Brand Management

Abstract In this paper a holistic model for internal brand management is presented. It is based on the identity-based brand management approach according to which a brand — just like a person — needs to have a consistent and continuous identity in order to be trusted. Focusing on the role of employees in ensuring consistency of the brand identity, two new behavioural constructs are developed. The first construct — brand citizenship behaviour — outlines what it means for employees to ‘live the brand’. The second construct — brand commitment — explains the psychological processes that lead employees to show brand citizenship behaviour. Three key levers for generating brand commitment (brand-centred human resources management, brand communication and brand leadership) and four context factors (culture fit, structure fit, employee know-how and disposable resources) are illustrated as building blocks of internal brand management. The theoretical insights are complemented by many real-life examples extracted from in-depth interviews with brand managers and experts.

INTRODUCTION

Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase a product's perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity. Marketers see a brand as an implied promise that the level of quality people have come to expect from a brand will continue with future purchases of the same product. This may increase sales by making a comparison with competing products more favorable. It may also enable the manufacturer to charge more for the product. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the manufacturer. This can result from a combination of increased sales and increased price, and/or reduced COGS (cost of goods sold), and/or reduced or more efficient marketing investment. All of these enhancements may improve the profitability of a brand, and thus, "Brand Managers" often carrylinemanagement accountability for a brand's P&L (Profit and Loss) profitability, in contrast to marketing staff manager roles, which are allocated budgets from above, to manage and execute. In this regard, Brand Management is often viewed in organizations as a broader and more strategic role than Marketing alone. The annual list of the world’s most valuable brands, published by Interbrand and Business Week, indicates that the market value of companies often consists largely of brand equity. Research by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, in 2000 suggested that strong, well-leveraged brands produce higher returns to shareholders than weaker, narrower brands.[citation needed] Taken together, this means that brands seriously impact shareholder value, which ultimately makes branding a CEOresponsibility.

Principles of brand management A good brand name should: be protected (or at least protectable) under Trademark law.  be easy to pronounce.  be easy to remember.  be easy to recognize.  be easy to translate into all languages in the markets where the brand will be used.  attract attention.  suggest product benefits or suggest usage (note the tradeoff with strong trademark protection.)  suggest the company or product image.  distinguish the product's positioning relative to the competition.  be attractive.  stand out among a group of other brands. 

>fighting brand >corporate branding >individual branding >family branding >" [2]

Functions of brand (For consumers) Identification of source of product, Assignment of responsibility to product maker, Risk reducer, Search cost reducer, Symbolic device, Signal of quality. (For Manufacture) Means of identification to simplify handling and tracing, Means of legally protecting unique features, Signal of quality level to satisfied customers, Means of endowing products with unique associations, Source of competitive advantage, Source of financial returns. ("Strategic Brand Management" 3rd edition,Kevin Lane Keller)

Brand architecture The different brands owned by a company are related to each other via brand architecture. In "product brand architecture", the company supports many different product brands with each having its own name and style of expression while the company itself remains invisible to consumers. Procter & Gamble, considered by many to have created product branding, is a choice example with its many unrelated consumer brands such as Tide, Pampers, Abunda, Ivory and Pantene. With "endorsed brand architecture", a mother brand is tied to product brands, such as The Courtyard Hotels (product brand name) by Marriott (mother brand name). Endorsed brands benefit from the standing of their mother brand and thus save a company some marketing expense by virtue promoting all the linked brands whenever the mother brand is advertised. The ths most commonly referred to as "corporate branding". The mother brand is used and all products carry this name and all advertising speaks with the same voice. A good example of this brand architecture is the UK-based conglomerate Virgin. Virgin brands all its businesses with its name. Techniques Companies sometimes want to reduce the number of brands that they market. This process is known as "Brand Rationalization." Some companies tend to create more brands and product variations within a brand than economies of scale would indicate. Sometimes, they will create a specific service or product brand for each market that they target. In the case of product branding, this may be to gain retail shelf space (and reduce the amount of shelf space allocated to competing brands). A company may decide to rationalize their portfolio of brands from time to time to gain production and marketing efficiency, or to rationalize a brand portfolio as part of corporate restructuring. A recurring challenge for brand managers is to build a consistent brand while keeping its message fresh and relevant. An older brand identity may be misaligned to a redefined target market, a restated corporate vision statement, revisited mission statement or values of a company. Brand identities may also lose resonance with their target market through demographic evolution. Repositioning a brand (sometimes calledrebranding), may cost some brand equity, and can confuse

the target market, but ideally, a brand can be repositioned while retaining existing brand equity for leverage. Brand orientation is a deliberate approach to working with brands, both internally and externally. The most important driving force behind this increased interest in strong brands is the accelerating pace of globalization. This has resulted in an evertougher competitive situation on many markets. A product’s superiority is in itself no longer sufficient to guarantee its success. The fast pace of technological development and the increased speed with which imitations turn up on the market have dramatically shortened product lifecycles. The consequence is that productrelated competitive advantages soon risk being transformed into competitive prerequisites. For this reason, increasing numbers of companies are looking for other, more enduring, competitive tools – such as brands. Brand Orientation refers to "the degree to which the organization values brands and its practices are oriented towards building brand capabilities”

