Employer Brand Headlines: The "Big Time" Edition (#100!)
My mission: Help you understand your employer brand better and make it work for you.
In this issue
A brand isn’t real
Redefining success
Differentiate or meh
Stronger writing
The big idea
A brand isn’t something you can pick up with your hands.
A brand isn’t something you can put in a box for shipment.
A brand isn’t something you can draw.
A brand has neither form nor weight.
A brand isn’t real.
A brand is a shared construct in our individual minds.
Call it an expectation. Call it a reputation.
It’s a promise. It’s an idea. It’s a concept.
But if you think your brand is only about the products you sell, you are looking at the world through a drinking straw.
We often talk about how the employer brand is connected to the consumer brand, often using some pretty tenuous reasoning (rationalizing might be a better word). We quote data that is 4, 7, and 10+ years old to draw connections between ideas we don’t own.
So on this, our 100th edition of Employer Brand Headlines, I present to you a strong case of how and where your employer brand is connected to the rest of your larger brand:
Many of you are using this language or thinking already. You’ve connected some dots between the work you do and how your marketing and comms team can leverage it. You’ve heard me talk about how the employer brand is the go-to crisis PR move. You’ve seen the quotes about how companies will look at Glassdoor reviews to understand company culture before buying a company.
It’s all connected. There is a single brand, and many (many!) teams use it every day to make decisions about what to build. what to say, and who to hire.
That’s the value of a brand to a company: to make better “distributed” decisions across the company, regardless of team, location, or local cultures.
This isn’t how you make the claim that employer brand is as important to the company as consumer marketing (until you generate revenue, you’re a junior partner at best). This is how you help your company, leaders, and brand teams understand the role you could be playing and the value you could be driving.
Me? I would take this and fill in the intersections of the chart: How can EB impact consumer marketing? How can EB support IR? But then take it a step farther: how are those teams impacting the company’s ability to attract and hire? Show the connections.
Think of this diagram as an eraser: it erases the lines between teams and between concepts. It erases the reporting structure that puts you in a silo sweating reviews and application rates.
If your brand isn’t anything and can be anything, make it something that allows you to grow your entire company.
Headlines!
People Aren't Just Quitting their Jobs. They're Redefining Success
Here it is. This is the big reframe you need. It’s not that everyone’s burned out and just quitting, it’s that what they value has shifted. Adjust accordingly to win.
Why you need to redefine your audience
Nothing is the same (see above article), so re-think what your audiences wants and needs.
The Definitive Guide: Why Are Your Employees Leaving You?
Boil it down to one simple idea: you built structures, processes, and policies to make it easy to manage “people” not to make the individual better and happier.
4 Tips on Differentiating From Your Competition
It’s not enough to be better. You have to be clearly different. But how?
The Business of the Business: A Proven Strategy for Brand Growth
What does your company REALLY offer…
The Future of Hiring Is Internal Recruiting
They say successful fishermen and women fish where the fish are. You know where your fish are? In your company already.
6 Ways to Help Employees Feel Valued
Don’t focus on how to make people feel valued. ACTUALLY VALUE THEM.
How To Recruit Tech Talent (Even If You're Not A Tech Company)
“The real problem is not that you aren’t a tech company; it’s that tech candidates don’t know how you use technology to change lives and make the world a better place.”
storiesincorporated.com • Share
Mutual fund productivity increases when sexual harassment is removed from workplace, study finds
(Real) Diversity isn’t about checking boxes. It is about providing a safe space to encourage everyone to be their most productive.
The Science of Strong Business Writing
As someone who knows his writing can be stronger, this spoke to me.
Quick hits
Tip of the week
Tear something down and build it from scratch. It doesn’t matter what. The act of doing it again with the knowledge and wisdom you gained the first time will drive a better solution.
Inside the fortune cookie
Quite simply, all powerful messages must contain an element of absurdity, illogicality, costliness, disproportion, inefficiency, scarcity, difficulty, or extravagance - because rational behaviors and talk, for all their strengths, convey no meaning. - Rory Sutherland
Thanks, everyone!
Reminder: The more people at your org who read my books, the better your job will get! employerbrandbook.com (They’re free!!!)
There are now more than 900 links in the link archive. And as always, when you reply to this email I will read your questions and comments. Is there any article I should be commenting on? A book? A podcast? Is there something you what to know? How can I help? Just reply to this email and it comes directly to me.
Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
Where the subject line came from:
Peter Gabriel - Big Time
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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