Organizational Self Awareness as a Marketing Strategy

We all know that guy - the one who gets too close to you at a networking event and accidentally spits into your drink while describing his 4-year-old niece's birthday party (for the 2nd time). This is a prime example of a lack of self awareness. But, it turns out, organizations can lack self awareness just as individuals can - except that, with organizations, the consequences can be much worse.

In the Information Age, everyone knows. No, there isn't a direct object to that sentence; everyone just knows. They know that the boss isn't as smart as s/he should be, they know the meeting this morning was a complete waste of time, and they know that the perennial desk-snoozer should have been fired weeks ago.

Now that the 35-year-corporate-career is yielding to a set of Millennial job-movers seeking work-life balance, intellectual challenge and emotional fulfillment, organizations must get more savvy about their internal operations - i.e., they must have organizational self awareness. The good news is that organizations who do have organizational self awareness not only become better places to work, but they also become better marketers.

The days of company-does-this but marketing-says-that are over; instead, information = transparency, and transparency is the backbone of today's effective marketing. Therefore, organizations who strengthen their operations by being good employers (i.e., they support employees, they have a strong work-life balance, they have great leadership, they encourage collaboration, etc.) have a huge advantage in terms of marketing assets. Simply exposing the brand's outstanding organizational prowess will lend beautifully to honest, effective marketing campaigns that will honestly and effectively resonate with more outstanding people - not only potential customers, but potential employees.

With organizational self awareness as a marketing strategy, brands can use operations to transparently drive the communications plan. If your brand's operations and communications both improved, how far could your brand go? This is very much a case of 1+1=3. On the flip side, brands who continue to be "self unaware" not only risk devaluing their brands in terms of marketing, but also risk losing valuable employees who will seek out greener pastures.

For any brand, that's definitely a trend to be aware of.

Tags

Scroll, or tap/click a list item to filter posts by that tag.

• Analysis
• Strategy
• Awareness
• Organization
• Marketing