Tài liệu Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management 8 doc

of effective people management in the branding process. In addition to the practitioner works we have cited, academics in the branding field have been sending out relatively similar mes- sages for a number of years (Berthon et al., 1999; Harris and de Chernatony, 2001; Ewing et al., 2002; Buckley, 2005). Are branding specialists on the ground taking this message to heart? The answer, it seems, is a qualified ‘yes’. De Chernatony (2001a, 2001b) has explored the differing interpretations held by brand managers about branding, some of which have imme- diate relevance for HR and people management. These inter- pretations with some examples include: ■ brands as visual logos and signifiers, which create dif- ferentiation in the minds of customers, e.g. the Nike swoosh logo, Adidas’s three stripes ■ brands as legally enforceable statements of ownership, e.g. among the ancient or prestige universities such as Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard ■ brands as a form of shorthand for consumers, e.g. Hoover or McDonald’s, which: ❐ assist the information processing limitations of individuals and help them to make attributions about products and services ❐ reduce the risk for customers in imperfect markets ■ brands as positioning by helping associate brands with particular benefits for customers, e.g. the Virgin brand and Virgin Blue in Australia, Rolex ■ brands as personality, in which brands are infused with emotional values beyond their functional benefits, e.g. Coke helping the world to come together, Calvin Klein underwear ■ brands as a relationship builder, which is an extension of the idea of brands as embodying a personality into the notion of customers having a relationship with the brand, e.g. Disney, British Airways ■ brands as clusters of values, which help organizations extend into new markets with related values, e.g. Virgin and its moves into the soft drinks market, Sony and its moves into entertainment 54 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management ■ brands as added value beyond the basic product or service offering, for which customers value and are usually willing to pay a premium price, e.g. Kellogg’s, Colgate, Unilever’s soap powders ■ brands as visions, which are mainly used to galvanize stakeholders into actions designed to attain some future desired state, e.g. Sony’s pioneer brand offering innov- ation, British Airways and the ‘world’s favourite airline’ culture change programme, Audi’s ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ (advance with technology) strapline, political parties such as the re-branding of ‘New Labour’ in the UK during the 1990s ■ brands as identity that set out an ethos with which organizational stakeholders can readily associate, e.g. the Body Shop, Apple, Ben & Jerry, Hewlett-Packard, Cancer Research ■ brands as image, which focuses on what customers per- ceive to be real, e.g. Barbie, Harry Potter, Evian and BMW ■ branding companies, which reduce the needs to pro- mote individual lines of business or products, and are increasingly seen as a way of engaging new and exist- ing employees in the corporate brand, the key focus of this book. You should be able to see from these diverse interpretations that the brand managers in this study viewed branding not only as playing a key external role in adapting their organizations to market circumstances, but also in aligning people behind the brand. In Figure 2.2 we have adapted de Chernatony’s (2001a, 2001b) ideas to construct a representation of the internal and external views on branding. Of the 12 roles of branding identified above, at least three are strongly internally focused and have major implications for people management and HR professionals. It should also be noted that there is a ‘clear line of sight’ between people man- agement, the employee-focused definitions of branding and the externally focused definitions. So, for example, in one of the cases we researched for this book, Agilent Technologies (an off-shoot of Hewlett-Packard), senior HR managers were Chapter 2 Managing corporate brands and reputations 55 unable to make a distinction between the notion of branding as identity and branding as a cluster of values, seeing instead a strong interpenetration between the two concepts. Given Hewlett- Packard’s long history as an employee-oriented brand, this should not be surprising. Similarly, one might expect the same degree of interpenetration between brands as visions and cor- porate branding, as we shall argue later in this text. This marketing and branding literature, however, is to be treated with a little caution as we have already noted in our point about its ideological basis. There is little doubt that it is stronger on prescription and on how things should be than on description of how things are. For example, to argue that brands 56 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management Branding as logos and signifiers Branding as values Branding as corporations Branding as shorthand Branding as personality Branding as ownership Branding as added value Branding as image Branding as positioning Branding as a relationship builder Branding as vision People management Branding as identity Figure 2.2 Interpretations of branding and the links with HR (based on de Chernatony, 2001; Martin and Beaumont, 2003). should be at the heart of all key decisions in an organization is inconsistent with how many successful organizations operate in practice. Moreover, as we have seen, consumers are increasingly wary of the negative connotations of brands and the ‘spin’ asso- ciated with brand managers, public relations and communica- tions departments. Most branding and marketing literature is underpinned by a unitary, communications perspective which is based on an assumption that organizations are essentially conflict-free and made up of homogeneous cultures. If they are not, the argument goes, they should be made so through effect- ive communications. From this perspective, conflict, politics and sub-cultures are seen as unnatural, malfunctions of naturally ordered systems, to be treated by having consumers, employees and other stakeholders understand the truth of where their true interests lie. As a result, this branding literature, just like the dramatized accounts of celebrity firms we discussed in the open- ing chapter, tends to restrict the role of HR to communicating brand values downwards, rather than as being the source of such values and the driver of key aspects of strategy. As