Internal Branding- An Emerging Trend

 

I have been out of pocket the past two days, so I have not had a chance to blog much this week. I had a tremendous opportunity to facilitate a brand summit in Chicago, where a forward thinkingenterprise group met to discuss next steps in their brand development process. I thank them for the chance to help lead the dialogue.

Now that I am back at the office, I wanted to share some thoughts with you about internal branding. As I posted last fall, the Academy of Marketing brand group, which I am a member of, met at Emory University where we agreed on five emerging trends in branding. They include: Brand Equity, Brand Funding, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Reputation and Internal Branding.

My area of focus there was on internal branding. I define it as a formal program that engages internal stakeholders, especially employees in the brand development process. That area has had special focus for me recently. To learn more about this emerging trend, I have a couple of resources you might check out. This week the kind people at brandchannel.com featured my work as the white paper of the week. Although the paper discusses my view on higher education, it has application to all organizations. Go to the website and click on the paper navigation link at the top of the page. For those of you in the Denver area, you might want to attend my presentation on internal branding at the February professional development event of the American Marketing Association. You can click on the events link on their website for more information. It will take place on February 17 at 5:30 pm.

Do you have an internal branding program? As the economy re-calibrates itself and organizations go through the introspective process of evaluation, I think they will realize that their most important intangible asset are their employees and discover the need for engaging them in their internal brand development process. They can be your most passionate brand champions!