Ten years ago, student a second time, I started a new professional career as management consultant. My first job was a project called “Employer Branding” at Merck Thailand in Bangkok.
Twelve years ago, McKinsey just started to talk about the “War for Talent”. I remember the article by Elisabeth Chambers, which Heinz Landau, MD of Merck Ltd, Thailand at that time, sent to me in preparation of the project.
And these days, ten years later, Jon Iawata, Senior Vice President Marketing and Communications of IBM, claims a new profession, which is fusing brand and culture into a new management discipline. His speech at the Yale Club in New York City also was given to me by Heinz Landau, my blogging partner.
Ten years ago, working on employer branding for Merck Thailand it soon became pretty clear that this project was not only about how to establish an employer brand called Merck Thailand, strong in recruiting fitting top performers and retaining them.
It was basically the first time in my life, being thirty-eight, that I ever had an office job, Monday to Friday, from 9 h to open end. Reflecting the deeper meaning of relationships which were built to last and to sparkle of inspiration, excellence and fulfillment, I understood that employer branding is not just conceptualizing how we want to talk about ourselves as employer.
I understood that dealing with people within the framework of a company (and outside) means dealing with everything: with people like employees, leaders and like clients and like shareholders and like the embedding society. So, we started to discuss the 4-stakeholder-approach and Heinz Landau did not hesitate to implement it step by step.
For me, I was asking myself – a newcomer in traditional business – how we possibly can balance and integrate the wealth of a pharmaceutical and chemical company residing in a marble reflecting architectural demonstration of success and power, the Emporium Tower in Bangkok, with the atrocious poverty of a third world country. The absurdity I was literally working in couldn´t be bigger. – And here, it was Asia to teach me, what Yin and Yang really means.
For me, in these days, it meant to stand absurdities and contradictions, and I learned to understand them as necessary constituent parts of a whole. I also understood that good conditions require the existence of bad ones and vice versa. This was a disillusionment for somebody deeply idealistic in his heart and mind.
And I also learned that successful business depends on a true cause, on values, on leaders who listened in order to learn and change themselves.
“What I learned was to understand, that all is about culture and attitude and about how we communicate this into the world, how we communicate our own identity as individuals, our belonging to differing social networks like companies and their identities; our belonging to everything, the whole, the universe.”
What I learned was to understand, that all is about culture and attitude and about how we communicate this into the world, how we communicate our own identity as individuals, our belonging to differing social networks like companies and their identities; our belonging to everything, the whole, the universe.
In fact, this is truly what positioning means.
Because positioning truly means
Identity
Conviction
Motivation
Purpose
And purpose means cause.
Where do I stand as a leader? Where do my people stand? What are we working for? Who will follow us? Buy from us? Challenge us?
I will never forget the deep impact my first consulting project had on me. Torn into two parts, a creative heart and a systematic mind, I understood that culture is everything but nothing if you cannot convey your true cause – beyond profits and out-performance – through a good marketing communication. Every artist knows this, and very agent selling the works, the voice, the show knows it as well. And I understood that even most professional marketing communication fails to be successful, if those who communicate do not have a true – that means identity building – cause in their hearts and minds, a reason, why they are doing what they are doing.
And that brings me back to the reason, why marketing and culture have to amalgamate, why they have to be mates. They are – in a way – like yin and yang. They condition each other. They need each other. And they need to be aligned and integrated in order to be successful, and for me successful means in this sense: that they reach people.
To reach people with a cause generating money in order to secure existence and proceeding moving the world to be a better place to live in.
And for me ten years later after positioning a company on the notion “care”, what are my thoughts?
After exploring the field as business consultant, managing director and director human resources? After experiencing different leadership styles and executing as person in charge recruitment, development and lay off? After having been challenged by values like truth, loyalty, and integrity?
Wherever I stood and in front of whom ever my communication was successful the moment the cause and its topic I was referring to where born out of my company´s culture and identity. This made me congruent and I myself as individual identity as well as corporate representative was understood receiving a positive feedback. And applying marketing methods and parameters and at the same time proving that our messages were corresponding to our behavior also my company was understood and received a positive feedback of its stakeholders.
This feedback loop is amalgamating marketing and culture into one motivation, one conviction, and one purpose.
Amalgamating marketing and culture fosters alignment and focus in management.
In my life I met a lot of great and fascinating people. I owe them a lot. And I met only a very, very few great leaders who were taking these ideas seriously. The new profession, Jon Iawata, Senior Vice President Marketing and Communications, claims, which is fusing brand and culture into a new management discipline, is in fact a matter for leaders and CEOs.
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