COMPANY BRANDING has three distinct facets: There are three distinct facets of a company brand. Each is an aspect of the employment brand and not the whole thing:

• Stories and positioning for people unfamiliar with the brand:  This is what most employment branding conversations are about…stories about company culture, relative extent of benefits, aspirational qualities of a business, pretty pictures, good stories, and transparency are all aspects of outreach to new clients. Active and potential customers consume content as they try to figure out whether or not they should hire a company.

• The way customers who know the industry see the company:  Once you’ve worked in an industry for a while, you know who the players are and have a sense of what it’s like to work in the trade. You talk to previous clients or by talking to the competitor. Those who move work in an industry are great sources of intelligence about what the ‘other guy’ can do or not. To paraphrase – “It pays to keep your friends close, and your ‘competition’ closer!”

• How customers of the company see the business: Working for a company is an experience to convey in branding activities. Do the clients show excitement about the product or service or just mouth the script?  There is a core DNA of experience of working for a particular client including a certain amount of ‘group-think.’ Like any perception rooted in a core audience, there are advocates, detractors, and the middle.

Do you recall the story of the blind men and the elephant? It’s a fable of how the same thing can look very different depending on perspective. Each wise man is sure he has the perfect explanation of an elephant, but failed to take into account the entire animal.  That’s when debates try to stuff complex ideas into little sound bites get you. The poem ends by the blind wise men were arguing about an elephant none of them had seen.

These three facets of the branding do not necessarily perfectly align. Experience varies by individual. When you go ask people from each of these groups about a company, you’ll get a range of answers.  So, branding means one thing to new clients, another to current clients, and another to past customers. Tampering with any of those aspects will affect the whole.

The point?  When you research your branding methodology, remember you have future clients, current customers, and past users of your services or products, and get feedback and input from all three to obtain the best opinions and viewpoints to pursue.

Copyright 2012 by Dawn D. Boyer, D. Boyer Consulting, Virginia Beach, VA