Communicating the Brand

Introduction

In 2017, Facebook had 1.7 billion monthly active users, with 75% of Facebook users being outside the United States11. Okay, however well your brand is communicated it is unlikely to be the first thing that Facebook users will jump to. But there has never been a better time when it is relatively easy to reach very large numbers of people. This creates huge opportunities but there is a health warning. You don’t want your messages to be lost in daily plethora of internet noise. Neither do you want a social media storm because of an embarrassing error or misjudged response to user criticism. Managing communications, including social media, could be a lengthy book on its own. In this chapter, we aim to introduce some key issues for communicating the brand and other areas to consider. Getting the communications right is important, getting it wrong may be disastrous.

4.1 Have a plan

1.1 As touched upon in chapter 3 it is important to plan the launch of the brand, even if the launch is very simple. Equally it is essential to plan brand communication over an extended period. Brand communication cannot be a one hit wonder. It needs to be repeated, reinforced and refreshed; based on feedback and on its measured impact.

1.2 The content of your plan will vary according to your organisational arrangements and the methods of communication, these will be explored below. As a guide, an eight-step plan may include the following, some are explored in more detail in the pages that follow:

Be clear on why you want to communicate. Your business case for brand development, (Chapter 1), should provide the answers. For example, if the underlying reason is to increase the numbers of good quality applicants, your choice of media and the content of messages will differ from the aim to retain existing staff.

Identify your audience.

Identify your resources. This may be about allocating responsibilities in-house or commissioning specialist expertise to provide activities, such as the design of a website. Also, do not assume that the use of social media is very low cost. For example, it may be free to sign up for a Twitter account or a Facebook page but managing them well will always require somebody’s time and effort. There may also be training costs to enable people to use various media. Whilst personal use will be a great advantage, do not assume that people will write for web-based communications in the way that the organisation wants. In the same way as people need skills to write for business, they may need training to write on the web.

Plan your messages.

Consider media routes; looked at in detail below.

Create an action plan, i.e. who will do what and when.

Decide on methods to the monitor the effectiveness of both the brand and how it is being communicated. This is looked at in detail in chapter 6.

Create a Risk Management strategy. This is a common feature in project management. Risks here can be broadly divided into self-inflicted and external. It is useful to brainstorm potential risks and to identify ways to mitigate. These may depend on the communication routes used, but potential self-inflicted risks could include:

Messages lack authenticity. One of your brand attributes may be a ‘great communicator’; but this is undermined where job candidates do not get a response to their applications.

Your messages come back to haunt you. For example, the brand shouts, ‘we develop careers’. But if the reality is the training budget is exhausted in quarter 1, this attribute will be undermined.

Transcription errors, particularly on web pages, can undermine a sense of quality.

Inappropriate tone of voice – this is explored in detail below.

Personal social media profiles of employees contradicting the face of the organisation. Where employee stories are used to communicate ‘what it’s like to work here’; be sure that the nominated person’s private life does not become the focus of attention.

Attempts to be amusing, controversial or to link the brand to current news events. Readers do not necessarily understand the intention and it can badly backfire.

Not being respectful of users’ views. Of course, what people post on social media may be wrong or seemingly malicious. Getting into war of words is not the answer; we look further at dealing with bad reviews below.

‘External’ risks may be from within the organisation but outside the control of HR/ the brand management team. Examples could include poor financial results, with threats of job losses. A public-sector scandal that has the potential to spill over to your area of service. Bad news for you if your brand attributes include job security or a caring organisation. Whilst you may not be able to predict, still consider who will be responsible for assessing the impact on the brand, the potential courses of action – such as suspending twitter feeds or encouraging a senior management statement aligned with the brand but specific to the circumstances.

As with all plans, do not file but execute and review regularly.

4.2 Identify the Audience

2.1 Some of this will have already been done when considering the scope of your brand, (Chapter 2). By default, we would recommend a whole organisation approach when developing and communicating brand attributes. Always be aware of the impact to the internal audience even when reaching out to the wider world. As previously emphasised, if the brand is not authentic there is a real risk that this will be exposed by the current employees either at the workplace or increasingly through social and other web media, such as Glassdoor where people can readily post reviews.

2.2 If your brand attributes do, however, vary substantially for different employee groups, consider whether different communication methods need to be used and whether the content needs to alter so that it speaks directly to each group. This is relatively easy to achieve on a web site where you may wish to create individual pages for a specific audience, such as apprentices. It may also be useful to create a microsite that focuses on the target group.

2.3 Understanding your target audience will help you select the appropriate media to communicate and the tone of voice to be used to accurately represent the brand and to capture attention. Listening, for example to social media chat, can reveal how your audience speaks and can help you use their language to meet them on their terms. Get the tone of voice right.