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Building brand culture.
You may theoretically understand the goals of a company’s branding strategy, but do you actually know what those goals look like in action. Every company is unique, so there may be little consistency from the “norm.”
Most companies have a list of their logos and corporate colors, but to embody a brand’s culture, it’s important to go further–much further. What about font styles or typefaces that have been specifically selected for their brand?
Does this business let any graphic designer that comes along utilize its fonts and color palettes? No. It might sound silly for me to make such a comment, but many companies take special measures to avoid this.
What is Brand Culture?
A brand’s culture is an evolving entity and you must always communicate it in the right manner. This is because you want your audience to know what you stand for and how you wish to your audience perceive you.
Brand culture is the inherent DNA of the brand and its value that governs brand experience, brand expression, and interaction. Brand interactions are with both customers and employees. Stakeholders of the company are also involved along each brand touchpoint.
The culture of a brand is also important to its longevity and will directly help the company navigate through difficult times. This goes a long way for a brand to maintain its footing in the market. A brand’s culture must combine with well-planned and tried marketing strategies for the people to know your brand. This as a result helps you sell your brand well.
Any company looking to be successful can only succeed if its stakeholders can recognize it. You need to communicate your brand well externally as well as internally by having tangible translations of your values.
Why Brand Culture is Important
So, what is the point of having a brand culture? It provides a sense of belonging and unity for everyone who is part of the community of the brand. The more defined, communicated, and understood it is within the business, the better it can attract and keep talent.
A strong brand culture helps employees better relate to the brand and increases overall engagement and productivity. It can also help build up a company´s trustworthiness by communicating what they stand for and where their values lie.
More Output
An effective company instills a culture of excellence and principled business behavior. It is imperative for any company to instill a culture of excellence and principled business behavior within its employees.
An organization’s culture needs to be easily understood and reinforced at each level. This helps stakeholders understand their role in executing the brand, considering it as an invaluable asset for the company.
Performance and efficiency
The culture of any organization is vital to the performance and inner workings of any company. A company is only as successful as its ability to effectively communicate its culture.
The culture is the embodiment of the brand in physical terms. They are one and the same in essence, but often do not go hand-in-hand when trying to communicate either.
Influences employees and customers
A strong brand culture can influence employees and customers through the products and services it renders. It encapsulates the requirements and their connotations in order to achieve a brand’s objectives. Culture is an orchestrated strategy that promotes brand engagement.
Brand Culture is an Asset
While culture is not entirely written into the brand, it is one of the biggest assets that represent your brand. You can always incorporate your core values into your brand to let everyone know how you work and what you stand for.
How to Build a Brand’s Culture
Brand culture has come into prominence in the past twenty years due greatly to technological advancements. Technology has led to global expansion of companies and with expansion comes cultural diversity that can pose problems for businesses if they don’t work on creating understanding between employees at various levels.
Define your brand culture
Many businesses find themselves in a quandary when it comes to building the brand culture of their organization. They want to create a strong, positive, and consistent identity that enables the brand to be easily recognizable by customers. To do this effectively, you need to define your company’s culture.
How you plan on defining your brand culture will help determine how you develop your overall marketing strategy as well as how you market your business internally and externally through social media and other channels.
Hire employees that believe in what you do
Brand culture is the values of a company and how its employees interact with each other.
Creating a positive brand culture has many benefits, including more collaboration and better communication between employees that produce more quality work.
The following six ways will help you build and encourage a good brand culture:
- Have the training to promote the values of your brand
- Make it part of your job description
- Encourage open dialogue about your brand culture
- Create consistent interactions with staff members based on your brand culture
- Celebrate successes that fall in line with your brand culture
- Evaluate performance based on how well team members follow the principles of your brand culture
Stick with your brand promise
When you deliver what you promise, it’s easy to build customer loyalty. Sticking to your brand promise is important because your customers will trust you even more for what you deliver.
Examples of a Brand’s Culture
This is often confused with company culture, but it is much different. It is the identity of your business and how you want people to view it.
As an example, here are two very different brands and their respective cultures:
Harley Davidson
Harley Davidson’s culture is all about rugged individualism, rebellion against authority figures, freedom from conformity, and freedom from responsibility.
Apple
Apple’s is about innovating for the sake of progress and becoming better than the competition in every way possible. The company focuses on quality over quantity and does not compromise on anything it produces because it wants to be the best in its field at all times.
An Effective Brand Strategy Helps Cultivate Culture
While you can think of the behaviors, beliefs, principles, and traditions of an organization, studies go further to prove that brands with a strong culture are more likely to acquire, keep and grow customers than those with weak or stagnant cultures.
This is a question that often gets asked in a client-candidate relationship. What will be the culture of the organization? Are we going to have the freedom to experiment and grow?
There is no right or wrong way of having a culture for an organization, but there are ways of making it effective for all concerned.
The culture of the employer is a deciding factor in helping a person decide if they want to take part in the company. A potential employee should know about the culture based on their own preferences and values.
To be a part of a company, a person needs a fair share of compatibility with the company’s culture. For most people, this would mean understanding how things work at that company.
The whole point of an effective brand strategy is to help your company cultivate a brand culture. An effective brand strategy will allow your audience to identify with your brand and forge a sense of trust and engagement with it.
