Align employee and company interests to achieve better business results

Aligning employee and company interests works well as a means to establish internal brand engagement. This enables the company to steer all of its efforts in achieving its objectives (market share, revenue, etc.) in one direction utilizing its major and most powerful resource – its talent capital.

This further benefits the company in three ways: efficiency, effectivity, and accountability.

Primarily, aligning employee efforts to the corporate objective means less resource wastage. This means people devote their time (and company money) to the more important tasks.

Secondly, goals are more effectively achieved given the clarity of vision both on the side of the employees and the company. Both parties know where they want to go, thus strategically and tactically everyone is goading in the same direction.

Thirdly and most importantly, employee accountability, ownership and responsibility are enhanced. Employee engagement ups their sense of ownership and responsibility in the things that they do. This aligns their passion, intensity and creativity to produce results that are more important to the achievement of things that are important to the company.

 

Read more on this topic and join  the discussion at: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/tjan/2009/08/how-to-align-employee-and-comp.html

Branded Employee Mindset is Business 2.0

It has always been a myopic notion that branding is the sole responsiblity of the Marketing Department. Building a strong brand starts with a branded mindset of the people making up the organization. With a branded mindset, people become advocates of the brand they work with and work for. They become the living, talking, blogging and influencing personalities of the brand.

In Business World 2.0, not invovling everyone in branding is just like promoting your brand in smoke signals. You burn them all, but you don’t put the right message across. Engaging and encouraging your employees to your brand thrust is one of the best ways in reaching more audience, influencing more circles and gathering more followers.

Visit http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp and read more on employee brand engagement in William Arruda’s “Employees are the Brand”

how sincere is your brand?

Whether we are talking about branding a country, a politician or instant noodle soup, sincerity and authenticity is of utmost importance. It is such a shame that some self-annointed branders diminish the value of the discipline by ignoring these two most important things.

Branding is a promise. Branding is not spin, and neither a catchword. Rather it is a story that tells people how and why their needs may be answered by choosing to visit or live in a certain country, vote for a certain politician or grab this instant noodle soup from the rack.

 This story is not fiction, but rather a straightforward, factual narrative that talks about the value of the product or personality. It is a story that is written from a painstaking understanding of the consumers – how they want it told; what they want to read hear or see; and what really matter to them.

 At the end of the day, the branders’ role is only to tell the story the way it is. It is also their duty to ensure that they will have a good story to tell. This is why, they have to go back to the root of the matter: how well will their country, politician or instant noodle soup answer the needs of the market they serve?

Read Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s view on authenticity in branding and join the discussion: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/kanter/2009/07/the-downsides-of-branding.html

Creative leadership is smart branding

Creative leaders are those who know how to manage themselves as a brand. This means staying sincere to the values that are relevant to the organization. It is not pompous display of shallow niceties but being in touch with the true needs of the the group. A creative leader stays in touch with what is necessary, what is valuable and what will deliver the best.

As a creative brand manager, a true leader knows him/herself from deep within, he/she knows what he/she can achieve, where he/she wants to go and how to get there. In short, a true leader knows what he can do and how to motivate the organization to reach a goal.

Just like creative brand management, leadership is achieved through strategically interweaving both internal (product or self) and external (market or the organization’s stakeholders) factors to deliver true value to the organization.

Visit discussion on:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/radjou/2009/07/why-are-creative-leaders-so-ra.html

Real Estate Brand: Build on Solid Ground

Build your real estate brand on solid ground By Ken A. Lerona (The Philippine Star) Updated October 24, 2009 12:00 AM

 

MANILA, Philippines – Many perceive branding something only for fast-moving consumer goods, such as noodles, detergents or shampoo. Sadly, it seems exclusively built only on advertising and other mass-based promotions. This is a myopic notion of branding.

Looking at the core meaning of this discipline, branding is very crucial to all products or services, especially those that require millions in investment. This is especially true in the real estate industry.

Branding is a commitment that any company or service provider builds over time. It is more than advertising and nice words — it is a continuing experience.

Positively recovering from the recent threat of global economic meltdown, the Philippine real estate market is poised to brush off the dust and dominate the skyline once again. The environment is seen to experience a déjà vu of the highly competitive scenario just before the dip of last year.

Rising from the rubble, property developers and marketers are required to fight back, armed with the necessary tools to stand on solid ground. Previous mistakes and deficiencies should be corrected while the strongest and best practices should be enhanced.

Like precious metals tested in fire, the recent economic challenge should be able to provide us the purest insights on how to tackle the new market order.

Developers’ view of doing business should be reconsidered given changing market behavior, global practices, and most specially, environmental concerns. Building with brick and mortar is no longer enough. Developing projects with relevant value is a must today.

Value is of utmost importance as a brand promise for property developers. It should be a pact written in stone.

Enough with location, location, location. In the past, property developers relied mostly on the product’s location or physical attributes to sell. We build a better mousetrap and expect people to rush and buy it. But this is no longer the case. Current consumer trends prove that property hunters — investors and end-users alike — are more intelligent, more discriminating, and keener on the value that they get for every centavo that they spend.

 “Creating value starts with adding value to people’s lives whether by offering them a better home, a better community, better facilities, a better investment, or simply a better business opportunity,” writes Jean Claude Saade in his article on real estate branding posted in brandchannel.com. He is a brand strategist who lives and works in Dubai, where mega developments have recently begun to sprout like mushroom in the desert.

Building a brand is like building concrete structures. It goes through a careful process of integrating value in every aspect of planning, implementing and controlling. And much like these tangible structures, brands — and the values they represent — need proper maintenance and management, too.

The value that matters to the market should be a crucial part of the blueprint in designing, promoting and selling, and maintaining the project.

Branding is a pact of forever. Unlike the FMCG industry, real estate developments require millions of investment. People live in these developments almost their whole lifetime and these may even be passed on to the next generation. Unlike consumer goods, these condominiums, subdivisions or commercial complexes live longer and become more dynamic and thriving in the long run.

Since the trend of pre-selling properties is the mode of doing real estate business today, it is crucial that developers consider the long-term benefits of branding. Buyers rely on the conceptual representation of the project as they part with their hard-earned bucks, and this translates to doing business as a matter of trust.

This is why building a reputable brand name and personality is very important in the real estate industry. It is the long-term trust of the market that nails the buyers to invest in the property development being offered. Reputable brands amount to a sturdy foundation that supports the whole business structure.

Branding creates an identifiable, transferable representation of the company and the projects they build. Given the high risks in investing in a property, consumers tend to compare, check and double check on the developers of the projects they consider buying.

Track record is very important to the buyers since this determines the security in their investments. They check whether these developers deliver their projects according to their promise — turnover date, finishes, amenities, services, and so on. They perceive this as an indicator of whether the developer can keep their promise on their current or future projects that they invest in.

The most successful local developers have managed to create a strong brand through a string of successful projects that they may leverage on in marketing their new and upcoming developments. They do not rely only on mass-based advertising and promotion efforts but on strategic brand management to take a strong hold of the lion’s share.

At the end of the day, what strong real estate branding provides is a better leverage in the future in whatever the business environment. It is not necessarily tangible but its value amounts to sure and secure investment to a sustainable business today and in the future.

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Ken Lerona is a real estate branding professional.