6 Ways to Develop and Nurture a Successful Brand Culture With a Limited Budget

Discover Top 6 Ways to Develop and Nurture Your Brand Culture Successfully With Limited Resources

1. Be Clear What Your Brand Culture Is

First things first: to develop your brand culture, you first need to know what you want it to be. What’s your bigger purpose behind what you do, what role do you fulfil in society, the reasons beyond the money? Purpose is the driver of brand culture and culture is the engine behind organisation results — it’s fundamental to business longevity and organizational success so critical to get right.

Related: Top 5 Reasons Why Brand Purpose is The Essential Growth Driver in a Fast Changing World

In the early years of a young business there can be so much focus on growth that brand culture is sometimes an afterthought or something put off until later. A lot of businesses and brands emerge without really thinking about what their brand strategy or brand culture is. But to develop and nurture a great brand culture, you first need to be clear about what it is and the brand strategy underpinning it. The later you do this, the more work it can take to get it right because it is harder to change something as it gets bigger, in fact it can take years to effect lasting culture change.

Related: Brand Promises, How to Craft, Articulate and Live Them for Brand Success 

2. Be Willing to Develop Your Brand Culture Over Time

Some brands feel as if they have been around for ages. You may remember them from your childhood, or your first job. When you look at old adverts for those brands, you get a sense of the culture behind the brand. There are often some things which have remained unchanged – but other things which have moved with the times, even if you hadn’t realized it before.

Image via Likesharetweet © Heinz

Some brands have been around for a very long time, but that does not mean that their brand culture has been the same throughout even if the brand name is unchanged. Like human beings, brands evolve over time and even more importantly, parts of what they stand for – such as their brand culture – can change.

Re-evaluating your brand culture regularly in the form of a brand audit health check to see if it is still fit for purpose is an important part of developing and managing your most valuable asset — your brand. A brand audit health check enables you to maintain relevance, be fit for purpose, identify your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for growth — help you to future proof your business. 

Parts or all of your brand strategy may be reaffirmed to still be relevant and exciting. Other parts may be in need of some evolutionary adjustment in the form of a brand refresh, or perhaps a more dramatic overhaul, a rebrand. That can be not only because the brand has changed, but also because the world around it has changed. For example, consumption patterns may have changed from previous years or the competitive landscape may have shifted.

Image via Telegraph © Burberry

An example is the iconic clothing house Burberry. Their brand image had been suffering and their brand culture felt dated. Under the creative direction of Christopher Bailey and business leadership of Angela Ahrendts, the brand culture was brought up to date while keeping the essence of the brand intact.

Related: Redefining Your Brand Culture After a Rebrand, Sale or Merger

3. Bring Your Brand Culture to Life – Without Breaking the Bank

In popular conversation the word ‘culture’ refers to things like the visual arts, performance,  entertainment and different geographic or ethnicities around the world. Culture thrives on good open, clear communication, ideally appealing to multiple different sensory factors.

A brand culture which lives only in a document adds little or no value to a company or the bottom line. In fact, an organisation with no well developed brand strategy or brand culture rarely performs optimally or delivers financially to its full potential. 

To really take root and become the living embodiment of a business, brand culture needs to be part of the very fabric of the organisation engaging leaders and employees throughout. Everything from onboarding, communications, development, training and learning journeys, customer experience, customer journeys, design application, marketing campaigns, sales scripts, language, incentives and reward, innovation and creativity, product hierarchies or brand architecture – how products and services are developed and delivered is influenced by, and takes its direction from, your brand strategy and brand culture.

The good news is that it does not have to be a huge investment and in some cases can be done effectively with lean resources. The results of so many participants of the Persona 7-Figure Business Building & Brand Strategy Mastermind is evidence to this alone. 

Bring your brand culture alive through storytelling, rewarding everyday examples of brand culture in action amongst your team and customers and tracking measurable progress. Consider the physical environment in which you operate and shape it to reflect the personality of your brand, share your brand values creatively on your walls, define your optimal brand culture behaviours and make them part of everything you do every day.

Consider your communications on and offline, be that through your social channels, video campaigns, music, website, brochures and packaging. With some careful thought and consideration, brand culture can be brought to life widely and often without excessive expenditure in smaller businesses. 

© MGI Learning

If you’re considering embedding your brand culture into your organisation then perhaps talk to MGI Learning. This is a very successful learning and development business founded in the UK over 20 years ago that went through its own transformation process with Persona Design a couple of years ago in the form of a brand refresh. Working with clients globally they’ve enabled organisations to transform their brand culture through building collaborative, co-creative, positive, high trust cultures.

© MGI Learning

Their founding premise is that “everything you think, feel, say and do is either a service or a disservice to yourself and everyone around you” because culture is played out by what people say and do every day. In fact, they have a world renowned IP for truly embedding culture change which is evidenced multiple times over in the metrics their customers have achieved after engaging in the MGI culture embedding process. Their IP is the envy of many competitors because few can touch the rigorousness of the MGI systems and the impact they have throughout the organisations they work with from senior leaders to general staff.

For a customer facing company, its people are often the physical embodiment of its brand culture. Choosing the right people, training them well to become your brand champions with effective embedding of learning and giving them the tools to perform is one of your most powerful ways to bring your brand culture to life and enhance your customer experience.

