Branding from the Inside out (Why HR and Branding teams need to Sync) -Teacher: Ron Johnson

Hello and welcome to useful content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom, Ron Johnson. Hi, Ron.

Hi, how are you doing? Um, I love the way that you said a brand new, because of course, uh, we are about to talk about branding, so quite clever on your part.

Hey, that's like, that's a good one. Good, good picking up on that.

I, I not intentional cause I always say it, but you know, that's good. No one has ever picked up on that before. Very nice. Very nice. So Ron, we know each other from LinkedIn and you've been around my space on LinkedIn for a bit. And of course you're from the Caribbean from Barbados, one

of my ancestral homes.

Um, but today we've come to talk

about something that's very dear to your heart about branding and HR combined together. But before we do

that, let the people know what you do and how you help your clients make 

useful content.

Okay, sure. So, uh, my background, interestingly enough, my first, um, my first degree was in biology. And, uh, a few months before I graduated, I realized I don't particularly like biology. So I took an MBA, um, class, uh, came back to Barbados and worked in a branding adjacent industry, which was printing, um, with my dad.

Um, then we moved into another branding adjacent space. We had a magazine called Circuit Magazine. That was actually one of the, actually, it was the first magazine in the world to have Rihanna on cover. This is when she was, um, not blowing up. So we're proud of that. We learned everything dealing with branding, and then we started our agency, looking creative, we started as a design agency, right?

Specifically meaning anything that can be designed. And then we kind of brought them to become a full branding agency and everything that goes along with it. Um, and we help our clients. We always say we always have clients build stronger brands and stronger businesses. That's what we do. The end of the hour.

Build stronger brands and stronger businesses.

Oh, excellent. I didn't know that you were into printing. Was it offset printing? I am an 

old printer myself.

really? Oh yeah, it was 

um, it was printing the big 

Heidelberg machines and stuff 

like 

Heidelberg presses. Yeah. What'd you

have? You had a four color press. How many 

colors?

I can't remember offhand but probably, it was like that was business, I was there for a while, but it was an opportunity to actually see the paper go through and you see the plates and 

the inks, you know, combine to make these four color things and then you 

collate into whatever cut in.

You know, stapling, uh, the gluing, you know, sometimes I can, I can almost 

smell it 

sometimes though.

Yeah. You smell it. Yeah. You do not smell that. That ink and paper smell. Oh, you, you know, anything, man, I, I used to be a lithographer,

um, and a press operator. When I first came out of technical school, that's what I did. I operated a printing press. Well, at least I was an assistant. 

So that's

some good history. That's some nice overlap there. All right. Great. So, so,

um, now that we've. Reminisce a bit about printing, let's talk about some of what we came to talk about. I think that you obviously described this now that you first started off in, in design, which I suspect

is like identity brand design, different things of that sort. Um, graphic 

design.

Yeah.

And you've now gone into, 

anything that could be designed, we 

could do it. 

uh, where anything that could be designed, right? And you specifically said, no, you've gone into branding. No, uh, I want you as somebody who has been doing this for a while to give me your definition of 

branding.

Sure. Um, so originally people considered branding to be visual and the, the, the name brand actually goes back thousands of years to when cattle owners or cattle ranchers or livestock brewers would actually heat a brand, a metal brand and sear it onto the cattle. So to distinguish, I own this cattle, this is my brand, this is my brand, could be an X, two Xs, whatever a circle.

And that's how branding came about to be associated with a symbol. Um, nowadays, of course, language changes. And when we're talking about someone's brand, we're simply talking about how people think and feel about the organization's products and services, right? How they think and feel. So, if someone has good sentiments towards your brand, you have a strong brand.

If your reputation, you can think of a brand as a reputation, you know, if your reputation is poor, you have a poor brand. Um, there are people that have great visual brands, great looking website, uh, great social media, great advertising campaigns, all this clever stuff. Um, but then on the inside of the organization, it's a top set working environment and that helps to diminish the brand itself.