When it comes to brand management,most people (practitioners and scientists alike) think of conducting market research, taking decisions about brand architecture or brand positioning,and managing advertising and media agencies. All this — if it is well done — will lead to high brand awareness among target customers and a compelling brand promise that target customers might even identify with. This is not enough, however, to generate customer trust or even loyalty towards the brand. Michael Maskus, Head of Group Marketing of the international financial services provider Allianz Group states ‘You have to deliver what you promise.’ If the promise made in the brand’s advertising is not consistently kept in the customer brand experience along all customer–brand touch points, the credibility and the overall strength of the brand will suffer. This lack of consistency led the discount fashion retail brand C&A into a crisis. Their UK television ads asked viewers to ‘discover the difference at C&A today’. Yet only a negative difference could be found: badly designed stores, lowquality unfashionable products and unfriendly personnel. As a result, disappointed customers denigrated the brand name C&A to ‘cheap & awful’. In 2000, C&A closed all of its 130 stores in Great Britain. Similarly, in Germany where C& A made fancy cinema ads to target the young audience, those who went into the stores were taken aback by the 80sstyle store design and the sales personnel who could obviously hardly remember their youth. C&A Germany Head of

Communications, Thorsten Rolfes, admits ‘The mistake was that our product and our stores could not fulfil the advertising promise at that time.’1 Now, finally, C&A is aligning its advertising and its brand experience in order to regain consumer trust and loyalty. This example shows that, for a brand to be strong, it needs to have more than appealing advertising. Just like a person, a brand needs to have a credible identity in order to be trusted. According to a relatively new area of brand research that this paper is based on, strong brands are built through identitybased brand management.2 In order to better understand the development and functioning of brands and brand– customer relationships, the proponents of this approach have transferred insights from human psychology research to brand management.3 In contrast to the typical outside-in perspective of the widely used image-management approach, the identity-based approach considers an inside-out perspective as equally relevant.4 Kapferer states, for example, ‘In terms of brand management, identity precedes image.’5 While brand image is on the receiver’s side — it describes how external target groups perceive the brand — brand identity is on the sender’s side. It can be defined as those sustainable cross-spatiotemporal attributes that determine the essence and character of a brand from the internal perspective.6 The proponents of the identity based brand management approach disagree about the dimensions of brand identity. While Kapferer7 suggests the dimensions physique, personality, culture, self-image, reflection and relationship in his brand identity prism, Aaker8 proposes the four aspects of a brand as product, organisation, person and symbol, de Chernatony9 argues for the six components brand vision, culture, positioning, personality, relationship and presentation, and Burmann et al.10 put forward the six dimensions brand heritage, organizational capabilities, brand values, personality, vision and performance. Irrespective of the different categorisations and labels, what they all share is the inclusion of organisational values, capabilities and behaviour as an important part of the brand identity. The strength of a brand, measured by how often consumers buy and recommend the brand, is determined by the consistency of the different brand identity components. This consistency ensures that the gaps between the desired and actual brand identity and the outside perception of the brand (brand image) remain small.11 As difficult as it ormight be, ensuring consistency amongthe brand’s advertising and official communications is not the most critical part in achieving a strong brand identity. Customer brand experience is driven by all customer–brand touch points, and many of these are determined by employees — not only those in the marketing department, but all employees who contribute directly or indirectly to the brand’s products, services and formal or informal communications. For this reason all employees need to be familiar with the brand identity concept and be committed to live the brand internally and externally. If this is not the case, employees might easily undermine the advertising-driven

expectations with their words and actions. An example illustrates this: the mobile telecommunications provider O2 with its claim ‘O2 can do’ tries to ensure thatb every employee feels ‘I can do’ so that clients realise ‘O2 really can do’. As the Head of Corporate Culture & Events at O2, Nicolas Georghiou, says ‘If too many customers had negative experiences, people would soon start making fun of the claim ‘‘O2 can do’’.’ Therefore, to achieve a strong brand identity the external, market-oriented brand management needs to be complemented by an institutionalized internal brand management. In many companies this is still not the case. A survey among 105 brand managers in Germany revealed that less than 50 percent had taken internal branding measures. The survey also showed, however, that those companies that had implemented internal brand management were significantly more successful in achieving their financial brand targets.12 The importance of internal brand management has not only been acknowledged by an increasing number of branding experts (consultants and practitioners),13 but also by brand researchers.14 In their research they generally focus on specific aspects such as organizational culture,15 leadership16 or the management process,17 but so far there exists no holistic model for internal branding. Such an integrated model is presented in this paper. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The model in this paper is based on a review of existing research in the fields of brand management and implementation, organisational identity, culture and behaviour, internal communication and leadership, as well as indepth interviews with brand managers and branding experts. The 11 semistructured one- to threehour interviews were carried out from April to June 2004 in Germany. Interview partners were two brand consultants and nine top-level managers responsible for the corporate brand and/or internal branding in the financial services, telecommunications, electronics and transport/tourism industries. The interview partners were chosen based on their expertise in internal branding. The considered companies (ranging in size from 3,500 to 400,000 employees) were all in service or service-intensive industries where internal branding is of high relevance. Using an exploratory research approach, the interviews were used to confirm, reject or adapt the authors’ first hypotheses from a thorough literature review, in an iterative process, and to gather best practice examples in internal branding. Within this iterative process the existing constructs of ormight industry oganisational citizenship behaviour and organizational commitment from organizational behaviour were modified and integrated into the model in order to explain

