Transcription:
How Your Culture Impacts Your Brand

Bryan Earnest: Hello, I'm Bryan Earnest. And this is the Amp Up podcast. Our topic today is how your culture impacts your brand. Mark Mathis is away again today. So we're bringing back a previous and now regular guest, Erin Bishop, Amperage's Director of Marketing and Research to join me today. Welcome back, Erin.

Erin Bishop: Thank you, Bryan.

Bryan Earnest: So Erin, today, we're talking about how your internal culture impacts your external brand and how authentic branding aligns these two important pieces of your organization's identity. I've heard organizations say and read online if you get the culture right, other stuff such as exceptional customer service, creating a valuable long-term relationship and having passionate employees, partners customers, et cetera, will just happen effortlessly, easy for me to say. In reality, your brand and culture are really just two sides of the same coin. You have to shape your company culture because that is the foundation of your brand. So we hear a lot about culture as how it impacts the recruitment of talent and keeping employees engaged, but how does it impact an organization's brand?

Erin Bishop: Well, I guess the short answer to that question is in every way. Like you said, there are two sides of the exact same coin. One of the things that the brands are so focused on right now and they should be is that authentic branding piece. In order for that brand to be authentic, the experience needs to be the same all the way around, all the way through the journey from when they're visiting you online to when they're walking in a bricks and mortar to when someone's answering the phone to how someone looks at them when they engage with them. All of that plays into your brand experience and your brand experience is driven by your culture.

You set your culture. Every organization has a culture. Whether you think you do or not, you do. If you don't think you do, you might want to do some research and figure out what that culture currently is if you haven't defined it. But how you define your internal culture and those values and those virtues that are important to you as an organization translates into what your customers are experiencing when they interact with your brand.

Branding is not just messaging and pictures and design and visual elements, and all of those things, that is all a huge part of your brand, but that's just your identity. That's the piece that sits on top of everything else. Your brand includes what is that strategy? What are the operational guidelines that we have in place in order to provide that ultimate experience? Because your customers are going to define your brand by how they're experiencing your brand. And that includes how they're experiencing it in person and virtually.

You mentioned values. So core values, how do core values come into play as an organization's culture and brand? Are they top-down? Are they bottom-up?

Bryan Earnest: up

Erin Bishop: Are they you just kind of know them when you see them? What role do they play?

I'd say they're bottom-up. Your values really define what those core beliefs are of your organization. Like what do you truly believe as an organization? What do you stand for? That's what your values define. On top of that, I would layer if an organization hasn't defined the actions that really determine how those values are lived out, I would really strongly recommend that they do. It's one thing to say "We are strategic" or "Teamwork is a value of ours", but what does that mean actually? When you define what those actions are, so. in order for teamwork to be one of our values, here are the three things employees are expected to do in order to live out that value. That really turns your values from statements that might live on a wall and on your website into actual actions that people are taking that define d efine your experience, which defines your brand. So it's all a trickle down effect, but at the foundation of that is those values and defining those and then defining the actions that demonstrate those values.

Bryan Earnest: When it comes to culture and brand and how those fit together, different generations view culture and brand a little bit differently. Talk about that a little bit of maybe our youngest generations now, how do they look at brands?

Erin Bishop: They are all about authentic branding and so you're probably thinking, "Okay, but what does that mean?" Because authenticity is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean? It means the youngest generations, they can sniff out anything that's not authentic. They can sniff out when you're not being truthful or when you're just saying things to say things or when you're just saying things, because you think they want to hear them. They aren't interested in that. They want to know what you stand for, what is the purpose of your organization, what are you doing that is for the greater good of the community, right? They are very, very interested in that social responsibility and they want to be part of something bigger and they need to know what that purpose is and why you exist. Of course, you might exist to sell cars. For example, if you're a car dealership, but there has to be a stronger purpose behind that in order to really sell those to that youngest generation.

Bryan Earnest: That's a great point, Erin. You talked about that authenticity back several months ago at the time of the Super Bowl. Mark Mathis and I did a little webinar or a little video podcast, I guess, on some of the Super Bowl ads. And we spent some time talking about Super Bowl ads that just disconnected on that authenticity meter. You see an ad for a product or a service that you as an audience have believed about this organization for maybe generations and then to create an ad that just doesn't connect in that authentic way, just almost leaves you kind of with this icky feeling and organizations can really just swing and miss sometimes. Where do organizations tend to forget about their connection between brand and culture?

Erin Bishop: Virtually, hands down by far. A lot of times, it's easy when you're talking about experience, it's really easy to connect how culture and how your employees are expected to act and behave and what your beliefs are as an organization. It's very easy to connect that with the in-person experience that customers have or patients have when they walk into your hospital. That is a very easy connection for organizations. It is much harder for them to connect how that then translates online, which is so important right now, especially as we navigated through the COVID crisis, right? Everything was online before that, and that has just made it so much greater. And in some cases, your website might be literally the only way that anyone is experiencing your brand for months, months and months or forever, depending on what the nature of your business is. If that culture piece and that experience piece is not translating into that online environment, it's a disconnect. And when I say online, I really mean everything online. So your website, for sure, that is your virtual front door. You should be treating customers, clients, patients the same when they walk through that virtual front door that you do when they walk through your brick and mortar.