So in the past, a brand was decidedly customer facing. Right. But now when we're talking about brand, we have to take employees into consideration because your employees are part of your brand,

Yeah, yeah. So your employees are part of your brand. Well, how does a company, um, who is now aware of this, so we're seeing that the brand is not external, it's internal, it's not the visual identity, but it's something that is Um, inside of the company, uh, how does, uh,

a leader of a company, and this is just some general questions now begin to

build those branding things inside of a company, I know we get into details later about the synergy between HR and branding, but how does a leader start to build that culture?

right. So three things to remember. First thing, engagement. Second thing, engagement. The third thing, engagement,

right? Um, you have to engage people if you want to build a strong brand, right. And that engagement has to start on the inside of the organization as opposed to the outside. That's where a lot of people make their mistakes.

We've got to engage our customers. We've got to make 

sure our customers know, like, and trust us. And they're spending all this time, uh, engaging customers. And at the same time, the employees are team members. They feel like second class citizens in their own, um, organizations, right? So engagement is basically a state of being where, um, People feel mentally, emotionally, uh, physically, um, connected to the brand and they feel as if this organization cares for me and I'm going to do, I'll be the best version of my professional self.

As soon as I step into that workplace, I will keep that best version of my professional self until I leave, you know, uh, and there's so many ways to, to, to do that. to engage people. I suspect you have a couple of questions coming up over that, so I won't jump the gun. But, um, just remember that there's a quote from, um, one of my favorite former, well, she's still an HR, um, consultant, and she says, you know, brands are built from the inside.

Hmm.

The way your employees behave, and I'm paraphrasing, the way your employees behave will eventually find its way to the outside. It will eventually. If you have a bad culture, if you have great branding, your marketing team or ad agency is going to create a great job of it, but inside your employees are disengaged, disillusioned, um, disgruntled.

Eventually, that's going to find its way to the outside, especially if you have customer base and stuff.

So would you say that, uh, um, your brand is, is acutely tied or closely tied to your just, just overall customer experience, um,

They're all related. So, um, branding, marketing, customer experience, they're all related. I'll show you how. There's a very easy saying, um, very memorable. Your customer experience will never exceed, uh, your employee experience. It will never, it will never. So if you want to improve your customer experience by default, you have to improve your employee experience.

You know, um, well, my, uh, friends, I met on LinkedIn, um, so civil, civil Um, she has a great quote, great quote, um, she says the way you kind of treat your employees is the way your employees will, um, treat your customers. You know, and if your employees don't feel engaged, neither will your employees and I'm kind of paraphrasing, um, her, her quote because I love it so much.

Right. Right. So it's important that your employees feel that they are being engaged because obviously, um, the most important thing is engagement, engagement, engagement, as you said earlier,

uh, so that

they can now turn around and give the, so in other words, they cannot give the thing that they don't have basically is, is,

is what we're saying. Okay, great. Wonderful.

Exactly. So, so, so the last thing I would say in terms of your reference of customer experience, poor customer experience is seldom the problem that needs to be solved. Poor customer experience is the symptom of a bigger problem,

Right.

which is usually employee engagement. So when you try to solve customer experience by giving all these rules, you must smile to the customer.

If they come within five feet of you, you have to say hello. Those are, those are rules to be, to be followed. Right. But it doesn't address the actual cause of that poor, that's my experience.

Right.

I mean, if you have a headache and you take a painkiller, you know, it'll get rid of the pain. But it doesn't actually solve whatever caused that headache in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah. I like the analogy. I like the analogy. So it's, it's passive relief is not active relief. It gives you temporary relief, essentially. All

right. Great. Great. So we've established those things and it's a good way to start in terms of framing how we should approach the synergy between branding and HR.

Now, I know you believe in this Very

strongly. You yourself have have, you have built a personal brand around this as well. Why do you feel? Why do you feel that HR must have a seat at the branding table?

Okay. Very, very, very good question. And I will answer that by giving you a true life story as to how it all started. Uh, we were asked by an organization to develop a full branding campaign for them. They wanted to announce to the public, we're here, we're great, we're awesome, etc, etc. And our copywriters, account, uh, account executives, uh, graphic designers, everybody came together, this great concept for this, um, this campaign.

It launched that. I think it, it grossed them like 175 percent to 200 percent of what their targets were because it told us what their financial targets were. And they were ecstatic and it was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Why? Because even though they met their targets, the customer experience was not great.

And 

again, poor customer experience is a symptom of, um, poor employee engagement, right? So the next year when they came to us and wanted a similar campaign done, we did it, We went okay, but it certainly wasn't like, um, off the charts like the first one was. And when we, when we tried to peel back the layers of the, the onion and, um, do these focus groups asking, why are you not taking advantage of these super offers that people said, no, we remember what happened last year.