employees’ brand-related attitudes and behaviour. The resulting constructs and the full model are subsequently explained. Employee behaviour: The often-underestimated success factor in brand building The crucial role of employees in brand building is due to the fact that all sources of brand identity are based on the decisions and actions of employees. In service industries this becomes particularly apparent. This does not solely hold true for service industries or for customer contact personnel, however. Gummesson18 coined the term ‘part-time marketers’ for those employees outside of marketing or sales to emphasise that they have a major indirect influence on the customer brand experience through their responsibility for the quality of the company’s products and services and through their role as internal supplier/service provider for those employees with customer contact. Some companies have put this insight into action extremely well. The coffee chain Starbucks is an outstanding example. It spends very little on traditional advertising activities, but expects its employees to create an exceptional experience for the customer. Employees’ training, their benefits, their sense of solidarity — and therefore their attitude and presentation — are consistently a cut above those of employees in the rest of the restaurant and fast food industry. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks recalls proudly ‘One of our store partners made an amazing discovery this week. He said that we are not, as he once thought, in the coffee business serving people. He said we are in the people business serving coffee.’19 In the pursuit of finding out what exactly is to be expected from employees if one asks them to ‘live the brand’, in their research review, the authors came across the construct of organisational citizenship behaviour — a construct that has received much attention in organisational behavior research. Also known as prosocial behaviour, organizational citizenship behaviour refers to individual voluntary behaviours outside of role expectations (non-enforceable functional extra-role behaviours) that are not directly or explicitly acknowledged by the formal reward system, and which, in aggregate, enhance the performance of the organisation.20 From what the authors learned in the interviews, it is a very similar type of functional extra-role behaviour in favour of the brand that really brings a brand to life, so this concept has been adopted and modified to fit the context of internal branding, and the construct brand citizenship behaviour has been coined. Brand citizenship behaviour is not only that part of organisational citizenship behavior that is brand-oriented, but also goes beyond the scope of organizational citizenship behaviour as it also includes externally targeted behaviours, while organisational citizenship behaviour is generally considered to be intraorganisational.

For a visualisation of the relationship between the two constructs, see Figure 1. Brand citizenship behaviour is an aggregate construct which describes a number of generic (brand- or industry independent) employee behaviours that enhance the brand identity. These generic behaviours can be categorized into dimensions, just as has been done in organisational citizenship behavior research. For organisational citizenship behaviour, Podsakoff et al.21 have identified seven commonly acknowledged dimensions in a literature review: (1) helping behavior (voluntarily helping others with, or preventing the occurrence of, workrelated problems), (2) organizational compliance (meticulous adherence to the organisation’s rules, regulations and procedures, even when no one observes or monitors it), (3) individual initiative (engagement in taskrelated behaviour at a level that is so far beyond minimally required or generally expected levels that it reaches a voluntary stage), (4) sportsmanship (willingness to tolerate the inevitable inconvenience and impositions of work without complaining), (5) organizational loyalty (promoting the organization to outsiders), (6) self-development (voluntary improvement of knowledge, skills and abilities) and (7) civic virtue (macro-level interest in the organisation as a whole and active participation in its governance, in monitoring its environment and in looking for its best interests). These dimensions were discussed in the interviews, and the authors learned that they are relevant for enhancing the brand identity as well, but with a slightly different focus. While for organisational citizenship behavior the first dimension is internally directed (helping colleagues), for brand citizenship behaviour it should also be directed at customers — thus the focus is wider. For the other six dimensions, the focus of brand citizenship behaviour is narrower — these dimensions are concentrated on the brand instead of the whole organisation. For better understanding, some of the dimensions were renamed, and the following list of seven dimensions of brand citizenship behaviour compiled: 1. Helping behaviour: positive attitude, friendliness, helpfulness and empathy towards internal and external customers, taking responsibilityfor tasks outside of own area if necessary, for example, following up on complaints. 2. Brand consideration: adherence to brand-related behaviour guidelines and reflection of brand impact before communicating or taking action in any situation. 3. Brand enthusiasm: showing extra initiative while engaging in brandrelated behaviours. 4. Sportsmanship: no complaining, even if engagement for the brand causes inconvenience; willingness to engage for the brand even at high opportunity costs. 5. Brand endorsement: recommendation of the brand to others also in non-job-related situations, for example, to friends; passing on the brand identity to newcomers in the organisation. 6. Selfdevelopment: willingness to continuously enhance brand-related skills. 7. Brand advancement: contribution to the adaptation of the brand identity concept to

