For any organization, the lifeblood of its workforce is its people. Their spirit, motivation and way of working must be nurtured in a corporate culture. Once a business identifies its brand as the focus for sustainable development, its corporate culture must also change in a way that supports the brand.
Economists believe that people make brands and brands are the elements that make up a company’s unique culture. Customers are the ones who spend money not to buy products but to enjoy those cultural values. For example, if they are in a situation where they have to choose between two similar types of coffee at the supermarket, consumers tend to lean towards the brand that is known to have an equal business relationship, bringing long-term benefits to farmers, rather than the brand that does not have this meaning. On the contrary, any business brand that has shady behavior, deceives consumers, violates professional ethics or business ethics will be boycotted by consumers.
This has happened to many brands in the world and in our country there is no exception. Consumer psychology is not only to choose goods based on simple benefits of use but also to decide based on emotional factors, to see what the brand means and how it affects them when they buy and use it.
Products are made by human hands, but hidden inside is the synthesis of knowledge, wisdom and experience accumulated by the enterprise during its operation. Beyond the product's utility value, the brand is the crystallization of culture within each product.
Brand: more than just the outside image
Recently, events related to issues considered “sensitive” within some public companies have been mentioned quite a lot in the media. This must have affected the reputation of these brands to some extent. We know that building a brand means creating an image for the outside of the business. Usually, consumers only see the “rosy picture” “painted” on the outside through the media.
What about the “color” of the company’s internal image? Do consumers want to know? The answer is yes. It’s like going into a hand-embroidered shop and wanting to find out if the paintings on display are truly hand-embroidered. This is not difficult in today’s multi-channel environment.
The results of a survey on employee satisfaction with a leading company with a “blue chip” stock value in Vietnam showed that the rate was only 50%. What does this number say? Surely there is much work to be done for the human resources department and the leadership of this company if they want to improve work performance.
Human resources are always the top concern of most businesses, but the question for leaders is what has the company done to attract and develop a team that is dedicated to the "flag and color of the shirt". Is it just salary? How can employees serve customers attentively as advertised by the brand when they themselves do not have faith in the place where they are working?
The above evidence shows that any business that wants to fulfill its brand promise to customers must first gain the trust of its employees in its leaders because they are the "brand ambassadors" who provide products and services directly to customers.
From this, it can be inferred that the big challenge for a business is to create a “transparent” corporate brand image from the inside out. Only then can the corporate brand “live” its true nature, bringing more value and meaning to related groups, including customers and employees.
Culture: the source of energy for the brand
For any organization, what makes it alive is its human resources. And their spirit, motivation, and way of working must be nurtured in a corporate culture environment. Once a business identifies the brand as the focus for sustainable development, the corporate culture must also change in a way that supports the brand. This process requires time, dedication, and perseverance from the leadership.
On the other hand, businesses must know how to promote the power of solidarity within the organization by pointing out the truth that we are all facing, which is the “shame of a poor country” instead of empty calls for “unity”, or purely “humanitarian” or “job-creating” work for employees.
In an ever-changing world, products, technologies, factories, management and people will eventually become obsolete and fade away, but the brand and culture of the company will survive and evolve over time if the business knows how to manage according to the vision and ambition of the brand. Specifically, these are values that contain strong beliefs and core goals that can motivate and inspire. For example, one of Sony's core values (1950) is to enhance Japanese cultural values or Walt Disney's core goal (1923) is to bring happiness to people.
More specifically, any business that focuses on brand for sustainable development should start by building a brand community. This community not only includes internal staff but can also be extended to external audiences such as customers, partners and the public. If the internal branding work is done well with the meaning of "conquering and spreading aspirations", the business will have the opportunity to attract people who share the same vision and trust each other, accept challenges and contribute to the long-term goals of the brand. The result is to form a sense of belonging and pride in being a member of the community in themselves, thereby creating a cultural environment of voluntary cooperation and discipline, continuously creating energy for the brand over time.
Brand and culture: a reciprocal relationship
For strong brands, the brand must be embedded in the culture and vice versa, the culture must be embedded in the brand. It is a close reciprocal relationship. Internally, the meaning of the brand must be spread into the corporate culture to create emotional added value for the brand at all points of contact with customers. It must originate from empathy with the direction, thereby forming motivation, spreading to the consciousness and behavior of all members of the community. On the outside, any brand that does not have a unique culture and personality will remain a common product or service with low value, and will hardly survive long in a competitive global market.
Japanese and American brands that have been famous for decades in the world have declared that they do not sell “high quality” products or services but rather sell the “cultural values” or “lifestyles” of their own people. It is not too late if every leader asks themselves now what the words “made in Vietnam” attached to their products or services really sell.
According to experts, whether a brand is successful or not depends on the daily actions of the leader and all their employees. Corporate culture is built by the product brand, but the product wants to have a good brand, it must be built by the staff of that business.
Kinhdoanh.com
