I was watching Tony Hsieh's presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit and something he said stuck with me.
I'll save you from having to watch the whole presentation in case you are familiar with his story.
"Culture and Brand are the two sides of the same coin."
We've seen a shift towards service as differentiator. Alan Wolk has a great presentation on this.
And this is what Zappos has focused on to great success.
Today, Zappos is the largest online shoe store in existence. Not bad for a little online retailer that went from $0 to $1 billion in revenue in just 10 years.
What Tony is saying is that crafting our communications is no longer THE solution.
Your culture is now an indicator that will impact your brand.
And to provide amazing service, you require an amazing culture.
No big deal. Until the introduction of digital into our everyday lives.
Everyone is exposed. Our actions. The actions of our employees.
The actions of our customers.
This belies a shift far greater than the movement of funds from TV to Search Advertising.
Our audience is looking past the carefully worded telephone scripts and customer service training.
Our audience is starting to see inside the walls.
The skeletons are being revealed.
How long before Wikileaks is reporting on everyday brands?
The answer to this one is easy. They already are.
And yet we expect that our company cultures will stay hidden?
Fat chance.
This is why I am so impressed with TwelpForce.
In one stroke, they have helped to embrace and transform the culture at BestBuy.
Now, maybe there is a brand out there that won't touch us in digital and social.
A brand that can hide behind the corporate walls and let the world go on about it's way.
But until we find such a beast, it's critical we take the time to asses the culture of the organizations we work with.
What is the culture?
What is exposed about the culture?
How is this impacting the experience and the brand?
Love to know your thoughts or some questions you use to explore this very issue.
I think consumers will make the connection between the brand and company culture faster in a B2C environment than B2B - do you agree?
Posted by: Amrita Chandra | August 18, 2010 at 04:47 PM
Good stuff Sean.
As for the, "Now, maybe there is a brand out there that won't touch us in digital and social. A brand that can hide behind the corporate walls and let the world go on about it's way."
What about Apple? Some of the stuff with the iPhone 4 is cracking away at this, but they still do a very good job of this, no?
Posted by: paul isakson | August 19, 2010 at 11:49 AM
Grin. I thought of them. But they are starting to advertise regularly. And Steve Jobs actually answering customers emails??? Im wondering if the facade is cracking??? Only time will tell! :)
Posted by: Sean Howard | August 19, 2010 at 12:59 PM
Apple is a great example that leads me to suspect that there is a matrix of factors that come into play.
A brand such as Apple is connected with a tangible product with properties that are inherent in that product. If that product delivers a great experience, the culture behind that product almost seems to be bestowed on the organization it's associated with.
Conversely, the frustrations that many people have with Windows products automatically get transferred to Microsoft, whether or not the properties of the products are truly a reflection of the organization that created them.
In other words, do we tend to extend the benefit of doubt until a touch point delivers a poor experience? At that point, that human-to-human connection - the culture - would then come into play either to save the day or to extend the poor product experience to infect the organization's reputation.
Posted by: Andrea | August 19, 2010 at 02:22 PM
Nicely stated.
I love the idea of emotions being a potential state or unrealized energy attached to a product that is realized at the point of usage. And the idea that this would then be applied to the perceptions of an organization makes perfect sense. If Im following your argument, you also appear to be seeing culture as a potential state attached to the products (or services) a company creates. That gets quite intriguing and would love to explore this more with you.
I also concur and believe that the ability to save a bad experience (across touchpoints) is one of the greatest opportunities with social media.
And are we not also seeing how this human to human interplay affects people outside of any interaction with the product? As companies become more exposed, I wonder about the role this plays on general perception or beliefs around brands and what they stand for.
Posted by: Sean Howard | August 19, 2010 at 02:33 PM
This is a great question.
I think that yes, in our present environment, this is likely true.
But I don't think it is necessarily because of anything intrinsic to B2B beyond the fact that social tools have not been as fully adopted in these spaces.
I look at Microsoft and how they enabled all their experts to have blogs and become sources for information and engagements with business customers.
Or SUN (who sadly failed) who enabled all their employees with blogs and social tools.
As more companies move into adopting these tools, will this change things?
Posted by: Sean Howard | August 19, 2010 at 02:35 PM
Oddly enough, I have been pondering exactly the same thing in the last couple of weeks (mostly from the perspective of working with professional services firms). For service organizations, their external brand and their internal culture are two sides of the same coin.
For me this is interesting, because it means that the work I do from an org change, collaboration and knowledge management perspective has a marketing and customer service aspect to it - and vice versa.
I'm going to disagree with Amrita and say that this culture/brand overlap is just as important in the B2B space - in fact I would say it can happen even quicker - because B2B services firms tend to have more intense and sustained relationships with their clients than B2C ones.
I'd also note that your brand is created to your enacted culture rather than your espoused culture. It's what your people do that matters not what it says in a company values statement.
Posted by: Matt Moore | August 25, 2010 at 07:13 PM
Nice post Sean. Increasingly I'm of the opinion that company values can't be faked through social media. If you're a decent company, then it will shine through, and if your an Omni Consumer Products-esque monster, you won't be able to hide it for long either. I would add that we've found that B2B's are actually slightly ahead of the social media adoption curve - it's ideal for building the kind of long-term relationships B2B's thrive on after all - (http://bit.ly/bDsaGA) and I'm sure that business customers have an extremely vested interest in finding out just who they're dealing with.
Posted by: Matt Owen | September 02, 2010 at 09:16 AM