changing market needs or new organisational competencies, for example, through passing on customer feedback or generating innovative ideas. Deutsche Bank probably had those kinds of behaviours in mind when it developed its brand claim ‘A passion to perform’. It wanted its employees not to act as ‘sales robots’ but to show more empathy for their clients. Setting up these expectations is, however, far easier than actually getting the employees to act this way. Survey results demonstrate that clients are not satisfied with Deutsche Bank’s service quality.22 Consequently the credibility and image scores for the brand are equally low.23 In general, the percentage of employees who truly live the corporate brand identity is often reported to be very low, despite the proven positive effect of this behavior on customer loyalty.24 So what drives employees to display the desired brand citizenship behaviour? BRAND COMMITMENT AS KEY DRIVER OF BRAND CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR brand commitment is the key driver of brand citizenship behaviour. The authors define brand commitment as the extent of psychological attachment of employees to the brand, which influences their willingness to exert extra effort towards reaching the brand goals — in other words, to exert brand citizenship behaviour. The term ‘commitment’ has been used frequently in the context of internal branding,25 but mostly in a rather common-sense manner without theoretical foundation. In the case of a corporate brand, the brand commitment construct as the authors understand it is synonymous with organizational commitment, which is generally defined as a psychological bond between the employee and the organisation.26 Organisational commitment has been shown to induce functional extra-role behaviour.27 The hypothesis of this paper is that this applies to brand citizenship behaviour as well. In this case, brand commitment can be interpreted as the latent variable behind the seven typical behaviours that are summarized for brand citizenship behaviour. In line with O’Reilly and Chatman,28 and based on Kelman,29 three drivers of brand commitment — compliance, identification and internalization — are distinguished. Compliance with the brand identity describes the adoption of certain behaviours that are consistent with the aspired brand identity in order to gain specific extrinsic rewards or to avoid penalties. The compliance dimension is based on Adams’ Equity Theory,30 which argues that individuals rationally balance contributions made (inputs) and rewards gained (outputs). It is easily comprehensible and has been empirically proven by O’Reilly and Chatman that commitment based on compliance does not yield any behaviour that goes beyond role prescriptions. It will, however, ensure adherence to rules,

which is a necessary basis for brand citizenship behaviour. Compliance is driven by the organisational structure, including incentive systems that determine formal rewards and sanctions,31 and the organizational culture that determines informal rewards and sanctions through social control.32 Identification with the brand identity refers to the acceptance of social influence due to a sense of belonging to the group determining the brand experience, and a perception of being intertwined with the group’s fate — ie its success or failures are perceived as one’s own. The identification dimension relies on the brand identity being perceived as a coherent group identity.33 It is derived from Social Identity Theory, according to which the individual’s identity is comprised not only of a personal identity but also of a social identity encompassing salient group classifications. These classifications can be either self-induced (‘self-stereotyping’), if the individual considers them selfesteem enhancing, or they can be imposed by others. Consequently the strength of identification can vary across the different classifications.34 Strong identification will induce brand citizenship behaviours due to a feeling of personal obligation to the brand as a group, the group of direct colleagues, the CEO or the immediate superior. Identification can be advanced through emphasis on brand distinctiveness and competition and through charismatic leadership and individual mentorship,35 as well as through a strong organisational culture with common rituals and symbols.36 Internalisation of the brand identity delineates the appropriation of core brand values into one’s self-concept as guiding principles for one’s actions. In its extreme form there is complete congruence between brand and personal values. The self-concept is ‘the totality of an individual’s thoughts and feelings having reference to himself’, 37 including traits, competences and values. An individual strives for self-congruity and therefore acts in a way that is consistent with the selfconcept due to intrinsic motivation. Internalisation is developed through organisational socialisation if there is not already a high congruence between the individual’s values and the brand values before the new employee’s entry into the organisation.38 The socialization process is driven by an informal transmission of values through colleagues and superiors, as well as by formal value communication. The three drivers of commitment are not interdependent. The brand commitment of each individual can be built on any one of the dimensions or on all three, while the dominance of one or the other dimension might vary from person to person. The brand citizenship behaviour is not influenced by all of the dimensions in the sameway. This paper’s hypothesis is that a strong internalisation has the largest influence on brand citizenship behaviour, while compliance has the weakest influence.

A HOLISTIC MODEL FOR INTERNAL BRANDING Brand commitment does not emerge all by itself. Several empirical studies confirm this: the surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization in Germany39 and by Towers Perrin in the USA40 showed that under a fifth of responding employees were highly engaged for their corporate brand, voluntarily giving that extra effort on an ongoing basis. An equal number were disengaged, meaning they had probably ‘checked out’ from their work. The remainder — roughly two-thirds of the sample — were moderately engaged at best. How can this challenge be mastered? The interviews revealed best practices, potential success factors and difficulties of internal brand management. Together with a review of existing research, they resulted in a holistic model with three central levers for generating commitment and four context factors for the evolution of brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour THREE LEVERS TO GENERATE BRAND COMMITMENT The interviews revealed that there is no panacea for generating brand commitment. A large number of measures can be taken and need to be coordinated. The essence

