By M. Isi Eromosele

The launch of any new brand should herald the beginning of a new way of operating within your company, made apparent through different and better activities, products, services and customer experiences that can be touched and felt.

Cultural transformation will be an imperative. It takes time to build understanding of what the brand can deliver, generate pride and inspire advocacy for it. However, most companies fall into the trap of a communications-driven launch, only to see short-lived effects.

Invariably, glitzy events, balloons, branded mugs, mouse mats, posters, desk calendars, stationary or screensavers will never achieve the necessary level of organizational change to truly deliver on the promises at the heart of the brand. Beyond the fireworks of the launch, it’s what happens before and after the moment the brand goes live that makes the difference between success and failure.

Before you go to market with the new brand proposition, it is essential to first build your internal capability to deliver on your promises. Brands that appear consistent from the outside may promise the earth, but if delivery does not match expectations, they will ultimately fall short and erode trust.

Embedding your brand inside your business is not a six-month campaign or an initiative with a known lifespan. It requires a sustained commitment to brand delivery that in turn drives market differentiation, business performance and growth.

Motivational Change

Your staff are your brand. If the brand is changing, very often, so must they. In small or big ways, the engagement process needs to achieve shifts in mindset, beliefs and behavior. People are complex beings. Their behavior cannot be programmed or controlled, but it can be influenced. This requires a multidimensional approach rooted in an understanding of what motivates them to do what they do. This motivation should be addressed from four perspectives:

Enable

Changing a business is hard, which is why many change programs fail. Going deep is the only way to understand the scale of the challenge and what it will take to make the transition. An upfront diagnostic process should look for any barriers and enablers to the change process and identify ways to make it easier for people to change.

For instance, if employees’ incentives had been built only on sales targets, this forces a short-term perspective on doing business and opens the door to customer experiences that fall short of the brand promise. Change the incentives to encourage them to build long-term relationships with customers and suddenly the sales mindset changes and trust is built with clients. In the longer term, this can only be good for sales growth and profitability.

Engage

Inspire and equip your staff to practice brand thinking. Creating an unrivalled brand experience will give you the edge on your competition. It also requires that everyone in the company be encouraged to look for ways to do things differently and better.

The engagement process should equip teams to start using the brand as a filter for daily operations and decision-making. For evidence of this idea in action, look no further than brand-led product innovation at Apple, brand-led service delivery with First Direct and brand-led employee experience at Google’s offices.

Encourage

Empower your staff to make a difference. Brand building is an exercise in the psychology of motivation. At any time, a wide range of factors could influence someone’s desire and ability to engage on personal, organizational and cultural levels.

People are more likely to commit to something if they are given the freedom, within a framework, to find their own solutions. Ask customer-facing staff what causes frustration or delight. Ask your sales force where they think the market is going and how the brand might achieve greater penetration. Run pilots to experiment with new ways of doing things.

Invite ideas from everywhere. Involve people in redesigning the service experience. Beyond this, there should be incentives for participation. Engagement cannot be conscripted, so think about what you might give people in return.

Beyond financial incentives, in small and large businesses alike, the opportunity to influence and shape the company’s direction might be sufficiently compelling. Trust and empower your staff to come up with the answers and they might surprise you. Take that power away from them and disengaged workforces are likely to dig their heels in further, doing the opposite as an act of defiance, either consciously or sub-consciously.

Exemplify

An example must be set. Leading by example may sound commonplace, but it is absolutely vital. Those at the top can’t just talk about the brand, they have to be the brand and inspire their staff to do the same. Crucially, leadership claims must be substantiated with action; with progress and results communicated.

Truly brand-centric businesses like BMW or Apple are guided by an instinctive sense of what is on or off brand. This is so deeply ingrained in their cultures it’s become second nature. But this is never taken for granted. Building the brand internally is not a one-off event; it requires continuous care and attention.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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