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.

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?

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.

Recruitment Video: Sleepy's

This weekend I was checking out the Sleepy's career Web site and found its excellent recruitment video targeting retail salespeople. I like it a lot because of what feels like very honest employee interviews without a lot of scripting. Examples - a bank manager turned mattress salesman refers to banking as a "thankless profession" and talks about being "burned out by banking," a female salesperson says she is one of the top earners in the company then quickly qualifies that as "top female" earners, and another salesman admits that "no one really grows up wanting to sell mattresses."

Along with good production values, the video excels because it doesn't have one second of B-roll. You don't see salespeople working with customers or happy people pretending to load a new mattress in their minivan while cheesy music plays. It's all about the employees and their Sleepy's experiences, which feel real. To me, they don't sound like puppets, and I'm happily surprised by some of the content that I wouldn't expect to get through an edit by corporate communications or the legal department.

Along with the good, there are a few criticisms - the video is very long (about 15 minutes) and huge to download (more than a 50 MB Flash file), neither of which are ideal for the Web. Maybe there is a shorter edit that would work, or multiple clips? Also, the video ends with three minutes of Sleepy's TV commercials, which seem out of place. Lastly, I could not find the video on YouTube - you would think that Sleepy's would want something this positive to be shared among job-seeking salespeople.

Employer Brand vs. Employment Brand vs. Recruitment Brand vs. Talent Brand

At my last job, I worked on a number of employer branding projects and sales pitches, and at my current gig, our recruitment advertising solutions support and strengthen our clients' employer brands. A question that has spanned both jobs is why there is such a lack of consistency in what companies call "employer branding," with a number of variations causing my confusion.

Here are some of the most common variations that I have seen:

Employer brand, employment brand, recruitment brand, talent brand

To me, only employer brand (and thus employer branding) makes total sense. The employer brand is a relationship between employees and the company, as well as a promise for what the employment experience should be like for both those employees and for job seekers. While the employer brand certainly reflects what it's like to work at a company, it represents the company itself, not the "employment."

The phrase "recruitment brand" refers to recruitment marketing, in which the employer brand is critical, and recruitment marketing campaigns certainly have themes and taglines that could be confused as a brand. But the core of those efforts - on which all else is built - is the employer brand, which sets the expectation for what working at the company will be like. It's a promise to job seekers of what they will experience as employees. If a branding effort is focused on recruitment marketing only, the actual employment experience for new hires likely will not live up to the expectations set in the recruitment process.

"Talent brand" is a newer variation that recently hit my IN box. It seems to suggest that the company's people are the central focus, rather than the employment experience. While people certainly are important to any employer brand and deliver on it every day, the brand represents much more - the company's promises to and relationships with employees, not (just) the employees themselves. And while people likely have more impact on the delivery of a company's employer brand than any other factor, they are still just one factor among many (consider benefits, meaningful work, learning and growth opportunities, work-life balance and the like).

When considering any of these variations as they come up, I always ask what the brand represents and contemplate the object of job seekers' and employees' perceptions. In almost all cases, it's the company, and thus "employer brand" makes the most sense.

Recruitment Video: Sodexho Internships

Our Workplace is Better Than Their Workplace

Posted on Google Docs, Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman put together a hilarious and effective recruitment pitch by comparing working at Google with working at Meetup.

(via Micro Persuasion)

A Couple Articles to Share

Two articles I've been meaning to share:

• What Are Search Engines Saying About Your Brand? - This is a great article, and I would add that setting up e-mail alerts will allow you to monitor your brand on the search engines, and will give you the opportunity to see new mentions and pages indexed right away so you can react quickly. Related article here.
• M&As Can Lead to Talent Loss - While this is not a surprise, it's great to see some data reinforcing what employer branding specialists have said about how mergers and acquisitions can impact a company's employer brand and potentially cause turmoil among employees.

Happy reading!

Conan O'Brien Tours Intel