What opportunities and benefits does ‘brand transparency’ present?

Zuckerberg has put the original brand purpose at the heart of what FB does.  Here we look at why it’s important to live the brand in everything you do.  It’s a lot more than an internal philosophy and delivers genuine customer value and great customer stories.

Brand transparency goes beyond the what a brand means to customers externally. That’s the easy bit to understand.  But is there the same level of awareness of what your brand or organisational values mean internally? Do they sit at the heart of everything you do? In the era of social media nothing is private and even internal ‘bad brand behaviour’ can spread like wildfire.

We believe in the need to navel gaze and establish what is the ‘value driven’ way of working for a business. That avoids the risk of social media leaks and resultant customer disengagement around non-brand behaviours.

If forward thinking sits at the heart of the brand key to what extent is innovation driven through the business? Are staff invited to submit new ideas, capture off the wall thoughts in an ‘innovation incubator’?

It’s a bit like practise what you preach but taken to the max. In fact, these initiatives can create fascinating brand stories for customers – a real opportunity to engage and connect with them in a different but credible way. And even get them to join in.

Two elements are important to create brand transparency – ensuring internal clarity around brand values and purpose but developing a way to live those. It takes a staged approach – engaging with the brand values and then nurturing ideas on how the values can be lived within the business. And finally, it’s about living them continually.

That way organisations can achieve consistent behaviours across customer touchpoints to create a better customer experience.  This could be via a set of pre-defined behaviours or permission to interact in a ‘brand inspired’ way.

Importantly it impacts on the product range or essence too.  Zuckerberg gradually transitioned away from his core brand purpose as the real commerciality of a big organisation kicked in.  You also only have to look at the recent ‘Cauliflower Steak gate’ (M & S) to see how important it is to behave and live up to your environmental claims.

And finally, there is the branding of the workplace. Some organisations have taken that to heart such as Google …ad agencies have long created brand rooms for their clients on creative development projects for a truly brand immersive experience.  But then that’s a whole new topic of conversation.