© Michael Woodhouse

Unique – and powerful

Every organisation has a unique culture, personality and character that affect their operations and future.

These three factors are closely related; in a way they are different views of the same thing, which we might call "identity":

• Culture is a view of what happens inside an organisation
• Personality is a view of how the organisation interacts with outsiders
• Character is a summary of the values that drive these two views

Identity is hard to measure and even harder to change, so it's ignored by accounting and often by management. But that doesn't mean it isn't powerful.

Customers know when an organisation is enthusiastic about serving them – and when its front line staff see them as a nuisance. They tend to respond in the way they are treated.

Staff too know whether they are in a positive, growing organisation – or just serving their time in an every-man-for-himself battlefield.

They know whether they are valued or just used and their job performance and length of stay reflects it.

Front line staff negativity and contempt for management has sunk many a fine marketing strategy without a trace.

Negative culture seizes newcomers, enervates them and drags them down to the same expectation of failure.

With business experience comes the realization that people make success or failure based on the culture, character and personality they imbue the organisation with.

An organisation with enthusiastic people who love their jobs and believe in what they are doing, that is hard to stop.

An organisation of people who wish they were somewhere else, that is hard to save.

Why identity matters...

...to customers

People use their image of an organisation – it's identity to them – to determine if and in what circumstances they will interact with it.

Their view of identity shapes that interaction from the start, determining their expectations and the emotion they bring to the relationship, whether it is, say, suspicion, resentment or affinity.

The task of satisfying them in a successful transaction is made easier or harder; the chance of conflict raised or lowered, sensitivity to price heightened or eased.

...and to staff

People rely heavily in social cues to tell them how to behave in certain situations. That's why people can be different in varied roles: employee, parent, friend.

Most people want to do the right thing and they need to be told what that is.

When they come to work, the organisation's culture, character and personality – its identity – tells them what is expected of them. Mostly they comply.

If those expectations further the organisation's goals, management has an easier task in applying its resources to its goals. But if team members have a different view of the identity of their organisation, management will be forever struggling to drag them along, rather than being carried by them.

Brand

The concept of "brand" is used to encompass all of what members of a target audience think and feel about a product or organisation.

Usually people talk about "brand" in the context of a formal attempt to influence how they are seen, typically via logos, slogans, graphic design, ads and promotion.

Working directly on your "brand" can speed up the natural process of its spread and recognition, beyond word of mouth.

Brand can also help people clarify their response to an organisation, encouraging a better relationship and speeding the formation of a relationship.

With enough push (usually via promotion) these formal activities can even create a public perception that is better than the reality. This can give the organisation some valuable wiggle space in getting their service delivery together. It can encourage an organisation to be better, by setting standards it wants to live up to.

In some rare cases the brand can even acquire consumer value beyond the actual product, when the customer uses the brand to say something about themselves and sees the brand as part of their identity (eg, Nike, Apple, any luxury sports car).

Brand dissonance

The main driver of how an audience feels about an organisation is actually interaction.

Advertising can say , "Hey, this will be great for you," and that's the promise, but an actual purchase is the reality. People may cut a brand some slack if they like what it's about or have a past positive history, but ultimately they will judge an organisation against the reality of their interaction with it.

If the dissonance between the formal brand claims and the reality of customer experience becomes too great, the promotional effort can actually have a negative effect.

This is happening with our banking industry. It's hard to recall, but just a generation ago banks were seriously respected by consumers. Then they started driving profit at the expense of what customers wanted. Now the banks spend millions on media saying that they are really nice guys, but any consumer will tell you, "They're all bastards." Bank bashing is a respectable social sport that is kept alive by bank advertising that is in the main wildly dissonant from bank reality.

A convenient "reality"

Marketing and advertising people may acknowledge the importance of organisational culture, but then they move on to what they know best – external promotion. Actually, many people in business will attempt to deny that corporate culture matters, they will say things like, "Just do your job, that's all I ask." (Usually these people are dissatisfied with how the job is being done.)

Similarly, they conceive of brand as solely the image that is created by promotion and ignore the experiences of the organisation interacting with its audience.

And, very commonly, "soft" things like developing a mission and vision statement and "team building" are derided as ineffective, wasteful, pandering to political correctness. They are not something a results-oriented manager would be comfortable with.

This view of reality is convenient because it focuses on tangible things that are easy to measure and to influence. It ignores factors that are tricky to pin down and really hard to change.

What is ignores is actually the major part of success or failure; the organizational culture, personality and character that determines whether an organisation has forward energy and an expectation of success, or sullen hostility and a chip on its shoulder.

The 360º view of brand

The widest view of "brand" is that it represents the totality of what your audience thinks and feels about you.

It includes their evaluation of your product or service, compared to what they know about alternatives. But it also includes whether they like you; whether they have good experiences in dealing with you (they feel valued, respected, liked in return). And it may include how your values align with and support their values, and help them express who they are.

When it comes to purchase decisions, all of these areas can come into play. People, including the people who make up large corporations and government departments, have a bias towards people they like and respect that can overcome deficiencies in products or services.

A 360º view of brand encompasses:

• What the people in the organisation think and feel about themselves and where they are going
• What happens when they interact with their audience and customers
• How all of this is expressed to the audience

In the short term, it is the expression that matters most, but in the long term it is the quality of audience interaction that determines success.

Brand integrity

Brand integrity means that the image you promote is close to the reality – or at least that you are aspiring to it and making progress.

Thinking about brand integrity in the context of a 360º view leads to the conclusion that the first focus of branding is internal; you have to get your own people to buy-in, before you can expect your external audience to accept you.

When your own people buy-in, they become the embodiment of the brand and carry it into all their audience interactions.

That is brand integrity.

Customers versus audience

Most organisations have a group of people they want to interact with, to "do business", whatever that may be.

But typically they also have a wider audience of people who influence those transactions, even though they may never be party to them.

Government has a hand in most transactions, setting boundaries and fundamental rules of play.

There may also be professional bodies and other setters of standards or regulators, an academic viewpoint and a body of professional knowledge and opinion (perhaps expressed through technical journals, consulting advice and sometimes the media).

The biggest audience is often "public opinion". People who are not your customers still have opinions about you and what they say can influence the people who are your customers. Depending on who they are, they may have a big influence.

The family, friends and employers of your customers will often have a major influence. This is another example of something that is hard to measure and harder to influence, so it is usually skipped around, an invisible elephant in the room.

Customer quality

Strong organisations are most readily marked by who they deal with and who their customers are.

Organisations which see themselves as the best in their field, who expect success, have quality customers who expect high standards, will work with the organisation to overcome difficulties, and will share their success.

Organisations where the staff like to whinge attract customers who like to whinge.

Your audience reflects who you are. Brand is the medium that communicates who you are.

Customer interaction

As someone is drawn towards an organisation their key points of interaction can include:

• Advertising and other formal promotion
• Media mentions
• What people they meet think and say about the organisation
• Website contact
• Telephone contact
• Face-to-face contact
• Development of a continuing relationship

To be effective over a 360º view of branding, the organisation needs a consistent message and feel, visual presentation and quality of interaction.

Effectively micro-managing all this or faking it over 360º is improbable. In reality, human interaction will happen and in the absence of precise and rigorously enforced rules, it will develop in ways that reflect the organisation's underlying character.

So, ultimately, the "soft" and hard-to-measure values of who your people are and whether they believe in and are committed to the organisation, these will determine success.