The Employer Brand: Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People at Work

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Employer Brand Insights

The world’s most powerful brands are built on great insights into the human condition, but as anyone in marketing soon recognises, there is far more to developing and managing a successful brand than understanding customers’ needs and aspirations. When I started my career as a market researcher I recall a well-worn marketing director advising me: ‘If all you did was respond to what customers asked of you, you’d soon go out of business.’ As my experience extended into marketing consultancy I eventually realised that this sentiment was not driven by hubris, but humility in the face of the complex, multilayered varieties of insight required to successfully manage a brand. To get it right, the brand owner must not only listen carefully to what customers say they need, but must also find a way of understanding their latent and implicit needs (that is to say, the needs they have difficulty expressing or are simply unaware of). In addition to understanding the customer the brand owner must also understand the overall shape, size and dynamics of the market; the underlying organisational or technical capabilities supporting the brand’s competitive edge; the investment required to launch and sustain the brand; and how this fits within the overall investment portfolio and business goals of the organisation.

Within the employer brand context we believe that there is significant value in taking a similarly multifaceted approach. Understanding the explicit needs and ...