It also includes your social media accounts. Social media is prime for being authentic. You can be real. A lot of the rules that a lot of us marketers have been playing with or following for the last several years kind of get thrown out the door when you go onto social media. Your posts still need to be true to who you are. They need to be true to your tone. They need to be true to your personality, but you have a little bit more freedom to really be you. And that is a place that your culture can certainly shine through is on those social media accounts and what you're posting and how you're posting that information.

Bryan Earnest: Great points, Erin. You know, it reminds me of an opportunity I had to speak with a hospital CEO who was so excited about their large remodeling project of their front lobby of the building. And he was talking about how that patient and family experience from the moment they walk in the building, it just feels like home. It feels like a place of health and healing, a place that's supportive. They had done extensive research about navigation through the hospital to make sure that people, when they came in that front door, really could end up in the right place and be stress-free.

And I asked him, I said, "How many people roughly come through your front door of your hospital on an annual basis?" And he gave me some numbers of, you know, a few thousand people that come through the front door. And most of those people are visitors and vendors coming to either visit a patient or sell the hospital something. And I asked him, I said, "Comparatively, how many people come to your homepage of your website every year?" And he kind of looked at me with a blank stare at first, and he said, "I see your point. Do we have that same kind of care and concern?" I think about the mahogany wood and the leather couches and the beautiful paintings that are put in lobbies of businesses when maybe the care and attention that's put into that first experience or that navigation to get people where they're needed to go online. So great points. Talk about employees a little bit and their connection to culture, and then ultimately to brand. How important is that for an organization?

Erin Bishop: Vital. Your employees are the faces of your brand completely. When people are interacting with your brand in some way, shape or form, they're ultimately interacting with an employee, whether that's a computer programmer that is programming your website or updating images or posting information or doing content builds or whatever that looks like for your organization, or it's someone that's actually face-to-face with a customer and every variation in between, right? Your employees are the ones that are delivering your brand, your employees dictate what people think about your brand.

Now, you could probably get away with doing some clever marketing and doing some great videos and posting some fun things on your social media account for a while before people interact with your actual organization. But if that's a disconnect from everything that they saw in the virtual environment and now when they're actually experiencing or buying your product or using your service or whatever that is, if that experience is not what they thought it was going to be based on what you were publishing virtually and how you made them think and feel virtually, they're going to bail. That's a huge disconnect for them. And it's your employees that are delivering all of that, which goes back to the importance of those values and actions behind them, right? Because your values are what? Yes, make people want to work for you, but they're also what make people want to do business with you, however that looks. So if there's a disconnect anywhere along that sales cycle, that's going to be jarring for consumers and it's highly likely that they will bail.

Using your example of the hospital, that's great that they spent that time and attention to do all of that in their brick and mortar. But if it's too hard to get to them in their brick and mortar, they're never going to experience it, right? And vice versa, if their virtual experience is wonderful and streamlined and they could find everything they wanted to, but then when they walk into that brick and mortar, it's a complete disaster, that's the same thing. It goes both ways. But the common denominator there is your employees are determining what that experience is in both of those places. And if you aren't guiding what that experience should be based on what your culture is, you're going to have a tough road to walk. It's going to be much, much harder to do what you need to do in order to resonate with customers now, consumers today.

Bryan Earnest: All great points today, Erin, talking a little bit about the connection between culture and brand. Any other thoughts you have about the connection of these two important elements?

Erin Bishop: The only other point that I would throw out here before we wrap up for the day is when you're looking at your brand and especially coming out of COVID, what a lot of organizations are looking at is are we still relevant in today's marketplace, do we need to rebrand? Do we need to reposition? Does our messaging need to change? Those are all very valid questions that all organizations should be asking themselves right now. If you determine that if you say yes to any one of those things, you can't effectively do that without having that culture conversation as well, too. That can't be done in a marketing silo. You need to involve employees in that, human resources, leadership, whoever is helping drive what that culture is, needs to be a part of that conversation. That probably includes IT. It goes far beyond what your marketing department can do on their own in order to make sure it's authentic.

Bryan Earnest: Excellent stuff as always, erin. Thank you. I'm sure we could talk for much, much longer about culture and brand and how they influence organization's marketing efforts. We appreciate your insights as always. That's it for today's Amp Up podcast. If you like what you've heard on our podcast, please share it. Go to amperagemarketing.com to check out some of our other episodes. Also, if you get a chance, please rate and review us. We appreciate any feedback. On behalf of Mark Mathis and myself, thank you. Check in on another podcast sometime, and we will help you move the needle.