1. Chapter 3: Understanding
Organizational Culture for Successful Brand Management

2. Contents Organizational culture Strategic brand wheel Brand mantras
Internal branding
Aligning staff with the brand performance

3. Introduction
The top management provides the strategic framework that ‘takes the brand from current value to the potential value’ by execution of the brand experience.
‘In an increasingly competitive environment with continuous pressures of quarterly performance the operating team is forced to focus on the short term objectives of meeting sales and customer acquisition.
This approach is myopic and completely overlooks the long term value creation potential of the brand to the business’ (Unnikrishnan, 2010).

4. Introduction
The top management needs to carefully delineate the core brand values and design the brand identity based on their corporate vision.
This brand identity through an internal branding process is clarified to the employees. The employees of the organization in turn build the brand and deliver the brand experience to the customers.
The customers interpret the brand values according to their own brand experiences. This results in the brand image that is the perception of the customers of the brand identity.

5. Introduction
The customers’ interpretation of the brand is reflected in the confidence they place in the brand through the degree to which they purchase and consume the same.

6. Apollo Hospitals Brand Values
The Apollo Hospitals Group was founded by Padma Bhushan Dr Pratap C. Reddy. Dr Reddy ‘shaped and nurtured the ethos of Apollo Hospitals with his vision and inspiring leadership. Recognized as the architect of India’s healthcare revolution, Dr Reddy made Apollo Hospitals a centre for medical excellence, innovation, and a catalyst of positive change.’ What started in 1983 with a team of 25 members is now spread across Asia with 46 hospitals, 8000 beds, and over 60,000 team members. It is Asia’s largest and most trusted healthcare group and has achieved international recognition. How does it manage to deliver consistently on the exceptionally high levels of service quality standards?

7. Apollo Hospitals Brand Values
The employees of Apollo are ‘enjoined to follow rigorously the Florence Nightingale approach of “tender loving care.” All efforts are made to ensure that every patient who comes into Apollo is put at ease instantly. It’s not just the quality of the diagnosis, the equipment, the medical staff, or the exceptional success rates at Apollo that have made it the leading health care provider in the region; it is largely the emotional bond that the hospital creates with the patient that makes Apollo so special.’ (Superbrands, 2009).

8. Brand value delivery Senior Management Specify core brand values
Influences
Marketing communication
Consumers interpret and redefine values
Organization staff enact offering

9. The Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is defined as the ‘company’s overall philosophy, a set of values, and beliefs that shape the way people think and behave’ (Hankinson and Hankinson, 1999).
It is ‘an amalgamation of values which gives rise to behaviour’ (de Chernatony and Cottam, 2008).
Thus, we can define organizational culture as ‘the values of the organization that gives rise to and influences the behaviour of employees.’

10. Organizational culture and brand performance
Organizational culture is ‘the pattern of shared values and beliefs,’ which helps individuals in gaining an understanding of how the organization functions. This understanding further provides them ‘norms for behaviour in the organization’.
This means that the workings of the employees in organizations are uniquely influenced by the prevailing culture of the organization.
For the employees to ‘live the brand’ they need to be supported by an appropriate organizational culture.
Organizations need to build a culture which revolves around the core brand values. This will influence the employees to perform their duties in line with the brand identity the organization has delineated

11. Organizational culture and brand performance
The brand interacts at the following three major levels
With the organization through the organizational vision
With the internal stakeholders through organizational culture
With the external stakeholders through the identity of the brand which it portrays and the image the consumers develop on the consumption of the brand.

12. The Strategic Fit Vision Brand Culture Identity / Image Organization
External brand building measures
Internal branding
Brand
Culture
Identity
/ Image
External stakeholders
Internal stakeholders
Delivery of brand experience

13. Strategic Brand Wheel and Gaps
Vision-culture gap
Vision-delivery or Culture-image gap
Vision-image or Identity-image gap

14. Internal branding Internal marketing Internal branding Perspective
To ‘orient and motivate its customer-contact employees and supporting service people to work as a team to provide customer satisfaction.’ (Kotler et al. 2010)
To ‘develop and reinforce a common value-based ethos, typically attached to some form of corporate mission or vision.’ (Mosley 2007)
Scope
Only the customer-contact employees
All the employees in the organization
Employee role
Employees are used as a tool to deliver the brand
Employees are strategically involved in creating the brand
Employee status
Channel to market
Employees ‘live the brand’
Focus
Narrow. Just focus on customer-brand experience
‘Broader range of brand-led corporate goals and objectives’
Approach
‘Outside-in’ approach as ‘focus on communicating the customer brand promise, and the attitudes and behaviours expected from employees to deliver on that promise’
‘Inside-out’ value-based approach

15. Internal branding process
Organization vision
Stage 1:
Brand identity (character clarity and preparation)
Planning
Communication and commitment
Stage 2:
Culture
Executing
Feedback
Performance of activities / Delivery of brand experience to the customers
Performance-Cultural fit analysis
Stage 3:
Evaluating
Cultural fit
Cultural gap
Brand adequate behaviour
Brand inadequate behaviour
Feedback
Motivation, rewards and recognition and compensation
Facilitation (brand oriented training and development)
Periodic appraisal for brand adequate
behaviour over time

16. Aligning Staff with the brand
Organizational culture should support and encourage the staff to be a part of the branding process
Strong brand philosophy and recruit staff who share similar values
Quiz top management about values of the brand over time
Consistent employee behaviour
Survey employees about their perception of brand from external stakeholders / customers perspective
Consistent branding programs
Show individual employees their job description and responsibilities
Consistently measure and communicate the various brand gaps to employees

17. Quick Recapitulation Organizational culture Strategic brand wheel
Brand mantras
Internal branding
Aligning staff with the brand performance

18. Questions?