A better question might be – can you build a sustainable brand without establishing the right culture. The answer to this question is no!
It is worth considering the CULTURE – BRAND CONTINUM https://www.djohncarlsonesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/THEORY-1-CULTURE-BRAND-CONTINIUM-MARCH-27-2018-.pdf
To build a sustainable or even credible brand, you need first to establish the culture that will create the brand.
Critical issues in this regard include:
- Your brand delivers real benefits
Your brand has the potential to attract the best people, retain the best people, extract the best from people, maximise customers, maximise repeat business, maximise referrals and maximise margins
- Your culture delivers real benefits
Directly related to your culture are, attraction and retention of the best people, those people contributing more and demanding less, higher productively and ultimately higher performance
- The culture delivers the brand
It is an advertising con to suggest that brands are created by advertising. Brands can be communicated by advertising, but they are created by the culture of the organisation.
- Brands are established from the inside out
Until such time as all staff understand and live the brand, the brand is most unlikely to exist. The consumer defines your brand on the basis of the behaviour of your staff.
- The behaviour of staff is all about culture
Staff and create a culture and that culture then creates the brand. The optimum culture is the result of staff engagement and that engagement and the resulting behaviour delivers the brand
- It all starts with the customer
The brand and the culture that delivers it should start with consumer consultation with the definition of the brand being the outcome of a ‘negotiation’ between owner and customer
- The board and management are critical
Once the brand is defined the directors and management must walk the talk, Before the staff will live the brand the directors and management need to do so
- Vision and values are essential
The negotiation with customers and potential customers needs to give rise to an agreed vision and shared values that can and will underpin both the culture and the brand
- Staff need education, training and focus
To create a culture, it is first important that all staff understand the vision and values. They then need to understand why the should live them, how they should live the, and who benefits