Activating the brand across the org

Recently, I was invited to Eli Health’s all-hands to speak about the importance of activating the brand across the org.

Of course, I was thrilled to talk about this, but I was even more delighted that our client was already thinking about this at such an early stage in the company!

The first question for me was, “How does the brand strategy have anything to do with the engineering team?” Ha! But also, great question.

As a brand leader, I often see how the brand comes to life through product experience, marketing campaigns, and content creation. But when I see other functions, outside of marketing peeps, and use the “brand lens” to make business and operation decisions, that’s when the magic happens. In the agency world, we call the brand strategy the 🌟 North Star of the company because it enables alignment across teams, unifies leadership, clarifies and prioritizes the roadmap, attracts and uncovers the right hires, evaluates potential partnerships, accelerates growth… It’s an underrated version of OKRs, IMO.

On the other hand, every single employee is a brand influencer/advocate. Don’t forget, that brand perception is what customers believe about a product or service, and how it makes them feel. Even if you’re not in a customer-facing role, you can still make or break the perception of the brand at any point in the journey, from awareness to retention stages. Imagine Airbnb is about “belonging” and the stay did not feel welcoming, or when Uber is about “mobility” and the transit is disjointed. The brand experience requires solutions from product, engineering, operation, legal, finance, customer service… It’s the consistent delivery of a single promise that builds brand trust over time.

Eli’s team asked, “Does brand create or influence company culture?” Absolutely.

Naturally, your company North Star is driven by a mission from the founding team in the beginning. Hopefully, your new hires also share the same passion and enthusiasm for the mission. If not, they will not be part of the team, and it will be hard to maintain the culture through growth. The shared vision creates a strong culture and alignment among teams. Brand creates a culture. And, culture creates a brand.

Thank you Marina Pavlovic Rivas and Zoya Brar for the warm invite! Excited to share what Yung Studio is creating in the coming weeks!