Employees must buy your message before your customers do

How to build an authentic brand—inside and out

Some call it “inside-out branding.” Others refer to it as “internal marketing.” However the phrase is coined, companies that practice it prosper. In good and bad economic times.

Think Apple. Southwest. Nike. Disney. FedEx. The new IBM. They don’t just have employees. They have brand advocates.

These and other innovative companies have reaped serious profits using creative, culture-building internal messaging. The numbers prove it:

We’ve been fortunate to work with many great clients that understood the meaning and value of innovative internal marketing: Cisco, Apple, Coca-Cola, Electronic Arts, Dell Computer and Pizza Hut, to name just a few. What’s their secret?

Authenticity.

“An authentic brand can often increase momentum (something that can give the team the bravery to get going again when they’ve had a setback),” write Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro in “Unstuck.” “The most authentic brands are those where there is no gap between the purpose of the company and its actions. No gap between what it aspires to be and how it acts every day.”