of these measures has been combined in three levers: brand-centred human resources (HR) activities, brand communications and brand leadership. Their theoretical bases and their application to internal brand management will be explained subsequently. The brand managers and branding experts the authors talked to unanimously pointed out, however, that these levers will not lead to success if the context factors are not in line: a culture and structure fit are necessary prerequisites of brand commitment, and brand commitment only results in commitbrand citizenship behaviour if each employee is given the necessary knowhow and resources to ensure a consistent brand experience. The alignment of the context factors will not generate identification or internalisation, but will enable compliance. Brand commitment based on identification is mainly generated through brand leadership, while brand identity internalisation can be achieved through HR activities and communication. Ensuring person–brand fit through HR activities During the interviews, one very interesting discussion evolved around the question of whether some people naturally have a disposition for higher brand commitment, while for some people it is just part of their personality never to be committed to anything. In this generalised form, the authors strongly disagree with this opinion. It can be assumed, however, that some people will have a stronger congruence between their personal values and the brand values before entering the company. Since in that case the core brand values are already part of their selfconcept, less socialisation effort is necessary. A brand-centred style of HR management needs to ensure that applicants with high personal identity– brand identity fit are recruited and selected, and that those employees with a high person–brand fit are promoted. This means that the brand identity concept needs to be the basis for employer marketing, and employee selection and promotion criteria. As Ind41 states ‘Recruitment is a branding exercise, it’s part of the management of the corporate brand.’ At O2, for example, a team of HR and brand managers has jointly developed applicant- and employee-evaluation guidelines based on the brand identity. But, as obvious as it seems, in many companies the necessary alignment between HR and brand management is often neglected. This might be due to the fact that evaluating the personal identity–brand identity fit is not an easy task. There exist promising screening methods42 that can be applied, however. Apart from these methods, allowing applicants to spend time with experienced employees and see the traits of successful employees before entering the organisation should help to achieve personal identity–brand identity fit through

self-selection.43 A second opportunity for the HR management to contribute to the generation of brand identity internalization is the phasing in of new employees. Usually the HR department organises some type of orientation training for new employees. This has a major influence on the initial socialisation process, and therefore needs to convey the brand identity with its heritage and vision, its values, capabilities and personality. In the later stages of employees’ careers, executive programmes that again highlight the brand identity can complement this initial training. In addition to formal training, social events and a mentor programme can ensure the informal transmission of the brand identity. Several studies have demonstrated that institutionalized socialisation has a significant positive impact on the generation of organisational commitment, organisational identification and person– organisation fit.44 The same should hold true for brand commit permisment based on brand identity internalisation. Generating brand communications

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If personal identity–brand identity fit is achieved through HR activities, the personal and brand values are congruent, but only unconsciously. Although in that case there is a general disposition to act congruent to the brand identity, this might lead to thoughtless brand-damaging actions. All employees need to be consciously aware of the brand identity. In some companies — especially ex-monopolists or engineering-driven companies — it is necessary to generate awareness for brand relevance in a first step. In many companies, the responsibility for the brand is delegated to the marketing department. Nicholas Georghiou, Head of Corporate Culture & Events at O2, supports this: ‘The largest challenge is to give employees in areas far away from the customer — such as procurement — a feeling for the brand.’ Similarly Ralf Klein-Bo¨ lting, General Director of Group Marketing at Deutsche Bahn (German Rail), states: ‘It’s a major issue for us that brand is still generally equated with marketing, or especially advertising, and responsibility for the brand is seen only at the marketing department. It’s not easy to make all employees understand that everybody has responsibility for the brand — that a clean railway station or a friendly welcome from a ticket inspector is just as important for the brand image as technologically,sophisticated highspeedtrain.’ So long as employees consider branding issues irrelevant for their daily work they will take no interest in understanding the brand identity. Only after each and every employee recognizes that he or she personally has a significant influence on the

customer brand experience, can an understanding of the brand identity concept be transmitted. Before discussing the suitability of different communication media for creating an understanding of the brand identity concept, a clear definition of what to communicate is necessary. A verbalisation of the brand identity concept is needed that is comprehensible and appeals to all employees, from board member to assembly line worker. This is not referring to the one-page copy strategy or creative brief that is given to the advertising agency — that will mean nothing to most employees outside the marketing department. The verbalisation of the brand identity concept has to meet two requirements that seem to be in conflict: on one hand it has to accurately represent all facets of the brand identity, and on the other hand it has to be memorable.45 Although an exhaustive brand book46 will be able to capture the full complexity of the brand identity, it will hardly be entirely memorised by all employees, if even read. A brand book might, however, serve as a good guideline for those who develop internal branding activities, for example, HR and internal communications staff. Many companies have composed a brand value statement as a guideline for employees. As these statements tend to be fairly generic and too long, however, they are difficult to remember. Leoncini47 points out that many companies mistake core values for what he calls ‘permission-to-play values’ — those values that ‘simply reflect the minimum behavioural and social standards required of any employee [that] tend not to vary much across companies’. This might result from involving too many people in deciding on the brand value statement. Consensus building in an extensive group process makes it virtually impossible to generate a short list of words or statements that capture the essence of the brand identity and that would not fit a competitor brand just as well. Leoncini48 asserts that the best brand identity verbalisation efforts are driven by small teams that include the CEO, any founders who are still with the company, and a handful of key employees. This is supported by Jens Gutsche, Director of Marketing Strategy and Brand Management at Deutsche Telekom: ‘This is not a democratic process, it has to be somewhat totalitarian.’ In order to be memorable, a brand value statement has to be short and to the point. Research has shown that the human memory can store about seven chunks of information at one time, not more.49 The most consequential reduction of the brand identity to a few words is proposed by Keller50 with his brand mantra concept. Brand mantras are ‘short three to five word phrases that capture the irrefutable essence or spirit of the brand’.51 They are a memorable shorthand of the complex brand identity concept that can provide ‘guard rails’ for the employees’ decisions and actions. Nike adopted the three-word brand mantra ‘authentic athletic performance’ to guide its branding efforts. This has saved the company from expanding its product line into areas that would not have fitted the brand identity, for example, casual shoes. Similarly Disney created the brand mantra ‘fun family entertainment’ which has