many of us schooled in the university of life will be aware, however, commu- nications will only get us so far; not everyone has the same interests, nor are organizations necessarily better off without a legitimate expression of conflict over competing interests, since it is usually only through conflict and speaking up to power that often-needed change results. Indeed, it is incumbent on good followers to express legitimate concerns. We will deal with this aspect of leadership and governance in Chapter 9. Harris and de Chernatony’s (2001) model, though strong in some respects, illustrates these criticisms quite well. The start- ing point for these authors is the need for employees to become ‘brand ambassadors’ in their role as the key interface between the internal and external environment of the organization and in having a potentially powerful influence on customers’ per- ceptions of the brand offering and the corporation. Nevertheless, we should not ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. They make a useful attempt at bringing together a number of the previ- ously discussed different interpretations of brands to explain the concept of brand identity, defined by them as ‘an organiza- tion’s ethos, aims and values that create a sense of individuality which differentiates a brand’ (p. 442). From Figure 2.3 we can Chapter 2 Managing corporate brands and reputations 57 see that brand identity comprises the connections between its core vision and culture, the company’s positioning in the mar- ketplace, the emotional or personality characteristics of poten- tial customers with which it wishes to associate, its presentation styles and, finally, the consistency between employee relation- ships and customers. They further argue that a brand’s identity is not always the same as its reputation, which they define as ‘a collective reputa- tion of a brand’s past actions and results’ (p. 445) that describes its ability to deliver value to key stakeholders. These authors regard brand reputation as more important in establishing and measuring brand performance, precisely because reputation takes into account the past as well as the present and it also encompasses all organizational stakeholders. 58 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management Brand vision and culture Relationships between staff and customers Positioning Personality Brand presentation Brand identity Brand reputation Figure 2.3 The relationships between brand identity and brand reputation (based on Harris and de Chernatony, 2001, p. 443). Thus, it is this key development in branding, which moves us away from a focus on products to corporate level branding, that has caused organizations to think more inclusively about how front line customer service staff, designers and developers, knowl- edge workers and a whole range of other employees can influence brand reputation. Moreover, as these writers suggest, corporate branding requires consistency and uniformity in delivering the brand identity by all members of the brand management team and all stakeholders, including customers and employees. Let’s have a look at an example from the technology sector. Chapter 2 Managing corporate brands and reputations 59 Box 2.5 Building a brand at Yahoo! Yahoo!, one of the best-known Internet companies, underwent a major re-branding exercise in 2004 to position itself for ‘its bigger future’. Like Google, Amazon and eBay, Yahoo! is coming of age and is past the start-up phase but does not want to lose the energy and values of those early years. Yahoo! is an interesting contrast to Google. Again founded by two Stanford graduates, but they are much lower key. From an HR perspective it is interesting that the author of the article that is the source of this case is Senior Vice President for HR at Yahoo!, and claims that the internal branding process was the starting point defining a mission and values state- ment, which began with simultaneous internal research conducted on the founders, executives and employees and external research on customers. Since the company saw itself as a young, rather irreverent organiza- tion, it did not want to begin with a list of values that every other organi- zation would aim for, so the question they addressed was: ‘What sucks and aren’t you glad you won’t find these at Yahoo!?’. Following research conducted jointly with marketers and HR staff, they developed a series of workshops to explore brand characteristics, competencies, values and territories. In addition extensive market research on what customers thought about the brand helped identify core, internal competences and defining experiences for customers. Libby Sartain argues that this simultaneous inside-out and outside-in approach helped define the target customer as a heavy user of the Internet with a Y! gene, who was interested in efficiency, engagement and expan- sion. The Yahoo! brand, signified by the ‘Life Engine’ had to address the needs of that customer. However, it also had to address the needs of Stage models, branding and HRM One useful way of thinking about the links between corporate branding and HRM is to see the relationship as a series of stages through which organizations may pass en route to full-blown corporateness. Figure 2.4 maps out two of the key dimensions we have discussed in this chapter. The first is the extent to which organizations differ in attaching importance to corporate brand- ing in their general business strategy, drawn from a study by Interbrand (2002) on the global financial services industry. The second dimension is the extent to which organizations perceive HRM to be a key variable in delivering their corporate branding strategy, if indeed they have one. Stage 1 corresponds to a limited role for branding in corpor- ate strategy, in which brands are restricted to symbols for par- ticular products, services or individual businesses, and in which HR plays little or no role in supporting the brand. There is no attempt to connect individual brands to employees’ motiv- ations, values or behaviours. Such a stage is likely to describe the position of many smaller or newer companies, especially in the non-service sectors, which fail to see how brands can embody values that relate to employees (or customers for that matter). Stage 2 applies to organizations that may have a master brand as a corporate logo but place more emphasis on building a vision and value proposition for existing or new product or service 60 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management employees (Yahoos), who made the Life Engine