And I don't really care how good the deals are. Um, I'm not going back to that treatment again. Right. Um, that made us realize, wait a minute. Because of the way that things played out, our effectiveness as an external branding agency was heavily influenced by what was happening inside the company. So we realized that if we wanted to excel at the customer facing side, we needed to make sure that the inside brand, the culture, employee engagement were solid.

And who's the department or team most likely to work with? deal with things like internal comms, uh, company culture, employee engagement, employee experience, HR. They are the most likely to be tasked with that. So anytime you're asked now to do something that's external, we always say you want HR in the room.

We need to know before we start this, this, this project, we want to hear it straight from HR. Um, what is your culture like? Are there any engagement problems we need to know about? What's your NPS score? You know, all of these things have to come into play because because branding is no longer only about the, uh, the customer.

It is also about the employee is about the, um, the team member.

hmm.

Remember, remember how your employees behave on the inside will eventually find a 

so that means that no amount of beautiful, beautifully put together content can save you. If you are not dealing with the internal thing, Yeah. And so I think that's a really important point because I think that many times when people come to, let's just suppose they come to my company for content strategy or they come to, for, for to create content, they are doing it on the basis of we want this particular outcome. Um, when we put out this content, let's just suppose you run a campaign or we, we're doing this thing for six months. We want this particular outcome, but your company could be actively working against the outcome if you don't address the internal branding issues. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's unreasonable and highly unreasonable to expect disengaged, disillusioned, disgruntled employees to provide the type of customer experience that will turn a casual shopper into a raving and a paying fan, right? Of the brand.

We once did a consult for a large company and on the first day of the Um, our main point of contact was carrying us through the building. This floor is where this is, this floor is where this is, here is whatever room. And she passed this huge motivational poster. You know these, um, every company 

has these, you know, some of them are very cliché, old school, but some of them are modern.

And she stopped in front of the dramatically and she said, she said, this poster is the cause of all of our problems. I looked at the poster and it looked visually appealing. I didn't know what she was talking about until I saw the words. The words said, the customer always comes first 

Oh, yeah.

course, the poster itself was not the problem, is what it stood for.

But every, she said, all of our engagement issues stem from the fact that people, our team members, our employees feel that no matter what, they come second to the customer. And you know, yes, that sounds logical, putting the customer first, right? But if you put the customer first, it automatically means you're putting employees, um, in second place.

And by putting customers first, you're actually making the experience worse for them.

Yeah.

Compared to if you put the employees first, and you have this team of really, really excited, uh, really hyper engaged, uh, really committed employees that will go the extra mile for that customer. By putting the customer first, you're denying them of that amazing, remarkable experience.

It sounds, it sounds paradoxical, but putting in our use first actually makes the customer experience better. 

I know the interesting thing about that is that is an age old saying that's not new. that is something that we've heard for ages. The customer should always come first. The customer is always right and things of that nature. But you're saying for in order, to build a successful modern company brand, you have to address these internal things first. And then,

then you then it flows out. It ripples out to benefit the customer. 

you know, starting, I'll give you an example, um, uh, in terms of the, Oh. We were, we were bought into one, another customer and, and they wanted their visual brand, uh, upgraded. To use their own words, their visual brand was, was bad. Just said it was bad, we need to redo it. So we spent about 45 minutes with them.

We got on the job and then, um, I started asking the questions. Does the company have core values? Um, do the team members know the core values and do they live them? Are employees as productive when the supervisor Supervisors in the room, all of these questions about culture. And by the end, the CEO said, forget the visual, we've ran it for now.

Our bigger issue clearly is employee engagement. So we went to work with them. Uh, we worked on their core values, uh, explaining this is how you want to live. Uh, uh, at work. Here's the, here are the behaviors that we encourage. Here are the behaviors that we discourage, et cetera. On, um, It was for a limited time engagement.

You know, when you work with clients, um, we want them to be able to graduate and stand at their own two feet. So about six months after our engagement with the client, I ran into one of their employees in the supermarket. He came up to me and, you know, said, you know, interesting to tell, said, you know, you know, where he's from, et cetera.

