitive organization in the future.

Richard Watson refers to a theory from Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that radical breakthroughs come from 3 sources: young people, accidents and the cross fertilization of disciplines (on a side note I love this theory and believe it is spot on!).

What this theory tells us is that organizations need young people to stimulate change and progress forward creating value for the organization.

So, how do we attract this valuable segment of people who are limited in supply compared to the large number of jobs that will be soon available?

Well we must create environments that appeal to this group. According the Watson, Gen Y passionately cares about how companies operate and interact with the wider environment. In addition, they are motivated by jobs with real meaning - a job that gives them a sense of contribution to society and the overall global environment.

Being a Gen Y myself, I have to admit this feels extremely close to home. My friends select their jobs/careers based on what they want to contribute and the feeling of pride they take from their job each day. And if you've been reading my blog, or even just my profile, you know that my life ambition is to help organizations make meaning and live it everyday - needless to say I am strongly motivated by meaning and purpose.

But I'm only an example of one - and a biased one at that. So we can look to other examples, like TOMS shoes, we see that young people want purpose in their careers, and that's what draws them into an organization.

TOMS' brand purpose is fundamentally ingrained into its very core - its business model was developed based on its one-to-one brand purpose. The brand story has attracted so many people who want to be a part of its movement, as a customer or employee!

In fact, the majority of TOMS talent is Gen Y. People graduating from top Ivy League schools in the US are choosing to work for TOMS over other high paying jobs. Why - some may ask - well it's because they receive far greater satisfaction knowing they are doing something valuable compared to just contributing to the mundane bottom line.

Analytical numbers and sales figures don't motivate employees - Emotions, purpose & meaning motivate and excite employees because they understand what they are doing and why they are doing it!

So, if you want to adequately compete in the future's talent war, you must fundamentally build your brand purpose into the heart of your organization. Ensure your brand purpose is meaningful to society and the global environment. Don't just write down your purpose and say it's there - believe in it, act on it and live it everyday! That will help you attract tomorrow's top talent!

Note: Image from TOMS Facebook page - this is the TOMS' headquarters celebrating their 4th birthday