5 - Culture

Summary

Brand = behaviour

Brands, we have argued, are organized heresy: they ensure the continuous importing of differences into the inner sanctum of the organization. There, at the inner sanctum, the brand meets the people who work for the organization. Organizational members are increasingly understood as prime opportunities to express the brand. The idea is simple: the brand experience of consumers is dependent on the way they are treated by organizational members. Hence, so the story goes, the brand equals the behaviour of staff. This chapter analyses how brands write themselves into organizational behaviour and culture. We propose a simple argument: in a service economy, organizations rely on people to make their customers happy. The brand is not built around the product but around the employees who deliver the service and (ideally) create a memorable experience.

Cindy Carpenter heads marketing and HR at Corrs Chambers Westgarth, one of Australia's leading law firms with around 1,000 employees. Before taking on this dual role, she was a brand manager at Unilever, finished her MBA at Wharton and worked for thirteen years as a strategist with the Boston Consulting Group.

Cindy's portfolio heralds the advent of a new era for brand managers. In the context of a professional services firm, the brand is developed and delivered through employees.