come to life, first by iden- tifying what attracted them to work for the company, and the kinds of development and experiences that would bring out their potential and retain them. Yahoo! is addressing the internal branding position and applying it to every dimension of the employee experience to find and keep ‘Yahoos with the Y! gene’, through a mixture of internal marketing techniques and career development tools. One example is its ‘My Life: My Benefits’ pro- gramme that attempts to match company rewards, benefits and experi- ences to different stages in the career life cycle of Yahoos. Source: Adapted from Sartain, 2005, pp. 89–93 Role of the brand in the business strategy High Low High Perceived value of HR in the branding process STAGE 1 Branding as a logo for particular products STAGE 2 Individual product/service brand strategy with HR supporting products STAGE 3 Corporate brand seen as a vehicle for strategic change with HR supporting the process STAGE 4 Corporate brand seen as centrepiece of strategy with HR in a pivotal/driving role Figure 2.4 Stages on the road to corporateness (based on Interbrand, 2002; Martin and Beaumont, 2003). brands. This may be because of the strength of existing brand reputations that the company may have acquired or because they wish to launch a new line of business distinct from the values of the master brand. This stage is associated with companies being a ‘house of brands’ and the role of HR in this context is to provide support for the individual brands and the connection with employees’ values is to identify with these individual brands. A good example here was the early approach of RBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which has grown rapidly to become one of the world’s major banks by acquiring major UK brands such as Natwest and Coutts, and Citizens Bank in the USA. RBS made a conscious decision to allow these brands to function as normal rather than re-brand them with the RBS logo. Similarly, estab- lished brands in financial services and the airline industry estab- lished separate brands to deal with new ventures in internet banking and low cost air travel, such as Cahoot and Egg, the Internet arms of the ANG and the Prudential, respectively, and British Airways now-aborted attempt to launch Go!, their low cost subsidiary. Yet another example is the little known, but extremely profitable, Kentucky-based, Yum! Brands. This company owns the much better-known Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. These three brands account for 4% of all restaurant sales in America, second only to McDonald’s, which accounted for 6.5% in 2005 (Economist, 2005c). The potentially negative effects, however, of such strategies, which are strong on product or service differentiation but weak on integration with the corporate values and cost sharing in areas such as HR, IT and property, have led some companies to move to the third stage of development. Stage three attempts to capitalize on the vision and values of a strong corporate brand for significant organizational change, for example, in bringing together previously disparate business operations, such as the Swiss-Swedish multinational ABB in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Belanger et al., 1999), or in improv- ing service offerings, such as HSBC, which acquired banks in the UK, France and the USA (Haig, 2004). The role of HR in providing support for this process of corporate branding lies in designing programmes for change and the role of the corpor- ate brand is to provide a compelling employment brand prop- osition for staff as well as providing an identity for customers (Barrow and Mosley, 2005). Whilst the payoff for such a strategy 62 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management can be significant in having employees ‘live the brand’ and in building strong relationships with customers, such changes are difficult to implement universally and usually require many years to become fully embedded, as we have already seen from our example of AT&T and NCR in Chapter 1. Stage four is when the corporate brand becomes the focal point of corporate strategy, with HR playing a pivotal role in driving the corporate branding process and employees identi- fying closely with the corporate brand values and acting as brand ambassadors. The role of individual product or service brands and employee identification with them is secondary, with recruitment and deployment of employees frequently used to underpin the corporate branding strategy. It is at this stage that employer of choice and employer branding policies are most likely to be found, with employees being recruited, developed and rewarded for identification with the corporate brand as much as, or more than, for a specific job. The payoff to the organization, in addition to having employees identify with existing business, is believed to be that employees will be more flexible and innovative in delivering future business or service improvements, good examples being Hewlett-Packard, Ben & Jerry, BP, Orange, Virgin, Sony, Google, the Body Shop and even Heinz, which is well known for its employee orienta- tion (Haig, 2004). In the case of some companies, heavy invest- ments in corporate branding and HRM will help them through the difficult circumstances by engaging employees and retain- ing their loyalty. We shall refer to one such case, that of Agilent Technologies, at various points throughout the book. A cautionary note needs to be added at this point. Stage the- ories usually connote a sense of progress, inevitability and best practice. We do not wish to imply any such linear thinking or assumptions since our belief is that context and timeframes play an important part in shaping the strategic positions of organizations. The case of the RBS, with its early decision to retain separate brands in the UK and the USA following recent merger activity, illustrates this point well. So, at best, stage the- ories highlight no more than promising practices and ours is no different; indeed, the question of benchmarking against best practice is arguably flawed because there is little sustain- able differentiation to be gained from following the pack. Chapter 2 Managing corporate brands and reputations 63 . Management Branding as logos and signifiers Branding as values Branding as corporations Branding as shorthand Branding as personality Branding as ownership Branding. Branding as added value Branding as image Branding as positioning Branding as a relationship builder Branding as vision People management Branding as identity