Why You Need to Integrate Brand and Culture with Denise Lee Yohn
b'\\u201cMost CEOs delegate culture to HR and brand to marketing. You need to prioritize a fusion of these areas.\\u201d For many organizations, this is a big shift. Thankfully, this big shift is the big focus of the latest book from brand leadership expert Denise Lee Yohn. We discussed the potential power of the fusion of brand and culture on this week\\u2019s episode of the On Brand podcast presented by\\xa0Twenty20.\\nAbout Denise Lee Yohn\\nDenise Lee Yohn\\xa0is the go-to expert on brand leadership for national media outlets, an in-demand speaker and consultant, and an influential writer. In addition to\\xa0FUSION, she is the author of the bestselling book\\xa0What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest\\xa0(Jossey-Bass) and the e-book\\xa0Extraordinary Experiences: What Great Retail and Restaurant Brands Do.\\nNews media including FOX Business TV, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR call on Denise when they want an expert point-of-view on hot business issues. She is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes, and has also written for Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Knowledge@Wharton, among others.\\nDenise initially cultivated her brand-building approaches through several high-level positions in advertising and client-side marketing. She served as lead strategist at advertising agencies for Burger King and Land Rover and as the marketing leader and analyst for Jack in the Box restaurants and Spiegel catalogs. Denise went on to head Sony Electronic Inc.\\u2019s first ever brand office, where she was the vice president/general manager of brand and strategy and garnered major corporate awards. Consulting clients include Target, Oakley, and Dunkin\\u2019 Donuts.\\nEpisode Highlights\\n\\u201cFor a long time brand and culture have been managed separately but there\\u2019s great power when you bring them together.\\u201d\\xa0Denise cited the example of Amazon, which surprises many but they\\u2019re able to channel the energy of employees who crave demanding work into innovation and service.\\nHow can you take steps toward connecting culture and brand?\\u201cYou have to identify your over-arching purpose. Why you\\u2019re in business. This should apply internally and externally. From there, you assess gaps.\\u201d\\nAligning culture with brand comes down to four strategies:\\xa0\\u201c(1) Organize and operate, (2) create cultural change and empower employees, (3) sweat the small stuff like rituals and artifacts, and (4) ignite employees in brand engagement.\\u201d\\nWhat if you have culture but not brand?\\xa0\\u201cYou have to leverage your culture to differentiate your brand.\\u201d REI has used this approach.\\nWhy small brands struggle.\\xa0As we were talking about what great brands do, we uncovered many ideas that can be useful for small brands. Specifically, Denise\\u2019s framing question from\\xa0What Great Brands Do,\\xa0\\u201cAsk yourself, what business are you\\xa0really\\xa0in?\\u201d If you\\u2019re Zappos, it\\u2019s not the shoe business.\\nWhat brand has made Denise smile recently?\\xa0As someone who talks brands all of the time, Denise had several choices. However, she went with the delight she gets from Bombas socks.\\nTo learn more, go to\\xa0deniseleeyohn.com\\xa0and\\xa0follow her on Twitter.\\n\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'