Marketing and culture – are they really such strange bedfellows?
Joe Papadatos, Managing Director
P is for People
You may be surprised that People and Culture Development has been added to the growing list of services we offer at Icon. You might be asking - What does marketing have to do with culture and people?
Depending on which school you went to, the discipline of marketing is said to have four Ps – Price, Product, Promotion and Place, or perhaps even seven Ps - Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical evidence. Regardless of how many Ps are in your mix, there is always one central P in mine – People. In marketing terms this is often described as follows:
“People are not just those who you are selling and advertising to. It includes staff, salespeople, customer service teams, and anyone involved in the marketing and sales processes. You want your employees to be effective and perceived positively by customers.”
From my perspective, this definition is too limited as it does not take into account the many people who work in the background to support those in the front line, and therefore creates a dystopic culture. Those important people who look after clients in the background and those who work for operations are left out of the picture. This model creates a framework of mistrust between us and them. How often have you heard the internal arguments, where the sales teams are fighting for their client internally, where the internal staff are only interested in a different set of parameters. The People component of marketing should include every employee no matter their role.
What does branding have to do with it?
Now let’s look at branding. I think branding in this over-hyped marketing world is more important than ever. While there are many definitions, I personally like this one.
Branding is the experience our clients feel when they buy our product/service. Branding is to be measured by our clients and the experience they receive. Success is therefore much more wholistic.
It’s the same theme for all of us. We need to exploit the online world. And it’s a challenge for those who aren’t familiar with it. The thing is that it changes rapidly. We can be experts in our business, but when it comes to online marketing, many people come up short. It’s simply not what they’re used to. But we must adapt in order to thrive. There’s no choice.
Every year the Roy Morgan Risk Report rates Australia’s most trusted businesses. Who came out number one in 2021? Woolworths. Why? Because they spent millions of dollars reassuring us that they were doing everything they could to protect us during the pandemic. They did what they had to do to create trust in the consumer during uncertain times. They recognised that building trust was an essential marketing tool.
From the first phone call or shop visit to the sales conversation, the buying experience, to the quality of the product, delivery and presentation, great branding is in the hands of the whole team. It requires a whole company attitude to ensure what you promise, you deliver.
The great challenge for all businesses in this global economy is that our brands are defined by the experience we provide our customers, not just the product we sell. If the growth of the online revolution has taught us anything is that it’s easy to buy it cheaper somewhere online. To build an e-commerce website and to sell something is the easy part.
Why do people buy from you?
As a good marketer, you need to understand why people buy from you, and in exploring this question you need to focus on the remaining Ps in your marketing mix.
The answer to the question about why people buy from you is a simple, yet powerful five-letter word – TRUST.
Trust is a word that can be whispered, shared and 100 per cent experienced. Trust is both a diamond if understood well, or a bomb if experienced poorly. Trust invokes the highest forms of emotional wellbeing we have. We are all very careful with whom we trust. Trust is both a force field when experienced well or incredibly fragile when broken. We all build our lives on the unseen virtue of trust.
However, we can never assume we’ll have trust in selling our business. Trust me I am a salesperson. Trust us we are a bank. It’s hollow, right?
Trust is the reason why people buy from you or your company, over and over again. But how do you build trust in your organisation? What is the great link in building our people and branding in our marketing plan? How and what does trust look like in your organisation?
Why should your clients, staff and other stakeholders trust you?
In a world where we are all being marketed with increased veracity every day, trust is one of the key reasons why people are making the buying decisions they do. The Millennials amongst us are looking for authenticity in the brands they purchase like never before. They engage with their brands. They connect with their brands to ensure they match their values. They are the ones that are driving the questions – Why should I trust you? Why should I buy from you?
In saying that they trust a particular company to deliver what they promise, they are ultimately saying I trust the people to deliver, to support, to provide the experience, and to deliver the promise. Within any organisation that involves many of the people who work behind the scenes to deliver.
Trust is built on authenticity and belief
Household brand names all around the globe use brand ambassadors to try and create a position of trust with consumers. But not all companies have the budget for expensive ambassadors and influencers.
I believe the real answer to building trust in your brand or company is not the expensive ambassador/influencer but in the genuine connection or experience. Trust is built on a foundation of authenticity and belief.
I know that these sound like lofty ideals. Yet all our work over many years, across many industries has proven one of the key reasons why companies are successful is that staff and clients like and trust them.
Company culture is glue
If the link between the two Ps of positioning and people is trust, then the glue that holds it all together is company culture.
The definition of culture is very simple – “It’s the way we do things around here”.
A great culture fosters behaviours that encourage belief in the company mission and values, and therefore all the people who work for the organisation are empowered to deliver. Put simply, there is purpose in everyone’s work, and it follows that clients love what you do. I love what I do. A great culture is not perfect or utopian. A great culture is transparent, open and lives its values.
Conversely, a poisonous culture is ugly; people feel they are not valued, and their work has no purpose.
I know this has been a long introduction to answer my question – Why has Icon Visual Marketing introduced People & Culture into our services?
The secret to company growth
Our work over many years has indicated that a company can only truly grow successfully if all the people who work for an organisation believe in, and live and breathe the mission and the values of the business.
Trust is the reoccurring theme of success. Trust is experienced by our clients, but more importantly it’s the trust the staff have in themselves, the company, and the whole environment in which they operate.
Trust is built on Culture. Culture is built on values and behaviours. And behaviour is built on “this is what we do” and “what we say we do”.
Culture at Icon
I’ve learnt about the importance of culture in my own business. We’ve experienced rapid growth and that came at a large cost. The growth meant that we lost ourselves while we were delivering great work, something was broken. I could not put my finger on it. A lot of soul searching made us realise that we had drifted into no man’s land. We were not actively working towards delivering the promise of trust and giving our clients and our people the best experience, we could.
A review of our culture showed us that that we were saying one thing and doing another. The journey, the skills and the tools are the subject of another blog, but suffice to say for this article, re-establishing trust for the team at Icon, has meant that we don’t take our culture for granted. Culture is at the heart of trust. Trust is at the heart of what we deliver to our clients, and trust is the reason why our team chooses Icon.
As icon has grown and evolved over the last few years, culture and personal leadership have been a driving force for change.
Trust is at the core
As I reflect on the many discovery sessions I have conducted over the years, trust is the reoccurring core for all successful companies. As marketers, our job is to create the promise of what you can expect when you buy a product, or you use this brand. The internal culture of a company will determine how well that promise is realised.
This is why have we introduced People and Culture to our list of services. Experience has shown me that everyone wants to work for a great company, and often it's left to chance or a personality. Yet culture and leadership are too important to leave to chance or one person. Over the years we have worked hard to understand how to deliver trust to our stakeholders.
So, for the team at Icon, for us to truly deliver on our promise of helping companies grow, helping companies build their culture is one of the greatest measures of success.
If this resonates with you, pick up the phone and give me a call on 1300 138 984 or email me directly at joe@iconvisual.com.au.
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