Your company brand is far more than just a logo and fancy design; it encompasses the whole customer experience and how people perceive your organization. So why is the brand important and how do you protect it?
Having a strong brand presence that represents your company is an important tool that impacts all of your customers and extends to the employees who work for the brand. With numerous areas of an organization that can be affected by branding, it’s important to understand how you can manage the company image should a crisis occur.
Understanding why your brand is important to your organization is the first step to being able to manage it well.
Recognition:
Brands that are better recognized can bring forward an element of trust. Consumers and candidates looking for employment will perceive that your company is authentic, therefore trusting that they can purchase goods from you or work for you and be protected to some degree more than with your lesser branded competitors.
Attracts top quality talent:
Top talent candidates looking for work tend to seek out organizations that are highly reputable, employer of choice companies and the bigger the brand, the bigger the achievement to be an employee working under the success of that brand. Talent also attracts talent, so it is worth the effort to build up the brands reputation to distinguish the organization from the competition.
“A good recruiting process focuses and aligns recruiters to deliver the best to the organization. Ultimately, recruiting should be viewed as a business partner, someone who is critical to the success of the business.” - Mathew Caldwell – Head of Talent, Instacart
Emotional Connection:
Branding also has the ability to create an emotional connection. By having a brand that is well known for its core values, ethical working practices and supportive culture can make customers and employees feel more connected towards that organization which plays a key part in loyalty. Loyalty is beneficial as it generates profits from returning custom, new acquisitions and decreases turnover rates.
Grows Business:
Having a brand can definitely help in growing your business in whatever sense you desire. Getting your brand out there takes time and effort, but by sticking to the brand promises you are preaching and using good marketing methods you will see your business grow not only in size, but financially also.
So as you can see, having a well-known brand has many perks, but if something brought about a crisis then the bad news can travel like wild fire with today’s social media culture playing a major part in exposing rather than containing the problem. A simple #hashtag can bring your company into disrepute within minutes.
So how do you manage and protect the brand?
Think ahead. Prevention is a smart way to start.
- Outplacement: Ways to manage your brand whilst your Company is in crisis should include preventative measures already put in place. You will be grateful for investing early on. If your organization has to lay off employees for example, having outplacement available will significantly protect the reputation of your brand. By putting provisions in place to help staff secure another job elsewhere is a generous benefit, so people are less likely to focus on the negatives and more on the fact that the organization goes above and beyond their responsibilities to help during difficult times.
Must Read: Benefits of Outplacement for Organizations
- Severance Packages: Although initially could be viewed as a costly investment, severance benefits can help manage tough situations in a crisis where employment is being terminated for any reason, they are . A severance package that is inclusive of outplacement means that employees don’t have the burden of financial worries as they will be financially and emotionally supported until they are placed within another role – and as outplacement speeds up this process, the severance costs are not always so steep.
- Legal Compliance: Having documents properly drafted, professionally checked and in-line with current legal requirements - whether that be regarding insurance cover, contracts of employment or policies and procedures - will give your organization clearly defined guidelines to follow should a crisis emerge. It’s better to do everything legally by the book than trying to wing it, potentially ruining the brand you have worked so hard to build.
Hopefully you can see your brand has the ability to go further than just the logo, strap line or product. It can be the customer experience, reputation, company philosophy and culture; everything that sets your company apart from the competition. So be sure to protect your brand and manage it with preventative measures where possible.
Further Reading: Essential Guide To Outplacement