helped it to decline non-brand-identity-congruent partnering offers, for example, from a mutual fund designed for families to save for their children’s college expenses, because mutual funds do not tend to be entertaining. Aaker and Joachimsthaler52 suggest an entirely different approach to verbalizing the brand identity. They regard brand value statements as ‘ambiguous and uninteresting, especially because such lists fail to capture the emotion of the brand and its vision’. They advocate internal role models, ie stories, programmes, policies, events or people that perfectly represent the brand identity. Personalities — such as a founder or a strong, visible CEO with a clear brand vision — are argued to be powerful role models. Putting the internal perception of the brand identity in the hands of a single person is not without danger, however, as will be demonstrated in the following section on leadership. There is still quite a gap between this general understanding of the brand identity concept and the everyday routines of employees. The brand mantra or internal role model needs to be broken down into specific requirements for employees. This means that specific behaviour guidelines and targets have to be developed as ‘strategic imperatives’53 — either centrally or with employee participation. The hypothesis of this paper is that employee participation will generate a stronger brand commitment based on identification and internalisation, while imposed behaviour guidelines will only generate weak commitment based on compliance. There is no

consensus, however, among the brand managers — at a large German bank the guidelines are developed by employees and included in targets agreed with superiors. At Tchibo, a coffee shop and non-food retail chain, specific guidelines

for service personnel are developed centrally and controlled by mystery shoppers every three weeks. Irrespective of how the guidelines are developed, a thorough customer–brand touch-point analysis54 for external and internal customer relationships is a necessary prerequisite. Alongside the rather rational behavior guidelines, the brand identity concept needs an emotional appeal to generate internal brand commitment.55 In order to achieve this, professionally managed internal communication around the brand identity concept is crucial. Internal communication is composed of three forms that need to be aligned: central communication, cascade communication and lateral communication each of which includes certain specific types of communication media/channels. Central communication is distributed by a central department, usually the communication department. Mostly it is the push principle that is applied: generally written materials (for example, house journals, newsletters) are distributed regardless of whether the target audience actually receives them. This should be complemented by media using the pull principle, for example, an intranet. Here employees have to actively seek information instead of it being ‘dumped’ on them, which can easily lead to information overload. Centrally organized events are a third alternative for central internal communication, based on interactive communication. O2, which describes itself as a ‘people- and event-driven organisation’, regularly organises ‘blue events’ (blue is the corporate colour) for all employees, which deal with aspects of the brand and other important marketing topics. Central communication is useful for creating awareness and distributing general up-to-date information about the brand. Of course external communication also affects employees. Vice President of Brand & Design at Siemens, Wolfgang Do¨ tz, illustrates complethis: ‘Sometimes some things are easier to achieve through an article in the ‘‘Manager Magazin’’ than through messages from the executive board.’ Cascade communication starts at the top of the organisation and is passed on down through the hierarchy. This method also suits the distribution of information, but is more time-consuming. Its advantage is that it is more convincing to sceptical employees, as information from a direct superior will probably be more relevant and more credible to an employee than information from a central department. In order to communicate the brand identity concept, in some companies a toolbox has been developed by the brand or communication department that can be used by managers to prepare brand workshops. Even more convincing than hierarchical communications are team workshops without a superior. These self-learning teams of about ten employees elect a moderator from the group, and can be supported by a visualisation tool called learning maps. Learning maps are large poster-sized graphical representations of a topic, in this case the brand identity concept. They provide information in an illustrative way and encourage employees to think about the brand and its implications, and develop personal and group action plans. A

large German bank has employed learning maps to communicate its brand identity concept on all levels. The responsible manager is very satisfied with the results: ‘To the employees this does not feel like indoctrination from above. Since they have developed the implications for their actions themselves, they are convinced of the agreed upon targets and will try to achieve them with high commitment.’ Lateral communication describes the informal transmission of information between employees regardless of their position in the hierarchy or division, commonly referred to as the ‘office grapevine’. This is the most powerful of the three forms of internal communication in convincing sceptics, because information from peers is most likely to be remembered and to influence the decisions and actions of individuals. Lateral communication is, however, very difficult to control and exploit for internal communication purposes. One promising approach to this is organisational storytelling. ‘Stories and myths about how the organization dealt with key competitors in the past, how it survived a downturn in the economy, how it developed a new and exciting product, how it dealt with a valued employee, and so on, not only spell out the basic mission and specific goals (and thereby reaffirm them) but also reaffirm the organisation’s picture of itself, its own theory of how to get things done and how to handle internal relationships.’56 Shared storytelling can therefore be used to construct a collective sense or alignment around the brand identity concept.57 Stories do not only evolve coincidentally, but they can also be planted deliberately to convey the brand identity concept.58 In an attempt to professionalise organizational storytelling, Nike has appointed corporate storytellers, a number of executives who spread legends that support ‘just doing it’,59 and O2 is posting ‘can do stories’ in its intranet in order to describe desired behaviour. Although this paper’s hypothesis is that lateral communication is the most effective way by which to generate brand commitment, all three forms have to be employed as they comple ment each other. From the interviews, five criteria for the success of internal brand communication could be extracted. First of all, the company needs to openly communicate to its employees so that they feel informed. Information needs to be clear, specific and relevant to the respective recipient. Secondly, patience is necessary: usually it takes several communication rounds for the brand message to sink in. Encouraging brand leadership on all levels The third essential lever for generating brand commitment is leadership. Without brand leadership, the greatest communication efforts will be of no avail due to a lack of credibility and urgency. There are two brand-relevant levels of leadership to be distinguished: the macro level refers to the role of the CEO and executive

