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An Essential Ingredient for Brand
By Noreen Aldern
July 2002
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Noreen Aldern
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In the last couple of years, companies in every sector have begun
recognizing the importance of employees and the role they play in
branding. For relationship businesses, the employee's role is profound.
In investment services, studies show that employees are 67% of the
brand (source: The VIP Forum). How can design, identity,
brand management, and marketing find a place in an organization
where the brand’s primary representation is driven by individual
style?
At U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, like many financial companies, we
are in our infancy of branding and have only recently moved from
pure identity management to a focused commitment to build the brand.
What we have discovered along the way is somewhat surprising: individual
representation of our brand is core to our success. Put simply,
our brand—and greatest asset—is our people. Our people
bring diverse backgrounds, styles, knowledge and experiences that
when combined with our resources, competitive product lines and
expert advice, help create customized and flexible solutions for
clients. However, a fundamental question still remains. How does
a company build a relationship with the client when the relationship
and brand representation is so heavily driven by the employee?
Fundamentally, we know that it is essential to a brand’s
success to provide employees with vital brand information and tools.
This is not revolutionary, but it is key. Communicate core values,
a clear mission, well-defined strategic imperatives, and provide
easily accessed brand tools. This equips employees with messages
and communication vehicles that help market a consistent brand promise.
Combine these elements with an equally essential ingredient and
it is a recipe for success.
That essential ingredient is “buy-in.” In the Design
Management Journal article, “The Big Idea” (Vol.
12, No. 1, Winter 2001), the author, Robert Jones of Woff Olins,
discusses going beyond traditional marketing to developing the “big
idea.” From an employee perspective this equates to buy-in.
A big idea that relationship managers and employees can hang their
hat on, visualize their role, and long to be associated with. Just
as important, they see the company’s role in their own success,
as the “big idea”, owned by the company, helps build
their business.
To empower employees with this incentive and provide the tools
that support it is perhaps the easy part. Many companies now employ
templates and distribution resources, such as company intranets,
that make developing and managing brand assets more economical,
effective, and efficient. The more difficult exercise is finding
the ingredient that can instigate buy-in and provide the cachet,
sex appeal, edification, and desired association to rally the troops
around the brand. Or is it?
No big surprise to some, the big idea and employee buy-in cannot
exist without building a foundation rooted in the business objectives:
core values, mission, strategic imperatives, goals. Without this
foundation, the big idea and the buy-in won't happen. Relationship
managers, advisors, and a sales force can’t mess around. They
need to grow their business. The role for brand and design managers
becomes clear. Everything we do must be rooted in the business objectives,
or help to define them. When business objectives are clearly defined,
the exercise can be a rewarding investigation into the soul of the
company—who do we aspire to be, and how can we be a meaningful
part of our clients lives.
At a U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray internal leadership conference,
the guest speaker, Art Collins, President & CEO of Medtronic,
Inc. talked about Medtronics’ commitment to helping people
live healthy and productive lives. This comes before anything else
and it drives Medtronics’ every move. Many of the U.S. Bancorp
Piper Jaffray employees indicated that they longed to be part of
an organization that did something profound, such as saving lives.
This was substantial; they were actually telling us they longed
for that essential ingredient—something to hang their hat
on—an association they would willingly market and help brand.
They were ripe for a big idea, ready to buy-in. And like Medtronics,
the answer was lurking in our core values and business objectives.
So how can design, identity, brand management, and marketing find
a place in an organization where the brand's primary representation
is driven by individual style? Find the big idea and get the buy-in.
It’s there, it exists, waiting to surface and it takes a full
commitment to discover it. The result will be that employees who
get it want to be associated with it and willingly help to brand
it. Our big idea flourished from a marketing area that dug in, researched
and accepted the possibilities. Through collaboration and acceptance
from other marketing and brand areas, our big idea was introduced
to employees. More than a campaign or tagline, “Guides for
the JourneyTM” is a concept that positions our relationship
managers and all employees as guides. The marketing materials compare
us to historical guides, providing the aspiration element for employees
to hang their hat on—the brand they want to be associated
with. These materials are sought out with enthusiasm and are easily
adapted to reflect personal styles of providing advice and guidance
while still managing to build the company brand. This helps create
a relationship between the client and the company as well as the
relationship manager.
Our Guiding Principles say “great people are our competitive
advantage” and, “we earn our client’s trust by
providing the best guidance and service.” Our “big idea”
is steeped in our core values and business objectives. Because the
idea aligns in this manner, the concept expanded well beyond one
marketing area and became a firm-wide positioning. Employees see
it as it was intended—in a way they want to be associated
with—and they are becoming our most powerful brand asset.
Design, identity, and brand management are moving from the role
of policing to partnering, enabling the ability to manage assets
more effectively. We won’t save lives but we have opportunities
to affect the quality of life for our clients, guiding them in their
journey to build a legacy, not just acquiring wealth and material
gain.
Our work is far from finished. We continue to implement tools,
introduce our idea internally, and are just beginning a concentrated
effort externally. But with strategic imperatives to build the brand
and a big idea equipped with buy-in, we can, without question, say
that at least 67% of our brand is now on its way to being engaged
and an essential ingredient to the overall success of our branding
efforts.
Noreen Aldern is the Vice President of Brand
and Design Management for U.S.
Bancorp Piper Jaffray.
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