Related: How to Use Brand Values to Drive Unwavering Customer Trust and Commitment

A case study of bringing brand culture to life at little cost is the innovation consultancy ?What If!. They used to be passionate about their brand values, painting them on their office walls. Employees and visitors could post a story next to a value detailing something an employee had done which showed the values in action. Each month an award would be given to one such nominee at a company huddle. This is an inexpensive and fun way to get people thinking about their brand culture every day, passing its manifestation multiple times a day on the office stairwell.

4. Get Your Brand Culture Out In the Market

One of the mistakes some businesses make is thinking that brand culture is an internal phenomenon alone. In fact, a great brand culture powers the organisation and brand forward and makes it more appealing, not only internally, but also to a wide range of external stakeholders. To that end, your brand culture should not be hidden under a bushel, but broadcast loud and clear. A strong brand culture should help differentiate you, enable you to be highly visible, credible, trustworthy and loved — a customer magnet, attracting and retaining your ideal audience so you consistently grow profitability.

Sometimes, getting your brand culture into wider circulation can cause raised eyebrows when you challenge the status quo or do things very differently as a disruptor. Customers, competitors and the media may challenge you. For example, Microsoft’s former CEO Steve Ballmer was famously filmed telling an internal audience that he loved the company, voluminously and energetically. He was ridiculed, but the wider audience got an insight into the passion in the Microsoft culture [1].

Related: The Impact of Company Brand Culture On Driving Performance and Increasing Sales 

Although initially perhaps uncomfortable, for the majority of organisations (with a few exceptions) sharing your brand culture with the wider world beyond your organization is important because it elicits feedback from different perspectives. It helps you to calibrate what your brand culture actually is rather than what you might aspire or assume it to be so you can be more aligned with external perceptions.

Image via Telegraph © Santander

A case study is the way in which Santander built its brand culture in its retail banking operation in the U.K. Rather than relying on internal facing documentation, the company got out and spoke to customers and others about what their view of banking was [2]. That is something it is easy for most businesses to do; the Santander experience is shown in this video.

Related: 4 Ways You Can Be More Customer-Centric to Grow Your Business

5. People Are The Key Factor in Developing Brand Culture

Like other forms of identity, culture is something which is shaped, reinforced, or undermined with even the smallest of day to day actions. So the way a brand’s people live its culture is critical to helping it develop in the right way. For large organisations that can be reinforced by training and embedding, internal communications, human resource policies and other tools. But no matter how small a brand may be, people are critical to helping its brand culture to flourish.

Related: 6 Brand Culture Do’s and Don’ts for Attracting and Retaining Your Ideal Customers and Top Talent

Every interaction that customers, employees, suppliers and stakeholders have with an organisation leaves its own imprint or impression about what that entity represents — good, bad or indifferent. This is why people are so critical in developing and nurturing a strong brand culture. Simply relying on your people to find their own way to build your culture positively is an approach based on hope not strategy and rarely works. 

Image via BBC

An interesting observation is offered by online shopping giant Amazon. It has come, reportedly, under fire for its working practices, which could cause a brand crisis. Instead of ignoring this, it saw it as a chance to burnish its brand culture. In the U.K. it has had a series of commercials with employees expressing what the brand means to them, as shown in the video below. Even if such an approach can risk seeming somewhat self-promoting or artificial, it does engage people in a useful conversation and shows that a brand takes its culture seriously.

Related: How to Build a Brand Like Amazon, Technology Branding and Marketing

6. Encourage Role Modelling of Your Brand Culture

Because your people are so important in developing and nurturing your brand culture, it’s  important to motivate them to role model the brand culture in daily actions not just words.

Image via Bold Business © Zappos

Even when a brand culture reflects the people who are the living embodiment of it, that doesn’t mean that they will always live up to it automatically. This is one reason why role modelling can be so powerful. 

The footwear retailer Zappos shows us an interesting approach to this. They offer $2,000 for anyone who completes their first week of training and decides that the company is not the right fit for them. Offering money for people to walk away when there is not a good fit with brand culture is brave – but it helps model the desirable brand culture. That is seen in the video below.

Related: The Age Of Internal Branding And Selling It From The Inside Out

Final Thoughts

Brand culture directly affects business impact externally but also internally. Developing it well requires a strategic approach so you have clarity around what you want your brand culture to be and how you’re going to execute on that brand strategy to achieve your objectives. 

Documenting your brand strategy and culture enables you to bring your brand culture to life so it becomes a living embodiment of the business. It also enables you to identify the elements that are immovably parts of the DNA and the aspects that need to be flexible and open to change so the brand stays relevant and can evolve over time. 

People are the critical factor in bringing a positive brand culture to life so don’t leave it to chance. Ensure the development of your brand culture is supported through brand induction, training and embedding strategies with your people because they’re a key interface in how it’s communicated both internally and to the outside world. 

Consider scheduling a brand audit because any crisis, like the pandemic, throws up a wealth of new data, insight and questions which make your brand fitter for long term survival. Evaluating your brand’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for growth through a brand audit health check enables you to thrive long term.

A positive brand culture only thrives with strong leadership so it’s important to develop and nurture the right brand culture because this is what enables an organisation’s people thrive — all of which ensures the business prospers and consistently grows its bottom line.

Questions to Consider

1. How clear are you on what your brand culture is?
2. How has your brand culture developed since you either founded your business or joined the organization you currently with?
3. What clues are there to your brand culture for someone engaging with your brand online or through your customer experience team or walking into your premises?
4. Have customers shared with you factors they like about your brand or other competitor brands?
5. How can you encourage your people who bring your brand culture to life?
6. Could you use a brand audit to help you reevaluate your brand strategy so you can strengthen your brand culture and grow the business even in times of adversity?