Chapter 3: Understanding

Organizational Culture for Successful Brand

Management

Contents

• Organizational culture• Strategic brand wheel• Brand mantras• Internal branding• Aligning staff with the brand performance

Introduction

• The top management provides the strategic framework that ‘takes the brand from current value to the potential value’ by execution of the brand experience.

• ‘In an increasingly competitive environment with continuous pressures of quarterly performance the operating team is forced to focus on the short term objectives of meeting sales and customer acquisition.

• This approach is myopic and completely overlooks the long term value creation potential of the brand to the business’ (Unnikrishnan, 2010).

Introduction

• The top management needs to carefully delineate the core brand values and design the brand identity based on their corporate vision.

• This brand identity through an internal branding process is clarified to the employees. The employees of the organization in turn build the brand and deliver the brand experience to the customers.

• The customers interpret the brand values according to their own brand experiences. This results in the brand image that is the perception of the customers of the brand identity.

Introduction

The customers’ interpretation of the brand is reflected in the confidence they place in the brand through the degree to which they purchase and consume the same.

Apollo Hospitals Brand Values

The Apollo Hospitals Group was founded by Padma Bhushan Dr Pratap C. Reddy. Dr Reddy ‘shaped and nurtured the ethos of Apollo Hospitals with his vision and inspiring leadership. Recognized as the architect of India’s healthcare revolution, Dr Reddy made Apollo Hospitals a centre for medical excellence, innovation, and a catalyst of positive change.’ What started in 1983 with a team of 25 members is now spread across Asia with 46 hospitals, 8000 beds, and over 60,000 team members. It is Asia’s largest and most trusted healthcare group and has achieved international recognition. How does it manage to deliver consistently on the exceptionally high levels of service quality standards?

Apollo Hospitals Brand Values

The employees of Apollo are ‘enjoined to follow rigorously the Florence Nightingale approach of “tender loving care.” All efforts are made to ensure that every patient who comes into Apollo is put at ease instantly. It’s not just the quality of the diagnosis, the equipment, the medical staff, or the exceptional success rates at Apollo that have made it the leading health care provider in the region; it is largely the emotional bond that the hospital creates with the patient that makes Apollo so special.’ (Superbrands, 2009).

Brand value delivery

Senior Management

Specify core brand values

Organization staff enact

offering

Consumers interpret and

redefine values

Influences

Marketing communication

The Organizational Culture• Organizational culture is defined as the ‘company’s

overall philosophy, a set of values, and beliefs that shape the way people think and behave’ (Hankinson and Hankinson, 1999).

• It is ‘an amalgamation of values which gives rise to behaviour’ (de Chernatony and Cottam, 2008).

• Thus, we can define organizational culture as ‘the values of the organization that gives rise to and influences the behaviour of employees.’

Organizational culture and brand performance

• Organizational culture is ‘the pattern of shared values and beliefs,’ which helps individuals in gaining an understanding of how the organization functions. This understanding further provides them ‘norms for behaviour in the organization’.

• This means that the workings of the employees in organizations are uniquely influenced by the prevailing culture of the organization.

• For the employees to ‘live the brand’ they need to be supported by an appropriate organizational culture.

• Organizations need to build a culture which revolves around the core brand values. This will influence the employees to perform their duties in line with the brand identity the organization has delineated

Organizational culture and brand performance

The brand interacts at the following three major levels• With the organization through the organizational vision • With the internal stakeholders through organizational culture • With the external stakeholders through the identity of the brand

which it portrays and the image the consumers develop on the consumption of the brand.

The Strategic Fit

Organization

Internal stakeholders

External stakeholders

External brand building m

easuresInte

rnal

bra

ndin

g

Delivery of brand experience

Brand

Vis

ion

Culture Identity/ Image

Strategic Brand Wheel and Gaps

• Vision-culture gap• Vision-delivery or Culture-image gap• Vision-image or Identity-image gap

Internal brandingInternal marketing Internal branding

Perspective To ‘orient and motivate its customer-contact employees and supporting service people to work as a team to provide customer satisfaction.’ (Kotler et al. 2010)

To ‘develop and reinforce a common value-based ethos, typically attached to some form of corporate mission or vision.’ (Mosley 2007)

Scope Only the customer-contact employees All the employees in the organization

Employee role Employees are used as a tool to deliver the brand

Employees are strategically involved in creating the brand

Employee status Channel to market Employees ‘live the brand’

Focus Narrow. Just focus on customer-brand experience

‘Broader range of brand-led corporate goals and objectives’

Approach ‘Outside-in’ approach as ‘focus on communicating the customer brand promise, and the attitudes and behaviours expected from employees to deliver on that promise’

‘Inside-out’ value-based approach

Internal branding process

Planning

Executing

Evaluating

Organization vision

Brand identity (character clarity and preparation)

Culture

Communication and commitment

Performance-Cultural fit analysis

Facilitation (brand oriented training and development)

Motivation, rewards and recognition and compensation

Performance of activities / Delivery of brand experience to the customers

Brand adequate behaviour

Cultural fit Cultural gap

Brand inadequate behaviour

Periodic appraisal for brand adequate behaviour over time

Feedback

Feedback

Stage 1:

Stage 2:

Stage 3:

Aligning Staff with the brand

• Organizational culture should support and encourage the staff to be a part of the branding process

• Strong brand philosophy and recruit staff who share similar values• Quiz top management about values of the brand over time• Consistent employee behaviour• Survey employees about their perception of brand from external

stakeholders / customers perspective• Consistent branding programs• Show individual employees their job description and responsibilities • Consistently measure and communicate the various brand gaps to

employees

Quick Recapitulation

• Organizational culture• Strategic brand wheel• Brand mantras• Internal branding• Aligning staff with the brand performance

Questions?