Brand culture is at the heart of your brand story
It is the vision, values, goals, and the essence behind everyday tasks and interactions. It creates an experience that your team, supporters, clients, and public yearn for. It leaves an everlasting feeling that can be its own brand cheerleader.
A positive brand culture is like walking into a room and being embraced with a big, warm hug. It shows you care. It shows how your brand is inclusive, diverse, and welcomes all genders, races, religions, and ages.
Brand culture is the reason why your clients, team, and supporters choose you, repeatedly
Let’s take a closer look at constructive outcomes from creating a positive brand culture!
1. Creates a thriving environment for innovation and creativity
The relationship between engagement and performance is substantial.
Many professional studies show, brands that prioritise culture and value their workforce constantly surpass the performance, creativity, and innovation of their competitors.
Unrestricted workplaces create a safe and accessible space to allow ideas to flow freely. It builds an environment where creativity, knowledge sharing, and collaboration are vital to success. This puts the culture at the heart of your business strategy. It allows employees to be as innovative as they need and want, which gives you a lucrative advantage, financially, over rivals.
2. Promotes wellbeing
By creating a culture where your staff feels valued, you are creating team members with improved mental health.
They feel satisfied, happy, and want to work harder and be better for themselves, and you. It is a domino effect that adds to a decrease in depression, sick days, and staff turnover. You are cultivating an environment where everyone is listened to, participating, and active. They are present and contributing to the financial performance of your charity or business. Employees notice these differences. It creeps into their lives, even outside of work.
A team member dedicates 8+ hours to you so to hear praise, reassurance, and support during work hours is life-changing. It boosts morale, which spills out to the rest of the staff, volunteers, directors, and all involved with your organisation. This act of positive reinforcement is remembered and appreciated.
By developing this culture, you are giving staff space to grow, learn, and reach new heights, professionally and personally. Afterwards, you will begin to hear how employees compliment you outside of work. They will choose to share upbeat stories during their personal time.
3. Converts employees into advocates
By consciously designing a workplace that is inclusive and improves employees’ mental health, your employees become your biggest cheerleaders. They share the excitement, happiness, and satisfaction they feel towards your brand with their family and friends. It then:
- generates a sustainable and ongoing branding awareness that extends beyond their immediate social bubble
- trickles into other social bubbles of the people that heard this first-hand
- becomes an ongoing wave of support, which originates from brand culture
Football is one organisation that has changed brand culture for the better!
Within football, racism and exclusivity continues to be an ongoing problem.
Since the 1970s, football fans shout racist slurs, chants, and abuse to players on the field and other fans in the stands. It has happened as recent as the Bulgaria versus England match in 2019.
So football, as a brand, is constantly working towards a brand culture change. One of the charities that they partner with is Show Racism the Red Card (SRtRC).
“SRtRC is the UK’s largest anti-racism educational charity. It was established in January 1996, thanks in part to a donation by then Newcastle United goalkeeper, Shaka Hislop.
In 1990s Newcastle, Shaka was at a petrol station near St James Park when he was confronted with a group of young people shouting racist abuse at him. After one of the group realised that they had been shouting at Shaka Hislop, the Newcastle United football player.”
From this experience, Shaka recognised how powerful it was to use his professional footballer status with making a difference. It became the heart of an effective strategy challenging racism in society today, while making a statement to schools and fans that racism in football will not be tolerated.
Brand culture is powerful
It is a way to authentically show:
- your team, public, supporters, and volunteers that you care
- that they were heard, and you are taking action to meet their needs in the most uplifting way
- your online presence, social media posts, and caring words are not just fluff
- you are optimistic, inclusive, and welcoming demeanour is truly at the heart of all you do
Learn how to reflect the true ethos of your brand, an inclusive organisation through branding design. It tells your team members, volunteers, supports, benefactors and the public what you stand for, without saying a word.
Image: Javier Allegue Barros | Unsplash
