Who could find a connection between the "Hokey Pokey" and internal branding ideas? None other than B2B marketing expert Randall Rozin! Randall, who leads the Global Brand Management function within Dow Corning Corporation, serves as the company’s key strategist on brand creation, internal branding, and strategy alignment. Besides all his corporate accomplishments, Randall is always a popular guest author on the Brainzooming blog.
Now take the common Hokey Pokey as a simple metaphor to suggest internal branding ideas. A stretch perhaps, but let’s have some fun with it as at the end of the day the goal of both the Hokey Pokey and Internal Branding are the same. We want an employee to put his or her "whole self in" to the brand. This concept applies for both business to business firms as well as business to consumer companies.
As the internal branding dance begins, we start slowly with a simple hand to test the waters. We put our right hand in do an audit of what we know about our brand and what we have been doing to communicate it to our employees.
With current situational knowledge in place, we put our other hand in to develop a strategy of where we want our brand to be in the future and outline a plan to get there. Now the left hand knows what the right hand is doing and has a path forward.
Next we have to get senior management alignment to our strategy and goals with active support for bringing the brand to life with and for employees. Sometimes this involves a little footwork.
With visible support from management, we now begin to create awareness of what our brand means, what it stands for. This involves putting feet on the street to inform all employees.
The head in this part of the dance, as with internal branding strategy, is properly timed. In this phase we move beyond awareness to really helping employees understand what the brand means, why it is important and what role they, as individuals, play in delivering on the brand promises.
With internal branding strategy you want hearts and minds. We covered minds in the previous step; a way to the heart is by having some fun with your brand to help convey its message in a variety of ways. In the Hokey Pokey, putting your backside in breaks down barriers by being a bit silly during the dance. For your internal branding initiatives putting your backside in could include sharing stories, in fun ways, of on-brand behaviors as well as off-brand behaviors and how to correct them.
The ultimate aim of internal branding strategy is to have employees' hearts, minds, bodies and souls committed to supporting your brand in service of your customers. In essence, getting everyone to put their ‘whole self in’ and do so willingly as they can see the connection between what they do every day at work and why it matters and adds value to internal and external customers.
Enjoy both the hokey pokey and your internal branding ideas and remember to “turn yourself about” to have some fun with it cause “that’s what it’s all about.” - Randall Rozin
