Do your consumer brand and employer brand exist in two separate dimensions? Fostering relationships between your employer branding and marketing teams and integrating your people in your storytelling might be the answer you need.
Way back a long time ago (I mean “industrial revolution,” not “before Facebook”), there were no brands.
When you bought a barrel from Robert Cooper, you knew Robert made that barrel. When you bought horseshoes from John Smith, you knew John hammered them into shape himself. When you bought flour from Tom Miller, you knew Tom oversaw the grinding and weighing.
And when something went wrong, you went back to Robert or John or Tom and you figured out a solution. You didn’t need to stamp “horseshoes by John” into the horseshoe because you bought it from John and you were the only owner.
But when the industrial revolution came, and these people realised they could make more and sell more at a lower price by building factories that made barrels and nails and bread, you couldn’t complain to Robert or Tom or John because it wasn’t their fault. They never put their hands on the goods.
The next step was opening up transport, so your nails might have been made a hundred miles away rather than around the corner, so how did you know which nails to by? The only means is reputation, and in order to support and solidify and anchor the position, the brand was created.
There’s an irony in how the consumer brand was created because of a lack of connection between buyer and seller as people, where the employer brand is designed to better explain why people should connect.
But in your world (I’d hazard to guess) consumer brand and employer brand might as well exist in two separate dimensions, barely acknowledging each other’s existence.
We look over the fence to the consumer brand (or, as we usually call it, “those jerks in Marketing”) and see money, access to decision makers, and impact. They look over the fence to employer brand (or, as they call it, “those snoozers in Recruiting” or “…shudder… HR”) and see slowpokes and dilettantes, people who play at marketing but without the need for business metrics or much accountability.
Sound familiar?
These star-crossed Capulets and Montagues seem doomed to glare at each other across the bullpen. But there are ways to integrate the two families (without having to go full Romeo and Juliet).
The first is to understand the elements of the brand architecture that are connected to the consumer brand. That is, the leadership and the purpose of the company (its raison d’etre, if you will let me use my limited French). What the company makes and why it makes it drives who they make it for, how to position that offering to the audience and how to get the word out. It’s what keeps IKEA out of the luxury car business.
That same leadership is the wellspring for your employer brand. Without it, you don’t hire the people who develop your culture. Without a clear culture, what are you offering a candidate beyond a paycheck?
The goal in showing a diagram like this to those jerks in Marketing is to make it clear that you in employer branding have the same objective and can both do amazing work aligned to the mission without getting in each other’s way. The mission can be the music that allows two strangers to dance together without fear of losing toes.
The second way these two rival factions can work together is to remember that people aren’t the most important asset in your business, they are your business.
In the last two years, I’ve noticed a marked uptick in the number of companies who talk about their corporate and consumer brands through their people.
That is to say, when the consumer brand has its back against the wall, the new favourite go-to move is to stop focusing on the price, product or placement, and bring out the people. That means connecting to the employer brand, because while your goals have been focused on attracting applications and creating hires, all of that story-telling, all those videos, all those employee profiles will be the raw material to help consumer marketing out of a jam.
You don’t have to wait until scandal rocks HQ. Start by pinging marketing and asking how you can help them (rule of reciprocity: give first, ask second) by identifying and supplying great internal voices for their own marketing. It could be as simple as using employees for your catalogue or website (and connect those people to their employer-brand owned elements). Or maybe you can tell a deeper story around “this is what we do and here are the people who do it.” Any marketer worth their salt will understand the power of having more human faces in their marketing.
This toe-hold, leveraging both the architecture and the use of people, will be the first steps towards reconciling the two warring tribes. Beyond this, look for ways to integrate people into every story you are trying to tell. Showing off internal people to the outside world via consumer marketing becomes a gateway for people to consider working there. Having people be ambassadors and talk about the mission and values to the world only reinforces marketing’s work.
Together, you can make magical things happen.
It’s possible that the stories are true and that a radioactive recruiter bit born-marketer James Ellis years ago. All we know is that James Ellis has become a well-known podcaster, writer, speaker and consultant in the growing employer brand industry. He’s done everything from putting a public Fortune 1000 brand on his back to building a 19-person employer brand activation team within the biggest recruitment marketing agency in the world. What drives someone to write, podcast, speak and work so obsessively towards revolutionising the recruiting and talent industry? Coffee. Yes, he would like another, thank you.
(Listen to thetalentcast.com podcast here!)