♟️ Employer Brand Headlines #140: The "Life's What You Make It" Edition ♟️
A new manifesto for employer branding's future
Mission: Blow up the standard for what people expect from employer branding
Employer Brand Headlines is brought to you by James Ellis.
In this issue…
A manifesto for employer branding’s future
EVP refresh?
Leading change
How to turn a brand around
The big idea
A few years ago, I wrote the Employer Brand Manifesto, a document that was designed to be metaphorically nailed to the doors of HR and TA, demanding they see employer brand as it is, a means to reinvent talent acquisition for the better.
It was well received, and got talked about a lot… in 2018 and 2019.
On a recent flight home from a nice long work trip, I started writing, and it seems that it is time for a new manifesto:
»The Employer Brand Manifesto, 2022«
Employer branding isn’t the new kid in town anymore. After hype and promise, we’re in danger of being relegated to a party trick TA does when it runs out of ideas. But you and I know that employer branding is magic. It is the catalyst for changing the way companies think about their people.
So today, let us pick up these ten ideas and carry them, holding them high for the world to see. That’s how we’re going ensure we reach our own potential.
One: Clarity
All business success starts by seeing reality for what it is rather than pretending things are the way you want them to be. That is no less true in employer branding. We can’t pretend we have huge budgets or the ability to make policy. So we make change by understanding what we truly can change.
Two: Insight
Successful employer branding requires an insight. What makes your company unique? What is something that only you know about what your audience wants? What do you offer that everyone will demand next month? What is the thing that annoys your audience the most? Without insight, we might as well sell detergent.
Three: Ownership
You must take ownership of the outcome, regardless of how many other people impact that outcome. That might require building something bullet-proof instead of elegant, or working twice as hard to get your internal audiences to “get it.” But saying “it was out of my hands” isn’t an excuse anymore.
Four: Selection
Define your own outcome and the means. Pick your partners. You must choose the means of your success (or destruction), whether it be Tik Tok, billboards or in-person events: there is no right answer save the choices you make. Reject was is given to you and be intentional with how you will make this work.
Five: Audience
Define and know your audience. You can’t know everyone, so pick the audience to care about. Seek to know what they want, what they care about, what they see from other companies and the industry. When it comes to jobs, do what you can to know them better than they know themselves.
Six: Fail
Be willing to fail in the service of learning something unique, surprising, inspiring, secret, or just plain useful. Failure is inevitable if you’re pushing hard enough, so pick when you fail. Don’t take risks because you’re lazy, take them with the specific intention of learning something you could otherwise not know. This will encourage you to take better, more useful risks. Create the experiments that will make you better. This is your lab. Use it.
Seven: Diligence
Take advantage of any and every way to do something that no other company would consider or accept. We make a difference most often in the small projects we select rather than the big ones, so we always have a dozen (or four) projects going at once. But that workload is no excuse for simply coloring within the lines. What will make your work great are the ways in which it isn’t like anyone else’s. That requires focus, effort and diligence.
Eight: Change
Incrementalism leads slowly and inevitably to the middle. Doing things the way everyone else does them and obeying the best practices is a safe path to obsolescence. Change the goal. Change the tactic. Change the strategy. Change yourself. Change is the only path to something amazing.
Nine: Defy
Blow up the standard for what people expect from employer branding. No, really. If you wait for others to tell you what you can do, what you can be, you’ll wait a very long time for anything useful. It’s on you to set your own bar high enough that others will see it.
Ten: Accept
This is hard work. In fact, it won’t always work. Every single day, we extend and strengthen the brand in completely new ways, with no guarantee, so we work hard to give the brand its best chance to succeed. We aren’t here to carry water or take someone’s order. We are here to make art in service of the company, employees and candidates.
Yep, we’re still podcasting about a book.
The revised and annotated audio version of Talent Chooses You (in Cine-o-rama) continues with episode 12, diving into the power of storytelling in employer branding.
Headlines!
Is Now the Right Time to Refresh Your EVP?
I don’t know. Did you change the value you offer to candidates and employees? [Employer Brandwagon]
The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking
One of my favorite sources of “big thinking” is Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street Blog and The Knowledge Project podcast. Shane has an eye for insight and always pulls great thinking out of people. Like Charlie Rose but… enjoyable. Anyway, here’s a long presentation (with transcript) from CEO Peter Kaufman gave to CalPoly economics club on thinking better. [Farnam Street]
Leading Change: The Best of NOBL’s Collective Writing
I’m convinced that after Leandro Herrero, Bud Caddell and NOBL are the most important thinkers on understanding and changing organizational systems (like offices, teams and companies. read this and you will just be smarter. [NOBL]
How to Bring Recruiters in Line With Your Employer Branding Strategy
I had an interesting chat this week with someone struggling with a similar issue. Why is it so hard to get recruiters to embrace EB (especially when its so clear to you and I how much it makes their lives easier/better)? While Bryan’s article is a good start, this problem is far more complex than a few bullet points. If you’re having this problem, you’re not alone. [Recruiter.com]
The Brief: Prevent WW3 in Ukraine
The secret weapon in good marketing and amazing creative is a well-thought-out brief. But so many people get hung up on the format of what a great brief should be, as if the shape is what matters. You can know exactly what program and computer your favorite writer uses, but that won’t make you a better writer. The value isn’t in the tool, it’s in the artist. But this brief was so well written and so compelling, I might make it my format moving forward. [Sweathead]
Reversing The Growth Trajectory Of A Declining Brand
Step one: stop trying to solve the problem with the thinking that put you in a hole in the first place [Brand Strategy Insider]
The C-Suite is listening
No people? No business. It still stuns me how long it has taken many execs to understand this simple idea. [Unleash]
Marketers rarely get what they pay for
This is more about the perils of spending money on advertising. Like a casino, the little guy thinks they can plunk down some cash and buy an audience, but the house is always the one who wins. [TheDrum]
Inside the fortune cookie
“Strategy is the litmus test that would separate distraction and opportunity.” - Jonathan Stark
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Where the subject line came from:
Life’s What You Make It - Talk Talk
Such a strange and engaging mix of the organic and mechanical, a groove based on a simple two-measure piano riff, but its sheer repetition (along with that tribal drum pattern) create space for that guitar and vocal. It comes from The Colour of Spring, which is one of this “if you know, you know” albums from the 1980’s. Just amazing stuff.
If you are enjoying the music, congratulations, you’re old. I made a Spotify playlist of all the subject line songs I’ve used over the last year and a half:
