Brand is what you do

I have spent a great deal of time working in advertising and then later in employer branding and these activities are not wholely dissimilar, but also not the same. I brought many concepts about advertising into the employer brand space, but I actually think I learned many more lessons about employer branding that is applicable to advertising.

The insight that I developed for employer branding efforts is that a company can invest whatever they like in a logo, tagline, and brand standards, but at the end of the day, the employer brand is expressed and experienced by the actions of a company. That means that any organization’s mission, culture, operations, processes, people, and tactics become the brand as the public experiences it. In many cases, this internal brand directly informs the consumer-facing brand.

A good brand is partially an inside job. Savvy marketers should consider the linkage between their company’s mission, the people and actions that accomplish it, and the external brand. Linking internal/employer brand and external brand is like mixing two elements of an epoxy, it can be indestructible.