With the advent of the coronary crisis, internal communication has become extremely important and has an impact on the company’s strategy. The need to support employer branding and corporate identity building has come to the fore. “The truth may not be pleasant, but if you don’t accept it, you are only managing your perceptions,” says Daniel Bradac, director of branding agency Generations.
What was the situation in your company during the coronary crisis?
The projects and portfolio of our clients have allowed us to continue working on ongoing projects, although we have also been faced with rapid changes and adapting to the new situation. It was made more difficult by the fact that every client’s situation was different, but we had to adapt to all of them and still manage our own operations. Fortunately, I feel relatively comfortable in these situations and my brain is working at 110 percent. I just deal immediately and look for what can be done. And at the same time I try to calm everyone around me. Since we are a smaller team and know each other well, everything went easier.
How did you perceive the situation with your clients?
With the advent of the coronary crisis, internal communication has become extremely important with clients. Various guidelines, governmental, corporate or multinational, security measures… The importance of frontline people in contact with clients has increased significantly. All of this placed great demands on company culture and internal communication. After the spring, when the expected downturn in industry and services was everywhere, it was in the summer that the need to support employer branding and corporate identity building came to the fore. We have been working on these topics for a long time. Not only do we have great know-how and results, but we can also compare and benchmark many things against the market and other companies.
The situation was nervous, chaotic and changed every day. Therefore, in addition to calming people down, it became an important element of the company culture to bring an element of fun to lighten the situation. We came up with formats and communications that our clients appreciated and used on a daily basis. As the crisis continues, in addition to employer branding, we are now also defining new brands, redefining brand strategies or repositioning existing brands. Leaders in many companies are already aware that this situation will last for a longer period and are not waiting with folded arms. They are creating new products, services or brands and need an experienced partner to do so. I am pleased that, thanks to experience, we have new clients, even international ones, in this period.
In today’s situation, when many companies are more or less affected by the crisis, is it easy for leaders to bring an element of fun into the company culture?
Leaders need to think this way too. Their job is to keep the mood and motivation in the company as high as possible. Getting people excited may be harder, but lightening the atmosphere is more than necessary. My experience of working with clients or interviewing CEOs in companies confirms this (Generations is creating its own format for CEO interviews called the Generations CEO podcast, ed. note).
Employees are the most important. In the new situation, there is a lot of pressure on everyone. And it’s not just the pressure to deliver the best business results, which is always high. In a crisis, there will be redundancies and a lot of austerity, which will change the atmosphere in every company. People are suddenly uncomfortable, they feel insecure and they expect that they, too, will have to give up many things. Every action provokes a reaction, and when you take something away from people, they start to fight back. The specific thing is that today this is happening simultaneously in families as well. Stressful situations are compounded by family situations, the sense of threat is more pronounced, and you want your feelings of security and stability back even more insistently.
The times place enormous demands on everyone’s behaviour, not just on leaders. The sense of certainty today is illusory, because no one can say what will happen. Leaders, however, are unwavering in their belief that they are steering the ship in the right direction. If they can at least give people a sense of certainty and can change their mindset to a positive one, it will come back to them in their support and action.
Pocit istoty je dnes iluzórny, lebo nikto nevie povedať, čo bude. Lídri však neochvejne veria, že kormidlujú loď dobrým smerom.
Daniel BradáčIs it important that communication within the company is transparent and that information is truthful, not misrepresenting reality?
I’m a sucker for the truth. If you embellish reality, you will achieve even greater disappointment. Communication must be both transparent and clear. As a leader, you need to know both the truth about your company and the truth about the situation in your company, otherwise you are only managing your perception. I always stress this to my partners in their branding and employer branding. There are still a lot of agencies that bring campaigns to clients but don’t know the truth. They read the brief and try to hit the client’s brief but they don’t know the essence of the company and their situation.
I use the example of a doctor, also you don’t come to him with a paper that this and this hurts me, and he from the abdomen tries to determine the diagnosis and even the method of treatment. On the contrary, a good doctor will first listen to you to find out how you perceive yourself and your ailments, then ask about your family history, then send you for various tests, and only then tell you what is wrong with you. He simply doesn’t curse, he doesn’t even give you a choice of 2 – 3 diagnoses to choose which one you like. He will identify one and tell you what the course of action is and the solution to your problem.
Our way of working is the same. The starting point for cooperation is that we first analyse the company. We always try to start with the CEO or business owners or top management. In the brand insight interview, which is the know-how of our company, we always ask almost 100 questions about the company, people, feelings and brand. In this way, we know the situation, the strengths and the opportunities, we know the perspective and the desired vision, we simply uncover the essential truth about the company and the brand.
