Branding the Inside of a Company

One of the areas I've been focusing on for the past several years is looking at how to communicate a company's brand most effectively to its employees. Many of the new tools and topics in the world of brands and branding focus on the emotional aspects of brand: how your customers "feel" about your company and the emotional connections you are making with them. Branding to employees deals with many of these same issues, but in some very different ways.

Over the next few weeks and months I am going to do my best to try and outline my view on how to communicate brand to employees most effectively. Today however, I want to concentrate on identifying three topics that I believe are very discrete, but often confused: Internal Branding, Employee Branding and Employer Branding.

Internal Branding is the general category within which we will talk about programs aimed at communicating a company's brand to its employees.

Both Employee and Employer Branding generally fall under the prevue of Human Resources.

Employee Branding is how companies define and discuss the kind of people who work for their company. Effective employee branding can be a significant weapon in the war to recruit the best talent. Good people generally want to work with other good people and employee branding helps "brand" the kind of people you can expect to find in any given organization.

Employer branding is similar to employee branding, but is aimed at branding the kind of workplace that a company has. It can be a very effective tool for HR in the recruiting and hiring process. One outstanding example of this is SAS Institute in Cary, North Carolina. SAS has spent years building a very nurturing work environment that makes it one of the most desirable work places anywhere. Seen as an employer of choice, the company has spent years building its reputation and now has one of the strongest employer brands in the world.

To build effective brand programs for both internal and external audiences all three of these areas must be taken into consideration and executed in conjunction with one another. With this in mind, in the upcoming articles we will primarily focus on the first area, Internal Branding, and the effects that it can have on your overall marketing strategy and customer success.