Brand Love Hate

Intel's Employer Branding TV Spots

The latest TV ads from Intel that focus on its people rather than its products are both well done and often hilarious. My favorite is "rock star," which treats an Intel Fellow as a celebrity. Bummer that they used an actor instead of the real guy - that does take away from the authenticity and the impact a little.

Employer Brand Advertising in Time Magazine

I was surprised and impressed to see two employer brand advertisements in the front of a recent Time magazine (June 1 issue, Michelle Obama cover). One, for Verizon Wireless (VZW), promotes a new recruitment Web site called Who We Are and focuses on teamwork:

At Verizon Wireless, we're all part of a team. Whether it's cell technicians working together to make sure every call gets through, or sales reps collaborating to help a customer, teamwork is a top priority.

While I have a hangup with posed diversity group photography, I like the ad and the Who We Are Web site as a way to promote the company and its opportunities. It does a nice job of mixing hard-sell employer brand messaging ("a great place to work") with community outreach content and ties into the consumer brand ("world's best wireless service"). It says work for the leader, because we have the best people and the best technology. Interestingly, Sprint has an ad a few pages later, but it's exclusively for its consumer wireless phone service.

The second ad, for Starbucks, is much more of a consumer ad with an embedded employer brand message. The headline, "It's not just what you're buying - it's what you're buying into," applies that concept to many aspects of Starbucks, from the beans it buys to the farmers it supports to the staff it employs and insures:

...the little extra you pay for our coffee lets us hire and train people who know the difference between a macchiato and a cappuccino. Our people are valuable. So, in return for their dedication, we offer full healthcare coverage to everyone who works at least 20 hours a week. We continue to do this, even in hard times, because it's the right thing to do.

To me, this one is a tougher sell to the job seeker, although I like the copy. It says work here - we'll take care of you; we put the extra dollars back into our people.

Now we all know that it's each of our experiences with VZW and Starbucks that will influence and decide what we think of these companies. And it's the real work experience that will determine their employer brands. But I like these efforts - you don't see a lot of employer brand advertising in major magazines - tucked between ads for watches and banks and hotels.

When Your Favorite Brands Re-brand

I was in the dairy aisle when I knew something was wrong. Looking farther down the aisle, where I normally would see my favorite Tropicana orange juice (lots of pulp plus calcium), I instead saw a wall of unfamiliar OJ. Tropicana had re-branded, and I was lost.

That was dramatic yet real - after years and years of the same familiar packaging, Tropicana changed its product design, a change that made differentiating its varieties and flavors almost impossible. I originally thought the criticism was silly, but Tropicana then added visual keys to the shelves in supermarkets to help customers find their favorite OJ (and to not accidentally buy tangerine-orange, which I almost did many times).

The good news in this case is that Tropicana listened to customers and decided to revert to the old packaging! I think all the analysis in the blogosphere was both impressive and cut to the heart of the real problem - it's not that we love the old packaging, the new designs were just too similar and confusing. I'll be happy to have back the same old color-coded cartons.

Another recent case of a favorite brand re-branding is Pepsi, which moved from its lively blue and silver design to a dark blue (almost purple) packaging with a now-distorted version of the iconic Pepsi brand mark. While the similarity of color at least allows me to still find the product, this change is boring and really subdues the packaging. I would have much rather seen a retro look with the classic Pepsi mark untouched, rather than it being degraded this way based on popular trends.

(Ahem, Tropicana is a Pepsi brand and both projects were done by Arnell, NYC.)

Nokia Employees Stick with Mobiles

From the "eat your own cooking" department, this week I had a call with a client contact at Nokia. After scouring our CRM and her e-mails for her "office" phone number, I realized I only had her mobile number. With a small sense of panic I made the call, only to quickly conclude, "it's Nokia, dummy!" The client confirmed that employees there (US corporate office in White Plains, NY) do not have desk phones, and thus exclusively use their mobiles for work. The client said she never misses a call and prefers to have just the one phone number. I think this is great internal brand support - I wonder if other cell phone makers, and even the wireless service providers, do the same thing?

Rallying Customers Around a Brand

Last month I received an e-mail from the president of smart USA announcing its new social network for smart car owners. Smart USA Insider runs on the Ning platform and is a great way to support smart owners and connect fellow brand enthusiasts. I actually found the idea to be a bit of a no-brainer and wondered why more companies - especially those with such a fanatic user base - aren't doing the same thing. So I decided to wait a month to see how the network grew - maybe it wouldn't catch on?