Ako líder musíte poznať pravdu o svojej firme aj pravdu o situácii v nej, inak riadite len svoju predstavu.
Daniel BradáčAre CEOs and business owners open during these interviews?
Yeah. I am convinced of it. Every CEO wants to get results, to contribute to the success of the company through his or her actions and leadership. Moreover, if he invests in our services, he has no reason not to open, because he wants to get the best possible result for his money. We deliver to our clients, among other things, a GAP analysis. The difference between the expectations from their brand and the reality of the brand or, if you prefer, the difference between wish and truth.
In the case of cooperation with corporations, it is also important that the local companies are different from their mothers abroad. Orange in Slovakia is different from Orange in France, Billa in Slovakia is different from Billa in Austria. Therefore, the globally established values and brand pillars are often not the same as the local ones. It is then a managerial decision for leaders to decide whether they want to maintain the differences and build their strength on local distinctiveness, or whether they would like to change their brand in some way. We know how to work successfully with both cases.
However, because of their egos and past experiences, people have an image of themselves and their company that may not reflect reality. If they weren’t honest or didn’t answer truthfully, would you know it?
I believe so. As I mentioned before, a brand insight interview has about a hundred questions. It’s my 25 years of local and global brand building know-how. It’s basically a psychoanalysis of the brand. It helps me find out the intent of the partner I’m executing it with, and gradually uncover the truth about the brand or brands they manage as well. There is a report, the beginning of our relationship and a dialogue about the company, the brand and its future. I value those conversations very much. It’s the beginning of an intimate relationship. And in such a relationship, neither party has a reason not to tell the truth. Because our goal is the same.
I have yet to meet a CEO who has any intention of not telling the truth. On the contrary, at least in my experience, people at the top of companies are very pleasant, have a focus on the goal, and don’t tend to spend money on wasted time when building and setting up a brand. I can disclose that my longest interview lasted a whopping 8 hours and we did it over 2 days. The personal attitudes and experiences of the people at the top are extremely important in understanding the context of running a business and brand. Of course, much of the information is highly confidential and stays between me and the client I am interviewing, but I can translate it into an outcome. And that’s critical. If you know the motivations of key people, you can translate them into the brand and communicate them clearly to employees and the market.
Not every company boss is also good at managing people.
The role of branding is not a personnel audit or improving the quality of people. I’m happy to leave that to my HR colleagues. The role of branding is to find out how people in the company feel about the brand they work for. What values do they realistically perceive, what problems does the company face and where are the strengths that can be built upon. In the process, we discover both positive and negative aspects that might never have been named internally, and they are assigned importance. We highlight these aspects and feel it is our duty to do so as well. Because even though these issues may not be marketing, branding or communications related, they can affect the overall performance and perception of the brand. Such areas can include people management or leadership skills.
For example, what are the strengths that can be built upon?
We just handed over a study to a client where it was the geographical location… A very interesting case where the location in Slovakia is relevant for the whole European B2B business. Ideal strengths are in the ability to excel, in qualities that are demonstrably 100%. In manufacturing companies, one of the most important qualities is safety. We, who do not work in such an industry, do not address safety at all. But coming to work safely and going home safely to family is the most important thing for people in manufacturing. Now imagine two manufacturing factories, in one the fulfillment of the plan shines on you when you walk in, how many products they have made since the beginning of the year, in the other the number of how many days they have been working there without an accident shines on you. It says a lot about the company culture, and you haven’t even started talking to anyone yet…
What is the result of your “mapping” of the company?
Brand feasibility study or Brandbook. Solutions and measures for brand growth for the coming years. We understand such a solution as a rather complex proposal. It is created on the basis of an analysis of the internal and external environment. An analysis of the performance of other brands on the market. We will not only bring a proposal for communication inside and outside the company, but also other improvements for the brand. An important part of this is investment in the brand to achieve its position in the market. Most of the time clients want to be number one or number two in the market. We tell them how much and in what structure they should invest in the brand, in the media. And then there are benchmarks and KPIs so that our work can be evaluated. This is what our commissioners see as key. I have to say, I’m comfortable with that as well.
If you know the motivations of key people, you can translate them into the brand and communicate them clearly to employees and the market.
Daniel Bradáč
Do you really bring only one solution to companies?
Yeah. I’ve mentioned the doctor parallel before, and it’s a really good metaphor. As a result, we name the problems, we name the brand potential and we say this is the solution, this is what you should be doing in the long run to make your brand heal, change, the way you want it to, strengthen and live successfully for many years to come, and do this immediately, this is how you should be communicating internally and this is how you should be communicating externally.