So I said, how is, how are things going at the company? You know, um, in terms of the company culture, the core values, et cetera. He looked at me and I'll never forget this as long as I can remember things. Uh, he said, they're going good for the company, but they're going better for me. I was very confused and he said, well, what do you mean by that?

He said, I decided of my own accord to adopt the company's core values in my personal life. And I now feel as if I'm a better husband and a better father for it. I said, what?

Okay. Okay.

Okay. 

Later. I was blown away, right? But that's what happens when you engage your employees and team members, right? And if you do it right, there is a change in attitudes, you know, change in behaviors for the better.

Um, core values are simply one of the tools that we use for better engagement. Um, but I thought I'd pull that out because it's such a, um, a powerful story of what can happen to an individual in When they are engaged, there is a change, right? There's a change in mindset. There's a change in behavior. You know, there's a change in expectations.

You know, there's a change. But, you know, that's, that's one of the ways that we get help. Companies engage with their, um, team members by bringing clarity to what's expected on a job. And also giving them opportunities to enjoy the job. Um, as we always tell our customers, you know, we are, we encourage our customers to, um, Um, Encourage the effort in the workplace and the effort being fun, not the other effort.

Um, but when you have, uh, when you have a company where people are excited to go to work and it's okay to have fun. Yes. Get the work done. You can, you can have fun again and that builds up the 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As you were talking about the CEO earlier, I was thinking, yeah, well, the CEO really in and truly should be the chief branding officer. Like the culture should flow from the top and go all the way down. Have you encountered a situation where There was resistance to that such to the point that the brand could not shift.

Oh, that's a, that's a great question. Um, it's a complex question. But yes, I've seen situations where there was resistance to change because to address the problem, you have to acknowledge there is a problem and to acknowledge there is a problem under the watch takes leadership, right? When you have a CEO that can confidently sit across the room from you and say, we have a problem, it's much better than a CEO who has a problem and say, it's not that bad.

Um, and then they get, and it's not necessarily you, it might be the CFO, it may be the CHRO, you know. But once you have, uh, sort of this, uh, you know, the CYA principle, you know, cover your, you know. Um, once you have people that are trying to cover theirs, um, you're always going to have, you're always going to have a problem.

You're always going to have a problem, and it will stand in the way of your brand. For sure.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good stuff. And I think that's a good setting for trying, trying now to find some other solutions for what this is. So we talked about why HR and branding should work. Sit together and talk and how the importance of importance of that on company culture.

We got some examples about how that might work and how it might not work. So let's go a little deeper, right? And since you

believe that brands are built from the inside out, you actually define these branding professionals as superheroes in disguise. Um, could you, could you tell me about that? Why do you feel that what makes these HR professionals, such great branding people and why they are the branding superheroes in your mind.

Yeah,

Are you familiar with, um, this comic scene? 

DC, Superman, Clark Kent. Okay, so you know that Clark Kent is Superman's alter ego or vice versa. Um, that, that, that conversation about which is the alter ego and which is the real person will go on forever. Um, but Clark Kent is this kind of unassuming, um, uh, mild mannered reporter.

Okay. and he doesn't get credit for everything that Superman does, even though they're one and the same. That's how I see HR professionals, right? I believe that the work that HR professionals do in terms of company culture, employee engagement, um, the employer employee experience, all of that helps to build a brand.

It helps to build a brand, but HR professionals are not always given the credit for building the brand from the inside. But they do the work. So Clark Kent doesn't get the, the, the, the, you know, the accolades 

world 

because of what he does to save the world. Yeah, but that's what, that's what he's doing. It's just that no one's acknowledging, no one's put, sorry, I shouldn't say no one.

A lot of people have a connective darkness within it. Clark Kent is Superman. And for me, it's like, the HR professionals are brand new professionals. They contribute to the brand. They're one of the biggest defenders of the brand that you can have on your payroll. Because if things go wrong on the inside, take a look for instance at some of the scandals, um, that have happened over the years.

Um, there is a scandal that involved Uber where a disgruntled employee called, I think her name was Susan Fowler, um, left Uber and she did this essay on her time at Uber, which allegedly. Included discrimination, gender discrimination against women, female engineers, um, alleged unwanted, uh, sexual advances, and it tarnished the brand, right?