It's now a little over a month since I received that e-mail, and smart USA Insider has more than 7,600 members and almost 3,500 user photos. Like the car, the smart social network seems to have caught on. And the Ning platform is perfect for rallying owners in this type of fanatic network - blog posts talk about receiving delivery dates from smart (there currently is a waiting list for the petite car), getting the call that a new owner's smart has arrived, road trips and the resulting miles per gallon (often 40+) and more. The Events tool helps owners gather one another in person for meet-ups (with some great resulting pictures), and the Forum allows owners to interact, answer questions and provide advice like how to properly acknowledge other smart owners on the road.

Smart USA also has a goldmine of data here - many smart owners also are sharing the problems they are having with their cars, such as check engine lights going on, wheel dust and dealers acting improperly. For a young vehicle and brand (in the US anyway), this information - if mined properly - should be incredibly helpful for smart. It looks like the site has moderators, but another step could be to have smart representatives answer questions and concerns (right now it looks like owners only).

I'm not an owner myself, but after hanging out on the site for a while, it's hard to not get caught up in the excitement around the brand and the interaction among the owners.

A Reason Not to Use AOL Mail to Send Out Your Resume

Today I received a resume via e-mail for one of the openings at my company. At the bottom of the well-written e-mail cover letter was the following footer message tagged on by AOL (which owns TMZ):

The Famous, the Infamous, the Lame - in your browser.

Get the TMZ Toolbar Now!

A word of advice to job seekers - use Gmail or spend $50 for the year to get e-mail at your own domain. It's worth the time and/or investment to make a good first impression.

Netflix Hears You - and Actually Replies!

I don't even use Netflix profiles, but today's e-mail to customers is the right way to handle user feedback:

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Jason,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Always better to ask users before a change like this, but Netflix handled it well.

Think You Have Recruiting Nailed? Move to Onboarding

The employer brand promise is made during the recruitment process, and it's checked and measured every day of employment. But day-one employment seems especially critical, as the new hire quickly is assessing - "is this everything I expected and was promised?" This makes me wonder how new employees who show up for their first days of work with less than they expected - maybe no desk, no computer, no game plan or no idea they were arriving - feel about their new employers during those first days? A rough first day or week definitely can be overcome, but why take that risk? Being as organized with onboarding as you are with recruiting helps deliver on the employer brand promise and keeps the momentum of positive interviews and interactions from before day-one employment going. Some companies (Cargill and Swedish Medical Center are two I found quickly on Indeed) even have HR staff dedicated to onboarding of employees. But it's a matter of attention rather than people. What I've seen is that almost everyone wants to hand off or opt out of onboarding - recruiters think their job is done, and hiring managers are too busy to organize the details of day-one employment. So why not have someone (even as just part of his or her job, for smaller firms) responsible for onboarding?

Coke Zero by Request

You know a beverage has gone mainstream when it starts getting requested on airplanes. I recently heard passengers requesting Coke Zero while on a JetBlue flight to San Diego. The answer was no - only Diet Coke was available - but it told me that Coke Zero popularity is on the rise. And the stats look to back that up - Beverage Digest reported (PDF) in March that Coke Zero volume was up 37.5 percent in 2007, when almost all of the brands in the top 10 were declining. Maybe the airlines should take note (looks like some restaurants have).

If These Kids Work for You, it’s Time to Fire Them

Employee photography is a requirement for effective corporate career Web sites. And if not possible, no people photography at all is better than stock photography. Employee imagery should be reflective of the company, its workplace and culture, and stock simply can't pull it off. Check out the happy, perfectly diverse and balanced group above - it looks like your company, right? I've seen that image on career Web sites and in recruitment materials for company after company, and even used it for an employee communication project about eight years ago. While providing what almost every company wants in its employee imagery - diverse, good-looking, seemingly professional people who can smile - it's fake. And even worse, it looks fake. It's not reflective of any type of work or unique workplace whatsoever.

Where stock photography really breaks down with job seekers is when they start seeing it in multiple places - for different companies - and it's clear that these pretty people can't work at both. This results in an appropriate question - if your employee images are fake, then are your employer promises as well? A career Web site should reflect the organization and help candidates determine if they are a good fit - but how do either happen when the content is not believable?

Stock photography in employer branding efforts only makes sense from the standpoints of budget and convenience. Some will say that real employee photography is too hard - it can cost a lot of money, is a ton of maintenance as inevitable turnover occurs and is a project never really completed if you want to reflect the company as it truly is today. But it's authentic, and that's a requirement. Otherwise you can use this smiling group as others have, and have job seekers question all of your recruitment messaging.