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When looking to align brand and culture, leadership teams often ask us which should come first. It’s an important question, as aligning everyone that matters to the organization—especially after taking a big leap like merging, acquiring or spinning off—maximizes value creation.
There’s no one universal answer. But asking three critical questions can help leaders start exploring how to optimize the relationship.
1. What is your company’s purpose?
To be clear, defining your purpose doesn’t determine which transformative element needs to be tackled first: brand or culture. But it is the key element that will unify them. Once finalized as the first step in building your B2B brand strategy, it provides guideposts for all the initiatives that follow.
After all, people don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
A company’s purpose is the reason it exists for external audiences: customers, communities, the world at large. And that makes it a vital foundation for both your culture and your brand. Purpose gives employees a compelling reason to believe in the business, the opportunities it creates for them and the impact they can make for customers—which then drives their commitment and engagement. For prospects, customers and investors, purpose offers a clear articulation of the company’s value, along with leadership’s vision for the future. Especially during a time of transformation, like after a leap, it builds the confidence and trust that drive consideration, conversion and loyalty.
We recently helped a professional services firm find its purpose and translate it into a resonant brand and culture. While the firm’s focus on employee development resonated internally, it wasn’t winning business with prospects or current clients.
Our strategists conducted deep research and uncovered the company’s true purpose: to empower advancement. Employees were part of that, but the company’s purpose served a higher calling. The firm’s very structure contributed to more effective, interdisciplinary analysis that helped their clients change the course of commerce. With their purpose a clear stake in the ground, the firm was able to move forward with building their brand and culture effectively.
2. What aspects of the company culture are unique or differentiating?
Once purpose is established, examining your culture’s unique attributes can reveal powerful opportunities for differentiation. Sometimes the very things that make your culture special—the ways you develop talent, solve problems or work with clients—can become compelling proof points of your value in the market. Here’s an example:
We partnered with an IT outsourcing company that needed to build a brand strong enough to compete against—and stand out from—the Goliaths of the industry. In every employee conversation, interview and workshops, we heard about how the company’s culture was unique in the competitive IT recruitment world. Unlike global competitors with high turnover and minimal development opportunities, this company invested in its people—creating loyal, long-tenured, passionate employees who continually grew their skills and gladly did their best work.
This unique culture also benefited clients significantly. Their service teams were well-trained, provided valuable continuity over time, and were committed to the company’s success. With this discovery, we knew that aligning brand with culture (with brand following culture’s lead) represented rich opportunity.
The result was a compelling brand platform that highlighted why these important cultural attributes made the company a better partner, using culture as a central message of the firm’s external differentiation. None of their competitors could claim these strengths—setting them apart and establishing clear competitive advantage.
This story illustrates an important point. Shared belief in the company’s values is the most important commonality to look for in a strong culture—the kind of culture that can lead the alignment of culture and brand.
Strong cultures don’t require overwhelming employee similarities. In fact, many thrive on diversity—of backgrounds, ideas, and skills. In truth, many strong cultures are founded on diversity: of backgrounds, of ideas, of skills.
Recently, we were engaged by a major international consulting firm. They had grown exponentially due to large-scale acquisitions in recent years. Because of this, leadership worried the business had no consistent modus operandi.
Our research revealed that this perceived weakness—lack of consistency—was actually a strength. So we built the new brand around the power of diversity to foster innovation and create better client solutions. This clearly differentiated the company from other big consulting firms, which actually touted the sameness of their employees’ pedigrees and processes.
Embracing their unique culture, the company shifted the conversation to focus on how myriad experiences and opinions can be assets for its clients. By emphasizing that the best ideas come from a diverse employee base, the company was able to stand out in the crowded consulting space and secure projects from several large, important accounts.
For both of these clients, unique aspects of the company’s culture laid the groundwork for a differentiated brand position; articulating the culture upfront was crucial to successfully aligning brand and culture. As we saw with these clients, rarely does company leadership know what elements of the company culture are most important from a brand perspective. Research is often needed to uncover not only what those elements are, but also why they benefit the company’s most important internal and external audiences.
3. Are there aspects of the culture that might be roadblocks to success?
Culture shouldn’t always go first as it has in the stories shared so far. In some cases, brand can become a powerful tool for redirecting an underperforming culture, transforming it into a productive asset.
As part of a larger initiative, a global payments technology leader asked us to conduct a brand equity study. Many important findings came out of this research, but the company’s leadership team was most surprised to learn that the company had fallen behind on customer service. Clients were looking for partnership and a flexible approach, but they found this market pioneer hard to work with.
Internal research revealed the issue: rapid acquisitions had created a siloed, product-driven culture. Employees—from sales and customer service to product developers and engineers—were encouraged to focus on building and selling the latest and greatest features and functionality rather than solving specific customer needs. The resulting interactions did not meet customer expectations.
Clearly, this culture was becoming a roadblock to success for the company. So as our first step, we developed a new, purpose-driven, customer-focused brand that could work quickly to reassure clients and prospects of the company’s commitment to them. The brand reframed its market leadership position to focus on customer benefits and innovation—communicating that the company’s best-in-class talent and resources enable them to transform their clients’ payments technology from a cost of doing business to a growth driver.
We then leveraged the brand and its purpose, “to transform payments technology,” to create new values like collaboration, accountability and commitment. The new culture was quickly embraced by employees and infused into day-to-day activities.
In this case, brand became a powerful tool for improving company culture and therefore customer service and connection. As is often the case, internal and external research played a critical role in uncovering the potential roadblocks. Through robust discovery, we identified meaningful opportunities to align brand and culture to the company’s best advantage.
So, which comes first: brand or culture?
As these examples show, it depends. If your company culture is truly differentiating in your industry, then using culture as the foundation for the brand can be very effective. But if your culture is actually a roadblock to achieving strategic aspirations, then a strong brand platform can help drive internal cultural initiatives that can empower the company to reach those goals.
In either case, determining the company’s purpose is an important early step—as it’s the key element for building both brand and culture. When undertaking a transformation project, take care to engage leadership, employees and customers to pinpoint why employees come to work each morning. Because this passion both inspires them and wins over clients.
To discuss aligning your brand and culture to set your business apart, contact us.
Originally published September 19, 2021.
