Life before a brand workshop
If you ask any employee what their corporate brand is, the majority will probably say it’s the company logo, motto, tagline, design look and feel or the tone of how everything is communicated. While that’s not entirely incorrect, it’s not correct either. A brand workshop will help your team clarify these points.
A brand is so much more! It’s a feeling and an emotional connection that customers have about a business or a product. A brand is one of the most valuable intangible assets that a company has and Seth Godin defined it beautifully by saying, “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” This embodies the magical connection that all companies want their customers to feel about their brand and products.
Humans are emotional and intuitive, making decisions based on gut feeling and trust. That’s why it’s important for companies to have that type of connection with the client. As simple as it sounds, it’s one of the most difficult things to accomplish. While there are a few companies that get it right, the majority get it wrong for many reasons. One of the reasons is because the employees don’t understand or know how to communicate the company brand and its core values.
A lot of companies don’t fully understand what their brand is
How can organisations communicate their brand’s core values? The solution is inside out. It has to start from inside the company itself, with the employees. In order for customers to have an emotional and loyal connection to a brand, all company employees must clearly understand, believe it and transmit it. While that sounds easy, this cohesion is extremely difficult to achieve because employees are simply not aligned with the company’s vision and brand for various reasons.
Each stakeholder has a different point of view
Many employees don’t clearly understand, know, or even care about their corporate brand. This disconnect and lack of cohesion is what gets a lot of companies in trouble. If you ask team members from different departments or stakeholders what the company brand is, you’re likely to get a handful of very different answers. Why? There are a lot of different reasons for this:
The organisation never clearly explained the brand and its values to employees.
Each team member has their own idea and understanding of what the brand is.
The brand changed and the new values were never communicated.
Each team member interprets brand values their own way or based on their work functions.
Some employees are only about the money and simply don’t care.
The wrong people are hired and promoted
Another reason for lack of brand alignment is because the wrong people are hired and promoted. Putting wrong people into leadership roles can be a recipe for disaster. Sadly, many companies continue to function in outdated and ineffective hierarchical ways, promoting and hiring employees for all the wrong reasons. Some team members get promoted because they’ve “paid the dues” and worked for the organisation or in a certain position for a X period of time. Others are able to climb the corporate ladder due to connections and nepotistic corporate culture.
More effort has to be made to hire or promote for the right positions. Just because an employee is amazing at his/her particular job doesn’t mean that they are capable of leading teams. And while hiring managers put a lot of focus on experience and accomplishments of job candidates, they often ignore the corporate culture fit.
Sadly, there are also a lot of employees that only care about making money or the prestige of working for a cool company, while not giving any thought about the corporate culture and what it stands for, leading to a toxic corporate environment.
So how do you align your teams with the company brand and its core values? The answer is quite simple! Brand workshops.
Why run a brand workshop?
Brand workshops are a quick and efficient way to help (re)define brand and company culture in the most efficient and cost effective way. Because they are led by experienced facilitators, these branding workshops help organisations identify and solve problems, definition and communication in a least amount of time. This creates cohesion by helping everybody understand the bigger picture and goals, leading to brand clarity and values.
One of the most important elements of a successful brand workshop is getting the right people from the right departments to participate. Experienced workshop leaders identify key stakeholders to participate in the workshop. Because these stakeholders are from different departments, they can share their unique perspectives and expertise with the workshop participants.
By putting different stakeholders in the same room, all the participants are working towards the same goal of brand clarity and cohesion. Everybody feels like they are a part of the problem-solving process and have the same goal in mind. It also creates an open space for ideas sharing and brainstorming. This also creates transparency because all of the participants can understand that different departments see problems and solutions from a different perspective. Going through the brand workshop process builds, strengthens and reinforces relationships between different teams because everybody is working towards the same solution. It also gives a feeling of value, accountability and ownership of the project.
Workshops helps everybody understand what a brand is
By going through the brand discovery and definition process with a workshop facilitator, everybody will have a clear and cohesive understanding of the company brand and values, serving as foundation for all decision-making. Not only for products/services, but also to hire the right candidates to build a strong and loyal corporate culture. This is an invaluable asset that many organisations overlook and it’s the precise strategy that Zappos used to build a company with happy employees along with an amazing brand and reputation.
Your brand’s core values are at the heart of what your company is and does
Zappos is one of the first companies to use their brand and corporate values as a guideline to build a successful company along with a happy and loyal corporate culture. Tony Hsieh, the founder and CEO of Zappos, was adamant about building a corporate culture where employees loved working and genuinely felt like a family. How did he do it? By defining and upholding the company’s corporate values, making everyone in the organisation aware of them and making ALL decisions ( who to hire, what to invest in, etc.) based on them.
Deliver WOW Through Service
Embrace and Drive Change
Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
Pursue Growth and Learning
Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
Do More With Less
Be Passionate and Determined
Be Humble
This strategy is now copied by the largest multinationals and Idea Bloom’s brand workshops can help you get to the core of your brand and values. While we can’t guarantee that your organisation will become a multibillion unicorn overnight, we can promise that our workshops will be fun, engaging and valuable. We won’t only help solve branding problems, but we’ll re-energise your teams.
Our brand workshop
Idea Bloom offers unique brand workshops that can be conducted in person or online. Each workshop is customised to meet the company’s and industry’s needs. If you don’t see a workshop that fits your needs, give us a shout. We’ll be happy to create one for you
Written by Juliya Obukhovskaya | Bridge Studio Content Writer
