⚡ Employer Brand Headlines: The "Don't Walk Away" Edition (#118)
My mission: move the conversation around employer brand forward.
Employer Brand Headlines, brought to you by James Ellis
In this issue
Position or punching?
Thinking human
Reverse branding
Open strategy
The big idea
I spent a good chunk of time in Talent Chooses You (open source and free) talking about the power of positioning, the magical (sometimes imperfectly understood or perceived) idea that by defining the territory in which you work, you can become the go-to company for a specific thing.
Think about coffee. If you make coffee at home, even with good beans, you can make a whole pot of coffee for… 75 cents? A dollar? A Nespresso pod costs $1.25 for a single (not very big) cup of coffee, which in comparison to homebrew, seems crazy.
But Nespresso isn’t competing with your Mr. Coffee or Chemex setup. It is positioning itself against a $3.50 latte at Starbucks, in which case $1.25 is a heck of a bargain.
(Trash person Peter Theil does a great job talking about positioning in Zero to One, which is worth reading. He talks about how if you define your market correctly, the goal isn’t to compete so much as it is to build a monopoly.)
What’s the difference between a Honda and a Toyota? Maybe you feel like the Toyota is a little cooler or the Honda is a little more reliable. They are brands fighting for position against each other, but not against SmartCars or Ferraris, which hold very different positions in the market.
Employer brands can define and hold positions, too. You’re the caring company. You’re the ‘move fast and break things’ company. You’re the ‘we’ll make you rich in 15 years’ company. You’re the ‘stability is its own reward’ company. Those companies are not really competing against each other, as the candidate who loves stability isn’t interested in breaking anything. Defining a strong position allows you to be the “only” company in a given space.
But this leads to a strange issue. With 20MM companies in North America (and maybe 50MM worldwide), how do you maintain a unique position? Is it even possible for every company to define a unique position? Perhaps not (and perhaps that’s why we see so much employer blending).
There’s a different approach you could take. Instead of trying to define some magical unique space where only you thrive like a hothouse orchid, potentially boxing yourself into a space so small that you can’t find anyone in it worth hiring, you could out-execute on your brand.
I think of this as a “puncher’s” strategy. Throw harder punches faster and more accurately, and you don’t need to be more clever or have a better strategy. You just out-punch your opponent.
The trick here is that unlike in boxing, in talent you have a LOT more opponents, all of whom are throwing their own punches and hoping to beat you. Just by the law of large numbers, one of them could land and take you out. We’ve all lost talent to companies we thought had way less to offer, companies we thought we had nothing to worry about.
But in a market where your position is being claimed by other companies, you need to think like a puncher. How do you craft a message that’s stronger than the competition? How do you select channels where they aren’t (or are scared to be)? How do you bring the first to them to make that informed choice more clear?
Defining your position well is the smart move. But at this stage, it takes a puncher’s mindest to just out-work your competition.
Headlines!
Reinvent Your EVP for a Post-pandemic Workforce
Normally, these kinds of white papers reek of sloppy sale pitches and thin thinking. but this one was VERY much worth looking at. Why? Well, aside from having a strong framework, it seems to finally realize that EVP (and EB) is about being human first.
What’s the Difference Between Brand Positioning and Brand Strategy?
I love talking about positioning… (See also, this article on brand archetypes)
Reverse Branding – It’s Easier to Know Who You Are Not
Yes!!!! When you get stuck on defining who you are, go back and look at who you are not.
What is a Brand Personality, According to Marketers Who've Developed Them
Every brand wants to define a clear voice, but they all sound the same, “smart, but not too smart, personable and friendly, maybe a little cool, but not off-puttingly so…” Ugh. So how do you get deeper into designing that brand personality?
Employee Value Proposition Survey Questions
20 decent conversation-starters when talking to staff about culture, work, and the brand promise.
Is Compensation No Longer King? It's Complicated.
Turns out subjective values (when proven!) are just as powerful (if not more so) as objective values.
The Culture Content You Need in 2022
Content proves your claims. It’s that simple. (And no, you can’t have too much content.)
www.recruitingnewsnetwork.com • Share
A User’s Guide to Open Strategy
We often think of strategy as the domain of the singular genius (Napoleon, Hannibal, Steve Jobs, etc). But very often, a strategy needs more daylight to ensure its own strength. So how do you build an open strategy?
How to Create an Employer Value Proposition to Attract Top Talent
Yet another article your boss is about to read about what you do based on 5+ year-old data.
How to Attract Top Tech Talent
Another article confusing A way to attract talent with THE way to attract talent. There are a LOT of ways to get the job done, so don’t let Bain and Co bully you into thinking this is the only way.
3 ways to shift the soundtrack in your mind
You are the voice in your head. If you tell yourself bad stories about yourself, you will feel bad. Tell better stories and feel better. (You’re in a role where most people don’t “get” what you do: you need all the internal support you can get!)
www.alivewithideas.com • Share
Inside the fortune cookie
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
— Raymond Joseph Teller
Thanks, everyone!
There are now more than 1,100 links in the link archive. Enjoy!
Reminder: The more people at your org who read my books, the better your job will get! employerbrandbook.com (They’re free!!!)
Finally, if you have a question, 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:
Toni Childs - Don't Walk Away
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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