What Is Internal Branding and Why Is It Important

Motivation Strategies – May 10, 2006

Propelled in part by research findings from the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, and recent articles in the Harvard Business Review, businesses are taking a new look at how their employees portray or contribute to their brands. More and more research and surveys (such as the retail survey cited in the article above) confirm that employees have a significant role in customer satisfaction. Dean Barrett, senior vice president of global marketing for McDonald’s, told attendees at the Promotion Marketing Association’s recent annual conference that internal marketing has become a critical part of his company’s overall marketing strategy because, “Our employees are our brand.” Companies as diverse as Campbell’s Soup, Best Buy and T-Mobile now have management specifically in charge of linking internal marketing to external marketing activities in order to engage employees to help achieve corporate objectives. Over the last two years, the subject has appeared on the agendas of a growing number of organizations, including the American Strategic Management Institute, Advanced Learning Institute, Penn State Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Business Marketing Association, the Promotion Marketing Association and the National Association of Employee Recognition. The Harvard Business Review has published two articles on the subject in the last 18 months, and most of the major human resources management consultants now have internal marketing or branding practices.

The recognition of internal branding in turn is leading to the creation of new budgets and efforts devoted to aligning employee behaviors with consumer needs. The big question: where does this responsibility lie? In some organizations, the responsibility lies with human resources and recognition; in others, it is part of corporate communications, which might report to marketing. Also emerging at some companies are performance management groups within HR specifically charged with strategies to align organizational activities to corporate outcomes. This big shift in dollars towards internal audiences will surely attract a wide variety of performance improvement consultants and branding companies that want to play at the strategic level, in turn creating lots of opportunities for tactical suppliers who’s services help engage, enable, and empower people.