Woodside has triumphed at the recent Randstad Awards, being judged the most attractive company to work for in WA.

What’s commendable about this achievement is that it follows a significant investment by Woodside in building their employer brand perception.  Woodside have invested in their brand to create a certain perception of the company as an employer, and this award recognises their success in doing just that.

The branding campaign demonstrates the Woodside team, in partnership with their advertising agency, The Brand Agency, have dedicated a lot of time to uncover what’s special about them.  What makes Woodside a differentiated employer to all the other prospective employers? What do their prospective (and current) employees aspire to be part of?

The answer, is that Woodside employees don’t take the easy route.  According to ads, “Woodside does what’s right, even when it’s not easy.” They’ve produced a differentiated and compelling advertising campaign to support this idea, and backed it up with lots of clear examples of how this claim is true.

The implication is, “hell, if you want an easy job, apply somewhere else”. It a promise that sets a standard of values, behaviour and performance which prospective employees want to associate with. It passes the BBQ test. When asked “where do you work?”, people want to feel pride and recognition in naming their employer.

It’s very fitting that Woodside’s claim that ‘success doesn’t come easy’ has been rewarded with this award. No doubt convincing a management team that investing hundeds-of-thousands-of-dollars in brand building activity wasn’t easy. It’s been more than worthwhile. Now they will reap the real rewards – stronger prospective employee attraction, employee retention, and growing shareholder value.

Kudos to The Brand Agency and Woodside.

The Randstad Awards are judged by the general public. The largest 150 companies in Australia are selected, and then a National panel of 7000 respondents select the winner, including 650 Western Australians.

So how do you win these awards?  How can you build your employer brand to ensure it’s in the ratings of best places to work?

Here’s the answer:  you can’t do anything to your employer brand to win these awards.  To win the awards, you actually have to be amongst the best places to work.  Yes, that’s the bleeding obvious, but worth pointing out.

Just like consumer brands, you can’t make sh*t up.  If you say your airline brand is friendly and has cheap airfares, you better make sure your airline service is friendly and fares are cheap.  We’ve all had a bad experience where a brand hasn’t met our expectations which they’ve set in their brand communications.  Banks come to mind.

Brands are a reflection of how people perceive your company, and how they think and feel about it.  It’s a virtuous cycle – become a great place to work, and you will be perceived as a great place to work.  You may even win an award.

I look forward to settling in to read Mark’s book and giving a full review, but here were the three takeouts I felt were tweet-worthy;

Humans see. Humans do. More than any other animal, we reference and imitate others. It’s faster, and (as supported by Jonah Lehrer in ‘How we Decide’) a more effective way to make decisions.

Behaviour changes first, attitudes follow.  Mostly we make decisions, then post-rationalise them to ourselves. This is something Adam Ferrier of www.theconsumerpsychologist.com.au recommends to change brand performance. For example, ask people to do something little for charitable purposes, then ask them to donate money later.

You use the brains of others to make decisions.  Society is full of infinite choice.  In many categories, it’s much easier to go with the social norm rather than use your independent judgement.  The way you devise communications messages should be cognisant of the social vs independent choice decision making process.

Thanks to @HERDmeister (follow Mark!), @APGAustralia and Danielle Norrish for organising.

There are a lot of facts that underline that now is a great time to build a home, like trades availability and rising building prices.  But consumers weren’t listening.  We imagined them as having their hands up in a stop-and-talk-to-the-hand pose.

The imperative for the strategic planning process was to find a way in.  We went back to basics and considered the concept of ‘a dream home’.  Really, it’s just that.  An emotional decision to build.  No amount of planning and financial certainty could compete with this powerful emotional driver.

Our insight was that when people see other people taking action, they’re likely to feel comfortable about following.  We knew that to make people feel reassured, we could share with them stories of people who have happily built their new homes, even during the GFC.

We decided the best place would be an inserted magazine-style brochure in The West Australian.  It would be subtle in its content to get past the stop-hand, and include real stories of people building, their fears and what their dream looked like when realised.

Our expectation for the campaign was to begin the momentum.  That’s what’s happened.  People have entered the market again and began calling, searching and visiting Webb & Brown-Neaves.  The Manager of Sales and Marketing, Rob Crawford, said;

“The campaign has been highly successful.  We’re starting to see the real results now in growing enquiry levels. And they’re not just people saying ‘how much is this, how much is that?’ they’re people saying I need to make an appointment to sit down, I’ve got a block of land and I want to build a house.  We were getting the enquiry last year, but it wasn’t the same quality.  We did this campaign to build a momentum, and it’s worked.”

Over the course of the project, we designed and completed;

10 x 1 hour depth interviews of key Clients

30 x 20 min phone interviews of other Clients

27 x 30 min interviews of Employees

144 online surveys of Employees

40 x phone surveys of prospective Employees

13 x in depth phone interviews of Employee spouses

Ertech had previously positioned itself as the civil engineering contractor that “Gets it right and on time”.