board in the brand management process, while the micro level deals with personal leadership of executives throughout the organisation. On the macro level, the executive board and the CEO in particular have a large influence on both internal and external brand perceptions. Rolke60 demonstrated the empirical correlation between the CEO’s image and the corporate brand image. The same is true internally. Employees will only take internal branding efforts seriously if they are supported by the CEO’s words and actions. Therefore internal branding needs to start at the top with convincing the CEO and the executive board of the brand relevance and the brand identity concept, so that they act as role models. Michael Maskus supports this: ‘At Allianz Group, the CEO feels responsible for the brand.’ Accordingly, in a press article about the Allianz Group stakeholders’ meeting, the CEO, Michael Diekmann, is cited with the quote: ‘We deliver what we promise’ — which is very close to the advertising claim: ‘The power behind the promise’. The downside of the prominent role of the CEO is that a few thoughtless words or actions can severely damage the brand image. This was, for example, the case when Deutsche Bank CEO, Josef Ackermann, made a court appearance that was perceived by the press as very arrogant. Another risk is that the brand identity might become so dependent on the CEO’s personality that it is left without orientation after a handover to a successor. This happened, for example, at EasyJet after the charismatic founder Stelios Haji-Ionnou left. It is therefore crucial that the CEO adjusts to the brand, not vice versa. According to Bernd Michael, Chairman of Grey Worldwide, a CEO with charisma and inner strength can be a powerful source of added value for the brand, but only if he or she is willing to subordinate their personality to the brand.61 As Josef Hattig, former CEO of the Beck’s brewery, phrases it: ‘Is the brand the boss or is the boss the brand? . . . The consumer interacts with the brand, not with the company, so the answer is: the brand is the boss!’. On the micro level, each executive also needs to act as a role model for the brand. Social learning theory62 argues that people learn new attitudes and behaviours by observing the behaviours of other people. They either learn through imitation of these behaviours or from their consequences. Social learning can be interpreted as the informal part of the socialization process through which employees learn about brand-related norms and values. In addition to role modelling, certain types of leadership behaviours are hypothesised to be more successful in generating brand commitment. The type of leadership that the authors assume to be most effective in generating brand commitment through identification is captured best by the transformational leadership theory developed by Burns and Bass.63 Transformational leadership with regard to the brand can be described as leaders’ behaviours that influence the value systems and aspirations of the individual members of the organization and induce them to transcend their own self-interests for the sake of the brand. It complements transactional forms of

leader behaviour that are based on social exchange processes and will most probably only result in brand commitment based on compliance. Transformational leadership, however, has been shown to have significant effects on organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour.64 It has also been suggested that it enhances organizational identification,65 and it is thus assumed to likewise promote brand commitment based on identification. Quantitative research by Bass66 resulted in the identification of four factors that characterise transformational leaders: charisma, inspiration, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration. The characteristics ‘charisma’ and ‘inspiration’ were mentioned, unprompted, several times in the interviews as success factors in brand leadership, while the relevance of the other two for internal brand management remains to be proven. Leaders can be trained to display all four factors, even charisma.67The characteristics need to be fostered in executive training and coaching.68 Several practitioners emphasise the necessity for empowerment of employees in this context.69 This fits in with this paper’s theoretical model, as employees with brand commitment based on identification and internalisation can and must be given more freedom than those without commitment or with commitment based only on compliance. ALIGNING THE CONTEXT FACTORS: CULTURE AND STRUCTURE FIT The three levers brand-centred HR activities, brand communication and brand leadership will only lead to brand commitment if the corporate culture and structure are in line with the brand identity concept. Corporate culture can be defined as the totality of basic assumptions, values and norms that are shared by the organisation’s members and transferred to new members, and that determine their perception, interpretation patterns, thinking, decision making and behaviour.70 Because of the large influence of corporate culture on individual attitudes and behaviours there has to be a brand identity–culture fit.71 Otherwise the brand identity concept will not be accepted among the organisation’s members. A strong brand identity that is lived by the employees is based on values that are congruent with those of the corporate culture. This implies that the corporate culture has to be considered when developing the brand identity concept. In general, a strong corporate culture will support consistency of the brand identity due to its informal coordination impact through social control.72 If a misalignment between an aspired brand identity and the organizational culture is discovered, there are three possibilities:73 adapting the brand identity concept, managing around the culture or adapting the culture. The first option is the easiest and