It tarnished the brand. If HR were on point and had taken her, because she did go to HR, and had taken her, um, complaint seriously, and addressed the issue. Those things probably would never have surfaced, right? So when you say that HR is defending the brand, it means they are doing the equivalent of what marketing is doing, right?

So marketing is engaging customers, right? And you have a situation where HR has to engage employees, listen to their concerns and take them 

seriously.

You know, and if you take, you take other, you take other, um, examples, I mean, and wrong. Um, back in the day was one of the more highly valued companies. Um, but they're allegedly, I'm using that word often just to not get myself in trouble.

Allegedly, um, they were involved in a fraudulent activity. The company folded, bankrupt. And the interesting thing is, if I'm, if I'm not mistaken, integrity was one of Enron's core values.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, just about every corporate company has that as one of the core values. So,

But, but, but I bring that up specifically, right? Because I want people to understand, I want your audience to understand, it's more than just hanging them up on a wall or putting them in a plaque or mentioning them in your annual report. You have to live it, right? You have to live this thing. Um, and who better than HR to drive that?

So when I talk about branding, um, I, um, I developed a framework called the branding equation, but I spell it B H R. It's phonetically identical to conventional branding, but it's a way to show that HR needs to be smack dab and centered in the middle of branding. So that's why when we're talking about that, we say branding plus HR equals DHRAMDING.

It's simply a way to involve HR at the signal that HR needs to be involved in the branding 

Yeah. Yeah. So you were talking just now about the situation where this employee at Uber, um, they had a situation that was untenable for them and they, well, they, they had, they left the job and they exposed all this stuff that was going on. Right. And you said that HR was, If HR had listened to them, they might've been able to treat with this employee, and then they would not have been disgruntled.

So that is one scenario. What about a scenario where the company is attempting to implement these values, engage with the employees and the employees resist? Now, I want to, I could do this generally, but I want to be so specific about this. What happens if the people who are responsible for branding the marketing people in particular resist, what do we do then?

In a situation like that, um, You either have to change the people or change the people. Yeah.

options. Oh,

when I say change the people, I'm going to go back to that story with the 

employee who had changed, had adopted, right? Who had adopted the core values and he changed from the insight, right,

And I'm a firm, and I'm a firm believer that if you do this process well, you will change the people 

from 

the insight. 

right, 

And that, and that's the, that's the preferred option. That's the preferred option. I am not going to go too deep into the other side because I'm all, I always make it clear that I'm a brand new professional that is embracing HR and that I'm not an HR professional myself. So I'm not HR advice, but the second, the second change to people means sometimes it's not a good fit.

Sometimes the employee is not a good fit for the company. Sometimes the company is not a good fit for the employee. It's not always the employee's fault. Sometimes the employee might be in the right and the company is in the wrong in terms of their, uh, approach and their, their core values and their ethics.

You know what I mean? So when I say change of people or change of people, that last change of people is a last resort. Just to be clear that I know that there are going to be some HR people watching this and they're going to have some things to say. So I'm not giving HR advice here. Um, but in terms of answering your question, if the company has decided that it wants to reach a higher level of engagement, um, and there's resistance.

You have to find a way to change people's hearts and minds. That's the, that's the real first option, change their hearts and minds. And I have not heard of very many situations where the CEO or the CHRO or the CMO has come and said, we want to do better. We want to improve the employee experience. We want you to feel happier here.

And they have an employee say, no, you're not interested. Okay, so I, when I, when I did the job description, I gave them the job description, and I said, And I said, let me give you this. There's something that only you can understand. You can understand that you have to understand the job description, right?

play. You're not putting it in their hands, they now have to demonstrate that we actually do want a better employee experience. So, for instance, at one point in time, um, this happened just before COVID, I believe, at our own company. We put the employee experience in our team members hands, and they decided what they wanted to do.

Like, we didn't force them to go to a party, you know, like you have Christmas parties. We did, we did have things like that. But one of the things that was really interesting is that all of our team members had an interest in health. And when we, we said, what do you want your employee experience to look like?

What do you want fun to look like? They said, they said health. And a group of them got together, they would, you know, jog around the building a couple 

times. You know, then they'd have some person come in and they'd do like different types of, um, exercises. They chose that. They chose that, right? Because we put the employee experience in their hands.

