Hiding and revealing

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Marketing (in the broadest sense) gets a pretty bad rap. Marketers are all snake oil salesmen, spin doctors and bullshit artists, right?

There’s a reason for that. It’s because we’ve come to the belief that the art of marketing is the art of hiding.

Hiding the downside, hiding the ultimate cost, hiring the fatal flaw, hiding the hidden fees, hiding the small print, hiding the strings, hiding the details, hiding the reality.

It’s all “Look at this new packaging!” and “Cool new feature!” and never “yes, the introductory fee is $29, but it costs $400 a year thereafter” or “that claim is only true in three states and even then, only on alternate Thursdays.”

And when everyone thinks you’re hiding crucial information (I mean, you are biased and somewhat incentivized to get someone to “buy,” right?), it can make our work… tough.

In selling toothbrushes or peanut butter or candles, sales success often comes by connecting the “big positive” as closely to the product as possible. Push anything out of the way that doesn’t make people want to buy it. That’s marketing as hiding.

And employer brand (as it so often does) takes its cues from consumer marketing. We think it’s normal to try and distract people from those negative reviews. We think the job has to involve obscuring what people say about us.

Does that feel like a strange thing to say? We labor under the assumption that our job is reveal something positive about our company, something that will attract the right people, but in practice, what we’re doing is the judicious application of fig leaves.

That boring but uber-positive platitude or tagline isn’t revealing anything interesting or useful to a candidate. It is hiding who you are.

An over-used phrase like “We’re a lovely place to work” doesn’t tell a candidate about what they are going into. I’ve come to the conclusion that saying you’re a lovely place to work is actually there to hide the negative aspects of the job that leadership would love to sweep under the rug. They purposefully don’t what you to say to whom you are a lovely place to work, because in being that specific, they are forced to reveal in what way they are a lovely place to work. The tag itself is there to hide any information that would help a candidate make a decision.

Hiding seems endemic to our industry. Frankly, I can’t give a presentation without someone asking, “Well, what if someone has a bad reputation/glassdoor score?” You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the question inside the question as, “How can we hide who we really are?”

Employer branding that hides is only useful in that it is better than no thought around an employer brand at all. Saying you’re a lovely place to work (and the requisite badge) at least shows that you care enough to say it, though it has little meaning or value beyond that.

What’s the alternative? Employer branding that reveals something about your company. Something specific, attractive, different and real.

Why should they want to work there. No, not that BS line you throw out because it’s “safe.” Can you say something specific? Something beyond a recruiter’s claim or a tagline. There are millions of businesses out there, so why are they choosing this specific one? It isn’t because they have that badge (a badge given to almost 10,000 businesses), but because they understand what they are being offered that they can’t easily (or credibly) get other places.

It very often feels like employer brand’s job is to shout the “good stuff” so loud that it drowns out or obscures the “bad stuff.” But we know that doesn’t work. The finest 3-star food doesn’t taste very good if you can smell the bathrooms from your table. (Which means if the bathroom smells, you won’t be able to charge 3-star prices for the food.)

Here’s the test. Look at your career site, your job postings, your social media. Based on what you are seeing, can you tell me in plain english exactly what it is you are revealing to people about your company? Something they don’t see in millions of other career sites or job postings? It isn’t good enough to say you have a “great culture” until you make it clear what that culture is, what it feels like, and how it enables performance. And once you do, can you honestly say that this thing you’re revealing is worth making a decision on? (If I were evil, I’d say, “Google that line. How many other career sites does it exist on?”)

Because if you are not actively working to reveal what your company is, what it rewards, how it behaves and why someone should want to be there, aren’t you really just hiding?

New: Want better employer brand videos? Ask better questions:

🃏 Why employees who work across silos get burned out. Gosh. Does that sound like every employer brand pro you’ve ever met? »

🃏 The role of the recruiter is changing. That means employer branding should be thinking about how to help recruiters change »

🃏 Why is Norway listed as a place where people are happy and are insanely productive? How are they achieving both? »

🃏 People want to have more control over how brands interact/engage. That is: they want to be in charge of how often they get messages and what channels they come from. Sound scary? Only if what you’re saying isn’t seen as interesting or useful (an accurate description for most CRM/candidate management communications »

🃏 How brands die »

🃏 Six methods to break your creative blocks »

🃏 Posters and all-hands meetings don’t change cultures. Calendars do »

🃏 6 Practical Steps to Use Social Media in Your Personal Branding Strategy »

🃏 Your Personal Brand Needs a Refresh. Here’s Where to Start. »

🃏 Yup, it’s me talking to Devyn Mikell on the Hire Quality podcast »

🏛️ All 2,400+ (five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!

One: Understand the financial impact having a strong employer brand. Nine questions to get your custom report. It’s free! »

Two: Compare 25 employer brand building companies side-by-side. It’s how you make a better decision about who will help you best in your EB journey. It’s free! »

Three: Three case studies that prove how an employer brand can be built in just three weeks. A 250-person manufacturer, a 300-person construction company, and an 800-person video game company. Just reply to this email.

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-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]