Will clients accept it?
Yeah, come to think of it, clients never actually asked about it. It’s just the way we work. Of course, it can happen, as with the patient, that he still needs time to accept and understand his situation, that he still checks whether the treatment offered is the only right one, or he tries something else somewhere else. However, the client always receives from me a workable solution that I stand behind. I believe it is useless to bring two or three solutions, it exhausts and delays everyone.
There is only one essence of truth. Moreover, time is money and it is true that the sooner you start, the sooner you can have the results of the “treatment”. Being first and fast is important in a battle of the brands. However, we also had a case where a client took his time to think about it and when we thought the project had stalled, after 8 months he called us up and after shaking hands in the office said: “It took a while, but let’s finish this together…”
You interfere significantly in the work of individual departments, especially HR. Don’t those people feel threatened? Aren’t they afraid of criticism that they’re doing something wrong when an outside firm had to come in to solve problems that they should be able to solve themselves?
I’ll help myself with a quote from a book, “Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re giving up, it means you’re refusing to give up.” Asking for help, in my opinion, is a show of great strength and a wise approach in order to solve a problem. I am a partner to my clients; I am not in their business to judge their work. I’m there to help them improve it. We have so much experience across many industries and companies of different sizes, at different stages of the brand development and lifecycle, that we are now a good external partner to management.
We are not a critic or a threat, we complement their know-how in an area they understand less or do not have the capacity for. We clarify these issues right at the beginning of the cooperation. After all, my day-to-day partner in this process will not be the CEO, but just the manager responsible for HR, PR or marketing. And we do our best so that they see us as a partner and help for their work.
So your advantage is also that you bring an outside perspective.
Yeah. I call it that inside the company one is part of the problem, but when it comes from the outside, one is part of the solution. If you are a parent, you know well the situation when you teach a child to play sports. It’s sometimes easier and quicker when a stranger teaches it to him. From you, the child has already heard some things hundreds of times and therefore they go in one ear and out the other. But all it takes is for a coach to say the same thing, and he already has attention. It’s the same with us sometimes. Smart people inside a company don’t have to be in a position where everyone in the organization listens and respects them. We give them that importance.
What is the impetus for the company’s strategy? When will they realize the need to solve a problem?
Stagnation. Innovation. The need for change. And now, a pandemic that has exposed or accelerated many things in companies. Leaders are struggling to survive and prepare the company for the future, inventing new product lines, new services, which is a great opportunity for branding. They don’t want an ad campaign, they don’t want PR, they don’t want an event, they want to set up and create a valuable brand. Start something new to communicate, something new to build.
The second reason is the growth or shrinkage of the company. Change is a problem, it affects people and they need to cope with it in some way. They need to sort out what the vision of the company is when it is half the size or half the size, or two companies merge and suddenly the company is different. They need that not only from a business perspective, but also from a branding perspective or setting the company culture, vision and employer branding.
The third reason may simply be an audit to see if the company’s direction is set correctly, and the fourth is the aforementioned brand feasibility studies. A brand defines that it wants to be number two in the market, for example, and it wants to know how much money to spend, on what media, with what message, what it should look like and how it should do it for three years.
Are employees still one of the company’s priorities in today’s tight labour market? Are economic results becoming more important?
Only people will provide you with results or production. The better you work with people, the more confident they feel and the better they feel in the company, the more value they will give to their work. It’s not for nothing that it’s said that dedicated employees realistically perform 20 to 30 percent better than employees who are not motivated. On the other hand, every company wants the best people on the market. Whether there is an abundance or shortage of labor, companies want to be the first choice when selecting an employer.
Today, the brand simply doesn’t belong to PR, to marketers, it belongs to everyone in the company. Because of the 3,500 employees of Billy, 1,000 employees of Unipharma, 2,500,000 people at OVB, almost everyone is on social media. Everybody lives in some kind of community. Everyone has something to say about their employer. And the job of employer branding is to say not ten things that get lost in the plethora of opinions, but the one or two strongest ones, and to say it with pride. To not wear his brand’s t-shirt in the garden and to bed, but to wear it out with pride. That’s the job of employer branding. There’s a difference when a cleaning lady, when asked what she does, says “I clean” or says “I work at Foxconn”.
Did the coronary crisis bring any specifics?