We also have a group called Power Collective Blueprinters. We have my agency, Blueprint Creative, and they had, uh, we had a, uh, a group called Power Collective Blueprinters, and they decided what they wanted the employee experience to look like in terms of fun. Not me, even though I was the CEO. So when you go to an organization and say you want to improve the, the employee engagement, you want to improve the customer experience, and you give employees an opportunity.

to be a part of that change and they have a certain amount of decision, a realistic amount of decision making power. If it fails, it means that they themselves have failed because and they don't want to fail. They want to succeed. You see, once you have, um, once you have a situation where the company's interests are aligned with the employee's interests or a team member's interests when they're, when they want to be seen, by acting in by the employee acting in his or her own interest, they're automatically acting in the interest of the company.

And that's what I mean in terms of changed people from the inside, mentally, emotionally. When that change happens, it's a powerful thing to, is a powerful thing to watch

when employees step up and say, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. You know, um, in our, in our agency, one of our core values was, um, You know, learn something new every single day.

We have a library of books, about 300 books, that the employees themselves, many of them chose because they wanted to improve in graphic design, they wanted to improve in customer service, they wanted to improve in a bunch of different things. They had the opportunity, you know, and I'm giving them, I'm trusting them that much help to keep them engaged, keep them engaged, keep 

them engaged. It was a long winded answer, but did it answer your 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It did. It did. It did. I mean, I have to admit at the beginning when you said change the employee or change the employee, I didn't get that. It was two different changes. So

Right.

what is good? You clarify it. And I know I understand exactly what you mean. Internal change, mentality, change, outlook, change, as opposed to,

you know, you know, replace, um,

you know, that's

That's the, that's the last, that's the last option if all else fails and, and, you know, like I said, I will defer to HR professionals on when it's time for that. That's, that's, 

um, my focus is on, is on the branding aspect 

Right. Excellent. So now that we have established all of these, uh, this understanding of how branding works, that's branding plus HR and what the employee should do, what leadership should do. Let's talk just a little bit about how that impacts the actual content coming out of the business and how when employee alignment happens, it How that then is manifest inside of the other parts of the marketing and branding.

So what results have you seen happen when those things align internally? 

Right. So when things align internally, I'm going to go back to. What I personally believe is one of the biggest responsibilities for modern HR professionals. Modern. There are still some HR professionals whose CEOs don't let them, they stick them in the corner to do administrative tasks, right? That's what we call, um, transactional HR.

Um, their, their CEOs don't give them an opportunity to fully blossom, but then you have transformational HR. These are the ones who are involved in things like employee engagement, company culture, et cetera. Right. So when, when things are aligned, the one of the biggest things that I think modern, modern HR responsibilities includes is employee engagement, right?

And once you have employee engagement, um, locked off, you have so many positive offshoots, right? So for instance, there is research that's been conducted, um, that found that when employees are engaged there, I don't remember the exact statistic. Productivity rises, right? Companies that have employee engagement, they generally are more profitable, right?

Companies that have high employee engagement, have a good employer brand, tend to have less turnover and churn. Right? Therefore, saving the company tons and tons of money. So, once that core is taken care of, all the other offsheets, they fit into place like a jigsaw puzzle. Almost, almost organically, or almost automatically.

All the things that the CFO is saying, Hey, we need to cut costs and we need to improve revenues. Those things start to happen almost organically. Yes, there needs to be some guidance, but those happen almost organically. And once you have that employee engagement, then, um, the best and the brightest will want to come to you, right?

Therefore reinforcing, um, a culture of excellence. Um, just yesterday I was recounting, uh, a true story. Uh, that happened seven years ago. So whenever we, uh, employ, or we both employ some person, we're doing the recruitment, we're doing different reviews, etc. Um, we always ask a silly question just to get people a little bit, um, you know, relaxed.

So we'd ask them, Skittles or M& M's? And they'd be like, what? 

This isn't where you're asking me if I prefer Skittles or M& M's. Or we'd prefer Friends or St. Phelps. We had to stop using that as 

the, or

our candidates became a little bit younger because they're like 

friends. I don't know what that 

is. That you have that.

Yeah. Um, but we'll ask them skills or M& Ms and they, they, they kind of become more engaged to say, you know, ask, okay, if you prefer to get those, what color would you be? And then they get animated and they're like, they start talking here to your true, your true personality comes up. Right. And this happened seven years ago.

