Why do I always feel obliged to pick on the airline industry? Well, because the airlines make it so easy. However, there are a few in the airline industry that truly understand the importance and power of a strong brand. As one client leader from a large telecommunications company said to me, "It's just about sucking a little less than the competition."

As most airlines have experienced, it's actually really hard to "suck less". The airlines that "suck less" are the ones that recognize that its people and the processes and behavioral ways that they've been trained on are proprietary to the company. The behaviors are personal and it shows.

Take JetBlue for example. Are they perfect, no, but are they consistently better than the competition, no question about it. Let me share with you a recent, yet very typical, experience designed into the workforce at JetBlue. Aside from the fact that the check-in staff, gate employees, and flight attendants are almost always overtly kind and friendly, JetBlue pilots also get into the service side of the action. It is not uncommon to see a pilot help out with the cleanup inside the plane in order to speed up the turnaround time.

On one particular flight I was on, the pilot came out of the cockpit just before leaving the gate and addressed the passengers using the microphone. He said, "Thank you very much for flying with us today. I am sure you will enjoy the JetBlue experience. By show of hands, how many of you are first-time flyers with JetBlue?"

None of us raised our hands even though there were probably a few first-time JetBlue flyers. The pilot continued, "Great, we have a bunch of savvy veterans who have come back for the JetBlue experience. Then you know what to expect. Great service, a great flight, and live TV. Folks, today we have the best flight attendants in the industry. Please don't hesitate to reach out to them if there is anything we can do to make your experience with us as pleasant as possible."

In less than 15 seconds, this pilot not only mentioned the term "experience" three times, he also set a high expectation for the flight attendants to live up to. My guess is that they welcomed that high expectation because they truly enjoy servicing passengers. JetBlue does a phenomenal job hiring, training, and evaluating its employee base to ensure they buy into the strategy and deliver it at each touchpoint.

Drafting optimal behaviors requires a unique investment by your company. In return, doing so promises to maximize the strategic value of workforce performance and contribute to a sustainable competitive advantage. Bottom line: The behaviors that your employees create become proprietary and lead to differentiation in the marketplace. Behaviors are the way you do business. They drive your culture. They drive your brand from the inside out.

I wonder if United wished they sucked a little less....

Do you want employees who come in, punch the clock (literally or figuratively), go through the tactical motions to get the job done, and then punch out? Of course you don't. What leader would?

You want employees who care about the success of the company. This happens when they buy into the brand. When they know what the brand means to the company and to them personally. When they know how to do the behaviors and deliver experiences that bring the brand to life. And when they understand why its important to the company and to customers. When this happens you will have achieved a brand-driven performance culture.

The guru on driving organizational "change", John Kotter, has a great quote, he says, "The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture or systems...The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people."


Think about your employee base as one big computer. There are two main components to making the computer perform: hardware and software. Your company has the same two components. Hardware is equal to the strategy and structure of the company. Software is composed of the beliefs and behaviors of the people in the company. If you don't have software on your computer, how useful is it. It simply won't perform to its potential. If the beliefs and behaviors of your employees don't fit inside the structure of your brand, your company will not achieve optimum performance. 

Every employee in your company comes to work each day with a set of beliefs that they have crafted through years of life experience. Employees have their own individual belief systems, which encourage them to behave in certain ways at work.

Most companies are inconsistent at best in delivering a productive work culture and profitable customer experiences. Why? Because most companies have not defined what it is that employees should believe each day at work. By establishing a belief system for your company, you are able to set clear expectations for employees on what they are to "think" about your brand and what it means to the company, employees and customers. If you don't define your company's beliefs, you leave it up to each individual employee to define their own set of beliefs about your company and you lose the opportunity to guide their thoughts and actions. This ultimately leads to inconsistencies in employee behaviors (how employees do your brand) and in the experiences delivered to employees and customers. 

Think about companies you've interacted with that clearly don't have a belief system that employees buy-in to...

Now think about the companies that do enroll their employees in a belief system that unites and drives the entire organization...

Ask yourself...who would you rather work for or do business with?

Ask yourself, is your brand invisible to your employees, customers and stakeholders? Of course not, you think.. how dare I ask that question!

Well, take a moment to truly understand what it means to have an invisible brand. Does every employee in your company know how to bring the brand to life in their job everyday and are they held accountable for bringing your brand to life?

The reality is most brands start out as invisible (ideas on paper). Nothing more than mission statements, core values, brand promises, credos, business principles...yada, yada, yada (insert Elaine Benes' annoying voice).

