Organizations invest a lot in their corporate brand. Typically, it takes as long as one year to research and build a brand.
The brand, tone of voice, personality, font and colour tones are all selected to support an organization’s research, corporate brand objectives, and the needs of its customers. Brand guidelines are meant to support and reinforce the consumer brand over the long haul while building brand awareness.
Consider now, the effort it takes to build an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and Employer Brand.
Again, many organizations will easily spend between six and 12 months to research and build their EVP and Employer Brand platform. In order to build it, deep research and thought has typically gone into understanding this audience (the employees of the company who are already well accustomed to the existing corporate brand). In order to get their attention and do its job, the employer brand creative will need to stand out and be clearly differentiated from the existing corporate branding or it risks becoming white noise.
Because the employer brand is also intended to drive powerful results in terms of talent attraction, it requires a distinctive voice and aspirational imagery that connects with external talent. If an organization’s employer brand blends too much with its corporate brand and communications, it can get lost in a sea of social content, and it can risk losing its emotional connection with passive job seekers. When we see an employer brand get watered down in order to align tightly with corporate branding, the real ROI is easily lost, and the research and recommendations on how to build and engage with your key audience are ignored.
Do I respect corporate brand guidelines? Absolutely. In fact, as a former head of Marketing and Communications, it was my job to protect them fiercely. But great employer branding results come from pushing the limits, and from building a campaign that is clearly designed for your talent audience. The success of both campaigns has tangible impact to an organization’s bottom line and its performance.
Are we saying you should ignore brand guidelines? No. Brand guidelines should be respected in terms of personality and overall competitive positioning. However, we recommend avoiding the use of corporate brand primary colour tones for risk of blending in. Instead, an exploration into existing secondary colour palettes or the introduction of complementary colour palettes is advised.
We also recommend brand creative that will clearly map to the EVP pillars. Your employer brand imagery should convey the culture that you aspire to build. Although you could have a powerful corporate brand, you may wish to convey a warm, fun and flexible culture. This requires significantly different imagery, and ideally different colour palettes, to tell those stories.
How do you get Brand and Communications on side? Early stakeholdering. The larger the organization, the more complex this can become, particularly if you have multiple marketing and brand leaders. Pull Brand and Communications in at the launch of your project, and highlight these recommendations and best practices. When launching with you leadership team, get support from leaders on the need for flexibility. Present the EVP market research and recommendations to Brand and Communications early. Let this key information simmer with them, and let them ask questions early. Determine what the similarities and differences are between the initial EVP findings and the corporate brand research and objectives.
When the employer brand creative process begins, sit with your Branding team and let them be a part of the process, including final approvals. Get buy-in early to push the limits. The more this work is done up front, the greater the result.
Continually revisit the objectives of your employer branding. The creative campaign should always reflect the KPIs. Align early and respect your corporate brand guidelines, but don’t come too close. Remember your objectives with this investment, and solicit feedback from employees to find out what concepts resonate with them.
When developing an employer brand, go big. Differentiate. Remember who your audience is, and what the objective and tone needs to be to get the results you are after.
Written by: Stacy Parker, Co-founder & Managing Director, Blu Ivy Group
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About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.
We provide integrated solutions in employer brand and engagement research, strategic consulting, employer brand integration, creative and talent communications. Blu Ivy Group is a trusted partner to many of North America’s most respected employer brands. For more information, go to www.bluivygroup.com