I went to purchase an item at the salesperson. Friendly, friendly guy did exactly what he's supposed to do, engage with the customer, show interest. And he said, what do you, uh, what do you do? What industry are you in? He said branding, you know, marketing. I usually say marketing advertising because some people don't fully understand what branding is.

And he said, okay, that's, that's cool. Um, where do you work? I said, Blueprint Creative. And the salesperson said, Blueprint Creative. That's the company that asks people about M& Ms during interviews. I was like, what? Like, how do you, how do you know that? He said, because anybody that wants to get into branding on the agency site knows about you guys.

They know, they know 

your culture, they know what you're going to do process. They know about so many different things, so many different things. I was like, Oh, so that's where all those unsolicited, um, applications for, um, employment came from because of the employer brand, we just didn't know that it had left.

Clearly, everyone we've interviewed has gone out and said, Yo, that company I've interviewed with is really different, really different. You know what I mean? They ask me, Skittles or M& M's? What's that about? You know, so, you know, um, Like I said, once employee engagement is, is uh, set, Things start falling 

in place. 

You know, it's interesting. When you were talking just now, I had the sense that when you do the thing right, it seems like the word gets out for itself and you may have less need for certain types of Of content or maybe advertising, or maybe, uh, these external things that come along with marketing.

Um, what would you think that might be a true thing that you have less need to communicate in other ways once the internal things are taken care of?

I think, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to say, Talk about quantifying it to say less content or more. I would focus on the quality of the content. The quality of the content is definitely going to go up, definitely. Um, from stories, I'm not sure if you're, um, familiar with zappos. com.

Yeah,

am. Yeah, definitely. 

were purchased by Amazon for a couple of billion, a billion each.

And, um, they're just known, because of their company culture, they're known for their customer experience. Remember, there's a link. Your customer experience will never exceed your entire experience. And they had a situation where a customer called about shoes or whatever they're buying, and just felt like talking.

And the operator, um, did not want to interrupt her because of whatever she was talking about. And that customer phone call lasted hours. If it wasn't eight hours, it was 10 hours. Longest, um, phone call from the call center in history. Instead of the management chastising this telephone operator for keeping, uh, for being there, um, so long, it became a badge of honor, right?

That some person wanted to speak to the telephone operator that long, you know, and they actually put it into an ad, I believe, and they spread it, you know, their, their, their stories to be told, right? Better stories to be told once you have, um, that alignment that you're talking about. So I don't want to say that you need to communicate less, I would definitely want to say that.

What I would say, in terms of content, is that the level of content, um, that you're going to have available to you through storytelling will, will just organically just, just organically grow. You know, um, and sometimes those storytelling techniques, um, happen organically without a copywriter, right? Or without, um, a copywriter.

Because people are talking about it, you know. We used to make a big deal, uh, we still make a big deal about employees and team members birthdays, and we try to make them personal. And we, we had a waterfront executive who loved, um, the particular ride, right, for Barbados. Loved their style, loved their car, everything.

And, um, for her birthday, we arranged, uh, To get her to meet this rally driver and sit in the actual rally car, right? And she cried. She cried tears because she was so excited,

right.

And guess what? She told people. She told people. We didn't have to sit down and write a blog article about it. We didn't need to because she told people.

You know, and all the other things that we, all the crazy ideas and the crazy games we play. The parties for our team members. All this stuff. And customers.

So what happens is that your content channels diversified, right? So before you might have said, I have a blog and that's the main content or I'm going to do a blog. That's the main content, right? Or the main channel. What happens now when things align is that your content channels explode, they explode and they're no longer, um, 

just restricted to, Hey guys, we're going to publish one blog Right?

So your storytelling, your storytelling becomes 

Hmm. 

much richer because people are telling stories. So in addition to that one blog a month that you may have decided on, or we're going to post on Instagram five times, right? Or whatever structured, um, content you have, I'm not saying to cut that out, continue it for sure.

But you're going to see your distribution channels. Explode. Fully explode. People are going to talk about you. People are going to talk about you. People are going to talk about you. And it all goes back to 

engagement. 

Yeah. Yeah. I, I hear you. Engagement produces engagement and that's what I would put it as, you know, uh,

Yeah.

