Customer Reviews

Brand From the Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of the premier books on brand development. The authors are spot on in advocating that brands are most effective when built from the inside out. If we do not engage our employees in the procees and get their buy-in we do not have a brand. Too often brand development is a communications and marketing effort. We need to make sure that we include HR as our brand partners, or brand leaders. There is a reason why Southwest Airlines is traditionally one of the first companies that comes to mind when we think of a case study in branding, and why it is consistently profitable. If I am not mistaken, it is the only US airline to be profitable each year since 9/11. I have seen Libby present before and she is one of the real pros in branding.

This predictable book on branding has a slight twist: aim your branding efforts at your employees as well as at your customers. Simple enough. Authors Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann have boiled employer branding down to eight essentials. Generally, they focus on their core concept with a positive orientation toward employees, although their lists, checklists and lists within lists do get repetitive. Maybe all those lists are intended to help the staff in human resources, where they place much of the responsibility for internal branding. We recommend this book to branding and internal marketing newcomers who want a rundown of the basics, and to human resource professionals who may need to learn about marketing to harness the impact of internal branding.

DISCLOSURE:
----------
I am a small business owner, and bought this book for ideas on how to increase loyalty among my employees.

SUMMARY:
--------
"Branding from the Inside" provides a conceptual framework for HR to increase employee loyalty. The writing is not great, as the authors have a tendency to ramble. On the plus side, the book is structured logically, and includes some illustrative stories from iconic USA corporations.

SHORTCOMINGS:
-------------
While I did get some benefit from this book, it falls far short of its promise. The authors are HR professionals who don't own or run their own business (except perhaps consulting), and therein lies the problem. Here is my list of shortcomings for this book:

1. The subtitle is highly misleading: "...Connect Your Employees To Your Business". I understood this to mean the book was written for business owners. It isn't.

2.The advice given all relates to large corporate settings with huge budgets. You need a good imagination to apply this book to a small business.

3. It is the job of the leader of any business to promote employee loyalty. HR has almost no ability to change a culture without full partnership with the leadership. This point is mentioned, but it was not dealt with as a deal-breaking issue.

4. I found most of the case histories to be clichéd and not useful.

CONCLUSIONS:
------------
I give the authors credit for creating a fairly robust conceptual framework to accomplish a complex goal. I just did not find it useful.

After reading quite a few business books, this book has helped me realize a golden rule: only buy books written by entrepreneurs, business owners, marketing directors, or high level executives. Business books written by HR professionals, business professors, and consultants are theoretical and focused on large corporations. This book certainly was.