generally the most sensible. Since the company culture reflects the brand history and heritage, adapting the brand identity concept will ensure continuity. Managing around culture can be necessary in certain circumstances. Daimler Chrysler, for example, founded a new organisation for the new brand Smart because it would not have fitted with the Mercedes culture. In some cases it is necessary to attempt to change the culture, for example, if the culture has remained static for a long time while the customers’ demands and the competitors’ positioning have changed. Changing the corporate culture is extremely difficult, because it emerges from social interaction and is not fully controllable. ‘Culture management’ is hardly possible; culture can only be influenced.74 This implies that adaptation of culture is a long-term process that requires a lot of patience. There are two promising approaches to influencing culture. The symbolic management approach75 draws upon the fact that culture evolves in a circular process.76 Symbols are manifestations of meaning that are determined by culture- specific conventions. They are, on the one hand, an outcome of organizational culture, but on the other hand, they influence culture through their interpretation. By consciously creating new symbols or slightly changing existing symbols, culture can be changed. According to Homburg and Pflesser,77 symbols include narratives, lingo, rituals and architectural/office design. The counter-cultures approach78takes advantage of the subcultures that generally exist beneath the company culture. Von der Oelsnitz79 suggests particularly fostering those subcultures that are closer to the desired brand identity concept than the overall culture. Over time the counterculture will influence and change the overall culture. Corporate structure is the second context factor that needs to be aligned. It encompasses reward systems, infrastructure and organisational structure. The first step in aligning reward systems is to ensure that incentive structures do not counteract the desired brandconsistent behaviours.80 In order to explicitly promote brand-consistent behaviours, such behaviours can be included in target agreements, so that they can be monitored and rewarded upon successful implementation. As employees can only turn brand commitment into brand citizenship behaviour if they have access to the necessary resources and knowhow, appropriate information infrastructure, planning, budgeting and controlling systems also need to be in place. In addition, employees can only show brand citizenship behaviours if they are empowered to take the necessary brand related decisions and get sufficient organisational support. Thus, the organisation structure has to support the brand identity. Difficulties in this area arise especially in companies with several divisions that are supposed to deliver integrated services/products. For example, at Deutsche Telekom the four divisions have autonomy. This was designed to foster in-house competition, but causes problems in customer service, as responsibilities for customers and competences are not clear. In light of these brand-damaging issues, the executive

board has installed several cross-divisional initiatives and is working on a new, more brandcentred organisational structure. The problems of divisional organizations become even more severe if the divisions are once-separate companies with their own brands and cultures that were acquired or merged to become a division under one brand, as is the case at Allianz Group, which promises to offer integrated financial services. The situation is entirely different if the divisions have their own brands. Then they should be deliberately separated to enable each to build its own brand identity,81 while simultaneously ensuring the optimal level of synergies. BMW has implemented this approach to divisions by giving its brands BMW, Mini and Rolls– Royce more autonomy in their brand management.82 Another organisational challenge lies in the inclusion of external partners (suppliers or outsourcing partners) in the internal brand management efforts. This is especially crucial if customer contact personnel such as call centre agents are outsourced. Brand commitment based on identification and internalization becomes difficult for an outsourced agent, as the emotional distance to the brand organisation is very high. Vodafone has avoided this issue by keeping the call centre in house. As Christian Bo¨ing, Head of Proposition Management, Vodafone Office, states: ‘Our call centre agents represent the brand, so we want the best employees who are committed and live the ‘‘Vodafone way’’. If they encounter a question they cannot answer, they will dig into the organisation for three hours and then call the customer who will be completely astonished at the competence of the agent.’ Not only does the overall organizational structure need to reflect the brand identity — internal brand management itself needs institutionalisation. This starts at the top of the organisation. A formal responsibility of one board member, ideally the CEO, for the brand demonstrates the importance of brand management. Since the levers of internal brand management span several organisational functions, the operational coordination of the activities cannot be given to either the marketing department or the HR department. A project organisation is not adequate either, as internal brand management is a continuous, nontemporary task. A promising approach seems to be the installation of an executive brand council including all functional and divisional heads as members, with regular meetings where internal and external brand management issues are discussed and decided. Such a council exists at 3M and Kodak,83 and has recently been established by Opel84 and Deutsche Bahn. Internal brand management can be supported in a decentralised manner by the nomination of brand ambassadors in each division and geographic area. They act as multipliers, communicating the brand identity concept to colleagues and encouraging involvement. They make recommendations concerning brand issues to the corporate centre, and they share best practices in written form and in regular meetings with other brand ambassadors.85 Siemens has applied this concept,

which works especially well for such a diverse company with400,000 employees in 600 companies and 190 countries. IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH In this paper, a model for internal brand management is presented that is based on organisational behaviour research and best practices observed in companies with strong brands . The authors argue that the strength of a brand depends on the consistency of the customers’ brand experiences along all customerbrand touch– points determined by the brand’s identity. This paper’s main hypothesis is that this can only be ensured if all employees display brand citizenship behaviour based on a strong individual brand commitment. The best-practice measures taken to generate brand commitment have been consolidated into three levers: brandcentred HR activities, brand communication and brand leadership. Based on the authors’ insights from the interviews, these levers are only fruitful if the context factors of culture and structure fit, employee know-how and disposable resources are aligned with the brand identity. Since internal brand management is still neglected in many companies, it is hoped that this paper draws management attention to the relevance of the subject, and gives valuable suggestions towards its execution. An institutionalized process of internal brand management with clear responsibilities should be implemented for all corporate brands, although it is most urgent in the service industry. The model serves as a sound basis for further research. The authors are currently working on a largescale quantitative validation of the hypotheses. Customer, expert and employee surveys for selected brands in the financial services, retail, transport/tourism and telecommunications industries are being combined in order to integrate the different perspectives of internal brand management