Yeah. I can see like an employee driven, um, content marketing even, or even, um, yeah. So it's, it's driven by the employees dedication, loyalty. Advocacy, you know, for this particular brand, because of how they feel, how they fit internally, you know, and then that, that is

what would happen. And it, it spills out into your distribution channels and you, the employee's distribution channels become your distribution channels because they're talking about the brand essentially. Yeah. Yeah.

I know we're running short on time. Um, is that in terms of the content channels and content as well for art and a site. You know, there are people, um, who are naturally gifted at, you know, breaking content and then there's the science behind it, you know, in terms of psychology.

Um, but I've seen companies, uh, the data has shown that potential, LinkedIn did a study recently, um, and the number one challenge for new employees who are planning to

apply for a job. The number one challenge they had was not knowing what the company was really like, right? Um, and it also showed that applicants trusted employees three times more than they trusted what the company said about its culture, right? So writing about our culture, awesome. Employees talking about their culture, awesomer, if that's a word.

I'm sure it's not a word. But what some companies do is that they actually put their employees in front of the camera and say, Hey, we're not censoring you. Tell us what it's like to work in this organization. Tell us the good, the bad and the ugly. And they put it out on social medias and people who find a player like, well, okay, that's what it's really like.

Yes, there's free snap covers, but the work is really, really, really hard, you know? And sometimes it goes over time or whatever the case is. So, you know, um, I just think that new storytelling will be enriched as opposed to having to either increase or decrease, um, quantity. I would say the quality of the storytelling will increase.

I agree with that so much. And I think that's a great way for us to end off our conversation here today. Ron, people may have heard you talk about this fusion between branding and HR, and they may want to learn more from you. Where can the people find you

online, Ron? 

I am mostly on Instagram. Um, if you type Ron Johnson Bargainers, you're going to find me. Um, my handle is ronjohnsonco, R O N J O H N, J O H N S O N C O, feel free, you know, if you have questions, uh, about how and why branding and HR should work together in your organization, you know, just connect with me on LinkedIn.

We have a conversation, you know, you know, really interesting to hear other people's challenges, um, uh, that they're going through and how bringing HR into branding, B H R A N D I N G, how that can actually turn you into a more profitable 

Yeah. Ron Johnson. You, you should put a middle initial in there to separate yourself because like Googling you is the hardest thing ever.

Oh, really? Once you put on the Barbados, you should find me. I hope. I'll go check Straight after. 

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that might be the key to it there. And the last thing is that you do have a book. Your book was released in 2021, I believe. Is it like late 2021? It's tighten your,

tighten your shoelaces, bright, bright

yellow cover with some black and 

Bright leather cover. 

Um, and

you can check that out. They can get on Amazon.

Yeah. Yeah.

You can get it on Amazon. I'll close with this by explaining, um, Tightening shoelaces is why it's called that. Um, it's a, it's a fable that I heard many years ago. There are these two guys walking through the forest and all of a sudden this huge angry bear decided to attack them. The first guy bent down really, really quickly to tighten his shoelaces because he was going to make a run for it.

The second guy looked at him and said, what the hell are you doing? You can't possibly outrun the bear. The guy took off on a sprint, he lifted over his shoulder and he said, I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you. Right? Meaning that the bear is going to take care 

of him, right? So the book is really about keeping one step ahead of your customers using the principles of 

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Good explanation. Great analogy. Great story. Thank you so much, Ron, for joining us on the Useful Content

Podcast. 

Thank you for having me. I hope I brought some value to you and your 

It's absolutely sure. I'm absolutely sure you did. And thank you so much, students, for joining us in the conversation. Useful Content Classroom, dismissed. And we're clear. Yes. So that's, that's good stuff, man. Good stuff.

hope, I hope you, uh, I hope it was worth your time. Um, I always want to add value to anything I'm doing.

absolutely, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, um, I knew, I knew we were gonna get into the conversation. I, the time flew fast. I probably would have more.

More things to ask and to go deeper and so on, but maybe another time we'll be able to catch up on and

get those things done. You know, I, that's, you have a really interesting background. That whole printing show me for a loop. I don't, I don't usually meet people who have been in printing, you know, that's not usual, but I guess in your case, it makes sense because you then have now this branding agency and then now a branding BH, R A N D I N G. agency now. Very interesting