7.2 RQ2: What is the process of corporate branding in startups?
7.2.2 Brand implementation
The brand identity can be transmitted into brand image either directly through external communication or indirectly through the company’s employees. In the branding literature the view of building the brand inside-out has recently gained a strong support. Both Witt and Rode (2005) as well as Juntunen et al. (2010) point out that the behaviour and personal relations of the employees with external stakeholders is a significant contributor to the formation of the corporate image.
SF1 supports this by explaining that that the external image of the company is a reflection of its corporate culture. According to Krake (2005) the passion is born out of the entrepreneur who spreads it through the company via its internal cul-ture, encouraging the rest of the team to “live the brand” every day (Krake, 2005;
Wong & Merrilees, 2005). MP2 explained in a similar manner that first the team Brand Book
Culture Guide Graphic Guide SoMe Guide Event Guide Visual Identity
Consistent with culture, behaviour and communication Brand Oriented Strategy
Focus on corporate brand Holistic & Coherent Brand Story
1. Honest 2. Original 3. Relevant 4. Humane Name
Non-descriptive to allow future flexibility Core Message
Supporting messages Website headers Values
Actionable, Related to everyday business Vision, Mission & Value proposition
Purpose
1. Contribution 2. Impact
Business Concept
Business idea Company structure
needs to have a strong belief in what they are doing so that they can get others to believe in it too. MP5 mentions that before engaging in direct external brand com-munication, the company should invest considerable effort in building the inter-nal culture on-brand, because if the exterinter-nal communication differs from the be-haviour of the founding team it will be perceived as inauthentic. To assure that the team will adopt correct behaviour, it is important to engage the team in de-veloping the corporate culture. This was specifically noted both by Hatch and Schultz (2003) and Juntunen et al. (2010) and supported by the interviews of MP6 and SF1. The team buy-in can be achieved in practice by such simple measures as asking the rest of the team for comments and ideas before implementing them, people tend to support more changes that they feel ownership of.
Once the team stands behind the brand, it is easier to start including the brand elements into every activity the company does. To facilitate the transfer of high-level goals into the daily operations, they need to be translated into practical guidelines relevant to the tasks performed by the team. SF1 tells that in their firm the brand essence presentation was repeated on every Monday meeting to re-mind the team about their shared values and beliefs. Another way they took the brand into action was through short and memorable catch phrases that described their way of doing things. He also mentioned that physical spaces, originally build to create brand experiences for customers, also influenced the team and encouraged on-brand behaviour.
Juntunen et al. (2010) found in their research that the identity tends to form on its own instead of being deliberately created. This is observation is likely due to the lack of branding expertise held by SMEs in general. However, some sup-port was found for this in the empirical data. SF1 described that they incorpo-rated elements to their brand identity on the go if they felt that they were match-ing with their values and were relevant to the customers. So there definitely is a more reactive and improvised side to the brand building that happens alongside planning but as Juntunen et al. (2010) advice, to build a coherent brand, all the elements need to be consciously developed towards the aspired identity.
Building a shared identity
Both the theory and empirical findings suggested that achieving a sense of shared identity early on is a vital task for new startups. SF1 provided some practical suggestions for creating the sense of shared identity amongst the founding team.
One practice their company had adopted was taking photos of the team doing things that made them feel they were onto something bigger. These photographic narratives reinforced their self-image as a team embarked on a special mission.
Another thing they did was to print t-shirts as soon as possible to foster the sense of togetherness through common uniforms. Rode and Vallaster (2005) mention that a key to developing a sense of belonging and identification with the brand among the team is creating internal communication routines that support the cor-porate brand. SF2 suggested that in practice the routines can be planned with a yearly communications clock that marks all the meetings and hangouts and
defines whether the meetings happen in person or remotely as well as other de-tails that contribute to the social experience.
Creating consistent brand communications
The brand image can be indirectly influenced by reinforcing wanted brand iden-tity through internal communication but equally important is the direct influence through consistent external communication. Once the core message and support-ing messages have been formulated they need to be consistently communicated through all channels (Keller, 1998; Krake, 2005; Wong & Merrilees, 2005). Con-sistency really is the key here as it was noted both in various sources of literature as well as by two of the interviewed marketing professionals that the point when you start to get tired of repeating the same message, is the point when it starts to get noticed by the target audience. The message must be consistent over time but also coherent across the different channels. AI1, SF2 and AI2 specifically under-lined the importance of coherent brand communications in projecting an image of credibility and creating trust.
Establishing corporate branding relationships
Brands are not built in isolation but rather in networks of different actors that all contribute to the development of the brand. Establishing press relationships was regarded by many academics as an important early brand building activity for startups. It was seen as an efficient and affordable way of leveraging the founder’s character and creativity in gaining publicity for the venture. Both SF2 and AI2 advocated the use of public relations in leveraging legitimacy from me-dia coverage. MP7 explained that if the brand story is built respecting the guide-lines of being honest, original, relevant and humane, it should be fairly easy to attract media attention. AI2 mentioned that it is important to follow media and to actively think what is the angle that could be used for fitting the story into the current discussion of trending phenomena. So instead of waiting for the public discussion to perfectly hit cord with the brand story, the story can be introduced in an angle that makes it relevant. Other means for establishing branding rela-tionships were listed in the literature by Bresciani and Eppler (2010) who sug-gested startups in using events as promotional opportunities and Ojasalo et al.
(2010) who proposed that the founders should organize seminars on relevant is-sues they specialize in. Small companies should also explore co-branding oppor-tunities with other more established brands who can lend them their credibility (Juntunen et al., 2010; Krake, 2005; Ojasalo et al., 2008)
Recruiting the right fit
In small companies the people are the brand, and the brand is the people. This means that expanding the team with people who share the company’s vision and values becomes one of the most crucial brand building tasks for a startup (Rode
& Vallaster, 2005). In line with previous studies MP5 and SF1 acknowledge that
recruitment decisions are a crucial part of managing the corporate culture of a growing startup. In terms of the Rode & Vallaster (2005) brand building model this means that there is a strong link between the elements of corporate behaviour and corporate culture. Rode & Vallaster (2005) explain that besides meeting the qualifications, the employee candidates should have a personality and attitude that match with the defined corporate culture. This was directly supported by MP5 who emphasized a value match over qualifications and advised to recruit personalities with values that can immediately start contributing to the corporate culture. In practice the company can attract the right kind of applicants by clearly signalling the purpose, values and working culture of the company through brand communications. MP1 elaborated further the significance of visual identity in recruiting by pointing out that it helps people to proudly show others how cool company they are working in. SF1 explained that it is also important to dis-cuss the company values during the interviews to make sure the applicants have a clear idea of the culture they are expected to fit in.
The illustration in figure 12 below, summarises the brand implementation prac-tices presented above and demonstrates how the internal corporate identity in-fluences the external stakeholders indirectly through the founding team. The fig-ure is based on the model of Rode and Vallaster (2005) presented in figfig-ure 1 and enriched with empirical findings about brand implementation practices in startups.