What we uncovered was that this was no longer relevant for the stage that Ertech was at.  Contracting on massive projects, such as the Gorgon project with contract values of over $100M, this promise was a minimum expectation.  Additionally, this statement was not as motivating as it could be for existing Ertech employees.

We recommended a new communications strategy.  Then, working with a copywriter and a designer, we gave Ertech a selection of contemporary elements for a new identity that suited their sophistication.  Ertech have made the project their own, and begun to roll out their new identity online.  It’s a great improvement and suits the sophisticated organisation that they are.

It’s a matter of listening to those stories, and monitoring which ones ‘crackle’. What are the legendary stories around the brand that get re-told over and over? The stories that can’t be forgotten. This is the stuff of culture and identity.

I worked at a great consumer goods company once, and the stories of the owner were constantly told – the time the old man stood up in a boardroom presentation, stood on the table and removed a flickering fluorescent light, the eating of petfood in product testing sessions (ewww) and of staggering personal frugality (staggering when you have a lazy few billions to your name). These are the stories that demonstrated the values and culture – of efficiency and personal responsibility – of the company, and by virtue, the employer brand.

It’s the job of advertising and PR to find these stories that crackle and light a fire under them.

I was delighted to see this morning that the PR campaign by Whybin TBWA Tequila Sydney’s campaign for MJ Bale, ‘Grazed on Greatness’, has won two Gold and one Silver Lion at the 59th Annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

This is a campaign that has found a story that crackled, and used it to entertain and convey brand identity. Beautiful.

Here’s a link to the news;

He asked me about a favourite building-company client of mine, and asked, “Mum, what do they do?” In very simple terms I had to explain it to him. Rather than just give the obvious “they build houses” I had to think quick and run through in my head a list of further details. I had to consider;

Who do they build for?
What sort of houses do they build?
Why are their houses different to anyone elses?

Of course these are just the sort of questions that define a brand positioning. And if you can’t explain your brand positioning easily to a child, perhaps you’re making it too complicated.

… Just in case you’re interested, my building client builds premium homes for those people who understand the difference is in the detail.

But these days it’s more than likely the first impressions people get are being generated from your website or digital presence.  Visitors look at the layout, colours, sophistication and language of your sites, and draw their own conclusions about what you mean to them.

In doing business with you, they may not ever venture into your office or branch.  Even shopping has become an experience that is sometimes detatched from the actual physical location of the store.  How does Coles, for example, convey brand meaning on www.colesonline.com.au compared to the supermarket shopping experience?

It has implications for marketing investment.  Is it a choice between an expensive new fit out of stores, or, a similar investment in an amazing website experience?  It may be decision that needs to take into account the source of new customers – is it from footfall, or is it from online, and where is the growth channel?

But is it possible?  Could you really have your perception changed by this advertising message?  I suspect not.

We are hardwired to think a tan looks healthy. See the current BUPA TVCs below, where the tanned version of the person is the healthy example.

A tan is usually derived from outdoor pursuits  under the sun.  Our brain sees a glowing person and draws the conclusion, “they’re healthy”.  Telling us to stop thinking that way is likely to be futile.

For mine, a more believable proposition that might gain better traction would be “sun exposure isn’t healthy” (with a Creative and Copywriting team to fix it up!) and an acknowledgement that fake tanning lotions are a better solution.

It reminds me of the saying, “losing the battle but winning the war”.  Giving up on convincing people that pale = healthy means the Cancer Council might have a chance of  winning the war against melanoma.

_____

Further to this blog entry, I received a great response from the Cancer Council

I encourage you to read their research:

http://www.cancer.org.au/Newsmedia/mediareleases/mediareleases2011/22November2011.htm

Now what do you think?

Each Tuesday I regularly attend a suburban exercise class comprised of only women.  It gives me a little surprise each time to see what these women are really like.

They look nothing like the women I see in ads, on TV, in the media at all.

They’re thin.  They’re chubby.  They’re daggy.  They’re happy.  There’s the girl who looks like a trucker, doing cardio in her jeans, whooping it up and cheering for her favourite song to be played.  There’s the 45+ lady doing breakdance moves on the floor, acting the clown and giving everyone fits of laughter.  There’s women who grin and shake their booty like no-one’s watching (not me for the record).

Of course what they look like is not the point of this article, and not a commentary about the portrayal of women in the media (although it could be).  It’s just relevant because how they look is an expression of their attitudes and how they feel about themselves.

If you’re in the business of connecting with real people, it makes sense to mix with real people.  Hang out at Westfield, even if it doesn’t fit with that inner-city hipster image you’re working on.  Go to the new housing estates, even if it offends your sense of fine design.

See some real people in action, find out what they really think and feel.  Query that perceptual image you have of them, which just might be redundant.