The whole situation is specific. What is also interesting is that both the first and this second wave are bringing out, in a good sense, interesting people, new leaders in various positions. It shows who it is in a crisis situation who is the centre of attention, who it is that people turn to as the natural authority. And it’s happening not just in the top positions in the company, but at all levels. And it’s these opinion leaders that we have started to identify with some companies. We have started to highlight and reward them. They are important people who can keep the good mood in the team and the community. In times when there is not abundance, people need positive role models.
Výsledky alebo výrobu vám zabezpečia len ľudia. Čím lepšie pracujete s ľuďmi, čím majú väčší pocit istoty a čím lepšie sa cítia vo firme, tým vyššiu nadhodnotu dajú svojej práci.
Daniel Bradáč
What are the most common mistakes companies make? When they have good intentions, but the effect is not what they want.
I don’t like to talk about mistakes because I don’t think they are intentional. They are rather missed opportunities. An example is when companies do not see a process through to the end. As I mentioned earlier, branding is a long-term and complex process. So the most important thing is to persevere and see the process through to the end. However, it is certainly a mistake if a company considers employer branding or branding as an isolated campaign. Or it gives the brief for a new brand to iks advertising agencies but doesn’t do its homework properly, i.e. it hasn’t clarified what it wants and feels it will find it in some agency output.
Or she wants to communicate how she would like to see herself, but the reality is completely different. For example, identifying a brand archetype helps to address this mistake. We’ve been working with archetypes for 10 years, and sometimes we see a company with a “ruler” archetype communicating with witty ads and the like. But the ruler is not primarily funny. That’s a mistake. The viewer or customer may not see it that sophisticatedly, they just feel that something about the communication doesn’t sit right with them. It’s also a missed opportunity when a company, without in-depth internal analysis and market research, starts changing its logo and design manual and treats it as a new strategy. It is the role of branding to align the internal situation and objectives with the external manifestations and communication.
Does it happen to you that halfway through the journey, leaders start to question whether the path is the right one when they don’t see results as quickly as they’d like?
It is one thing to doubt and another to challenge. Because once the client gets all the data, the whole study, they basically get a huge amount of material and they can make better decisions, question, challenge, and it’s perfectly fine if the debate is substantive. I like to debate and provoke debate with the client. I explicitly require my people in the agency to keep an eye on the market, keep an eye on the competition, ask the client all sorts of questions. If you stop communicating, if you stop caring and you think that things will “work themselves out”, there will be problems and doubts. Only in discussion are you sure that the direction is good. That you know where you are going.
Is it important to be on the same page with your client?
Chemistry is extremely important.
Can you also work with a client where the mutual chemistry doesn’t work?
That’s a good question. If there is no mutual trust, it will be felt in the result, it will show somewhere. Because basically, where there is no trust, there is no interest in uncovering the truth. That’s why my condition of cooperation is communication with the CEO and with the people who actually run the company. You can’t do branding with just a select department and not know the opinion of those who run the brand.
When does a company need brand consulting?
Today. We are living in a time of change and everything will change. Companies have little time to make decisions and cannot afford to make the wrong choices when repositioning their brand or building a new one. Because it’s all about value. Building a valuable company and brand should be everyone’s goal. Client needs can be divided into the following: I want to increase my value and I don’t know how, I want to reach a new audience, I want to build a new brand or sub-brand, repositioning an existing brand, brand mergers and the associated building of a company culture and in every company employer branding.
We are currently being approached by various companies with these very assignments. However, no one has brand consulting in their budget, unlike advertising, PR or event. Therefore, there must be a real need and willingness to find that money somewhere inside the company. Each client is different and each has different expectations from the outcome of the project. But it’s always about long-term brand appreciation.
What about when the client senses a problem but can’t name it, and basically doesn’t know what they want, but they want it?
Often this is the beginning of our cooperation. It is in the discussion and conversations that the task is created, consolidated and clarified. It is ideal when a client feels a need and is looking for someone to fill it. If he reaches out to us, you can trust that we will find out what he needs, and we will be honest about that as well. Accordingly, we will suggest the optimal solution to him. And either we can implement it, or we send him to partners who have some specific know-how.
Is there a golden rule that you would recommend to follow?
It’s important to surround yourself internally and externally with people who mean well by the brand or the company’s strategy, who have the company’s business success in mind, and who also like working for the company. It’s like a family that comes together when there’s a problem, and even if everyone doesn’t share the same opinion, they’re all about the solution and a good outcome. If you don’t have this in your company, the rule of thumb is that you need to find an expert to help you identify the pillars on which a solution or a valuable brand can be built.
Author.
The article was published in the print version of Strategies magazine and on the web www.strategie.sk.Photo: Matúš Lago