To most employees and customers, they've heard it before (yada, yada, yada) and your brand is nothing more than a few catchy words with little substance or know-how. It doesn't have to stay that way, though for most it unfortunately does.

Here are the six causes of the invisible brand:

1. No company belief system exists 
2. Employees don't understand the benefits customers are seeking and how to deliver those benefits
3. Poor employee attitudes
4. Employees choose their own behaviors hindering consistency
5. Customer experiences are not managed
6. Employees don't understand how they impact the business goals of the company.
   

To sum up the invisible brand: Beliefs drive attitudes. Attitudes drive behaviors. Behaviors drive experiences for others. Those experiences lead to a business result (more or less productivity, loyalty, and/or sales). If you don't like the business result your company is achieving, look at the experiences your employees are delivering.

Your competition can and will copy your brand (messaging, ads, marketing materials, employer promise, etc.) and flood the market with more yada, yada, yada, but they can't copy your true brand (people and process) when you've made it visible for employees and customers.

If actions really do speak louder than words, then why do so many companies miss the mark when it comes to sustaining customer loyalty and employee morale and productivity?

The answer’s simple: companies fail to reckon with reality. The experiences that customers and employees have with the company brand do not align with who and what the company says it is.

The best companies develop strategies and programs to solve the discrepancy between real and perceived brand image and build more powerful brands. In doing so, these companies have made billions in new sales, grown tremendous loyalty with customers and employees, improved productivity, and transformed their organizational culture.

Interestingly, these leading companies all have something in common - They all started by doing the unthinkable: they recognized they were wrong.

Being wrong in business nowadays can be the kiss of death. But this admission can also give a company the freedom to be okay with not having all of the answers. And, it can help a company realize that while it’s very hard to change dramatically overnight, it is possible to get better every day.

How can you help your company become better? You can start by finding out if the perceptions of your company’s brand are in alignment with reality — that is, what your customers and employees actually think.

Companies that build trust with their customer base and within the work culture do so by focusing on branding from the inside out. You can have the best marketing message and flashiest Web site in the world, but if you can't back it up with employees who deliver consistently good customer experiences you're only "Branding for the Neighborhood."

An approach of branding for the neighborhood may feel good as you develop new logos and taglines, create a new brochure, update your Web site, and launch an ad campaign. But it's superficial. You paint the house, plant flowers, and look great from a distance. But this only works if you don't want anyone to come inside. The good feeling won't last when the financials are due, stress is high, and your top employees decide to leave. A profitable and sustainable brand must be built from the inside out through the right people, operational processes, and programs that are in alignment with organizational goals and objectives.

Don't let your company's branding efforts be focused solely in the marketing department. Rather, focus on the operational processes and people systems necessary to deliver on the promises you want to make. Then make the promises your employees can and will deliver to drive customer loyalty and sales.

I often get falsely accused of being "anti-marketing" when in reality I value marketing as much as the top marketers and leaders in the world, I just see marketing as a piece to a larger puzzle rather than the "'end all" solution. In my travels I come across too many leaders focused so much on positioning and messaging and not focused enough on what it truly takes to deliver a differentiated experience to employees and customers. In my opinion, at least 90% of the time your employees and customers are going to judge your company and its products and services by the experience they have with it and 10% or less by what you tell and market to them. A brand is not built through marketing messages, it is built though people and process held together by employee day-to-day behaviors.

Let me share with you a quick story about the power of brand-behavior.

Recently I was in Florida visiting a well-known restaurant chain that serves bagels. My family had ordered dinner, but I also wanted to take six bagels home. I went to the takeout line to place the order. While the sales clerk was packing the bagels, I noticed she was putting them into a large, expensive box suited for 12 to 24 bagels.

I said to her: “Please don’t waste that costly box on my bagels—a smaller bag will do.” Her response was appalling: “It’s OK, I’m not paying for it.”

Ouch! My immediate thought: “Well, I’m paying for it!”

Now, I’m fairly certain this attitude and behavior wasn’t taught during the company’s training and orientation session. But it clarifies the root cause of this imbalance between what the brand stands for and reality. Quite simply: Employees don’t see themselves as a vital part of the company brand.

Simply put, if you are not managing behaviors employees do and experiences employees and customers have, then you are not managing your company brand.  It doesn't matter what the restaurant's marketing said, the employee's behavior undercut all of it!