Brand Culture Examples.
It’s now a year and a half since brands the world-over brought their workplace into the home. The influence we have on the health of the people inside our brands is more acute than it has ever been.
As brands, we have the power to protect and cultivate a healthy, enduring atmosphere. Yet, even well-intentioned brands can get so tied up in red tape, they forget the impact they have one their team.
But, a progressive brand culture isn’t built overnight in some grand mission statement. A flourishing culture comes from affirming and consistent action. The foundation of which you build on trust, diverse hiring and healthy habits.
Brands that work from the core? The devotion that will come from that kind of authenticity has real staying power. Get it right, it will be so contagious your customers can feel and experience the ripple-effect of it.
So what does your brand actually care about? Are your brand values empty, meaningless promises? Or is your brand’s culture living and breathing your values in everything it does?
In this video, I go over six case studies of happy brands that have built a bright company culture and the key takeaway from each.
Video Transcript
Company culture is a clumination of how you define your brand. See your purpose, vision, mission, and values, what you stand for and against as a company and how this is embodied on a day-to-day basis throughout your business over time. And through living this brand culture, additional symbols, messages, beliefs, rituals, and habits are developed, and this plays directly into the experience your customers have when interacting with your brand. So here are some examples of brands working really hard to create a great company culture.
Netflix, Netflix created 124 page slideshow presentation. All about their culture of freedom and responsibility and how they wanted to retain the best talent through a process of unfiltered honesty throughout the company.
So they expected to be able to give honest feedback to their employees and they expected the same in return throughout the company. Netflix also doesn’t measure employee effort by the amount of hours they work, but instead by what they produce and on the back of this, they decided to get rid of all vacations.
In terms of a limit on vacations. So Netflix employees actually have unlimited vacation days possible. On the back of being able to produce the work that they are needed to produce key takeaway. If you treat your employees with respect, you treat them with honesty and openness and you allow them to feel empowered and give them the best tools possible.
They will do amazing things and not only for the internal culture, but for the external brand as well.
Google now, no list on great company culture. We’ll be complete without the addition of Google, one of the most well-known and pioneering firms for company culture. Google provides a lot of perks for its employees, including free food at the cafeteria free gym memberships.
Access to talks and events and also hybrid working. So they were one of the first companies to bring in hybrid working across the company. So employees can work in the office three days a week, and at home two days a week, they also encourage the Googler to Googler. Training program, which is where one person from Google can coach or mentor another.
And all of these perks have kept Google’s employees motivated, empowered, and innovated, and energized to do more key takeaway. If your brand is about innovation forward-thinking and creativity developing a company culture that allows this kind of thinking to flourish is only going to help your business and your brand long-term, it will drive your brand forward and it will create internal advocates for your brand.
Zappos, Zappos put so much weight on company culture. It actually dedicates half the interview process to working out whether or not you’re a right fit. Culturally for the company. New employees actually get offered $2,000 after just the first week of training to quit the job. If it’s not right for them, they then have to go through call center training.
It doesn’t matter what seniority level of the position they go for is whether that’s management, whether that’s C-suite or call center, they have to go through this training. And what it does is it instills 10 core values of Zappos. Into each employee through that process, the reason they go through all of this training is to make sure that when someone actually walks through those doors on day one, they are complete fit with the company culture.
And because Zappos is built on customer service and making sure that they can meet those needs of the customer, every point they want the new employee to fit right into that culture. Key takeaway company culture builds your brand. So Zappos is actually built on the idea that they are great at customer service and they produce this at every turn.
So when they get a new hire into the company, they want to make sure that that hire is in keeping with the existing company culture. They go to great lengths to make sure this happens. And the reason they’re doing that is they don’t want anything to happen to that brand. So they want to make sure that each new hire actually builds on that premise.
Hit the like button if you’ve enjoyed the video so far and comment below, have you worked in companies with good, bad or non-existent company culture? And what was that like? Comment below.
Pixar now Pixar’s company. Culture is built on the idea of creativity and collaboration with employees encouraged to show their ideas at an early stage and get honest feedback from their coworkers.
They promote that no idea is a bad idea and that every idea can be shaped and molded into a good one. But to do that, it requires collaboration with your coworkers and feedback from them. And they’re encouraged to not judge their peers, but judge the work that they’ve done and give critical feedback on it. And this creative collaboration is really important for the way that Pixar works and you wouldn’t have half of the interesting ideas that come out of Pixar without this brand culture.
Key takeaway create a company culture that serves your ultimate vision. Pixar’s culture is set up to help them keep making the magical and groundbreaking stories that they produce. So if you can think about your ultimate vision for your brand and then create a mission that allows you to work daily towards that vision, and then create a culture that helps to fuel that mission on a day-to-day basis.
You’re not only gonna continue to grow that brand towards that vision, but you’re going to create a really strong culture that embeds the mission and the vision into the company.
Zoom. Now Zoom has grown exponentially over the past 18 months with more and more companies looking to use online meetings and Zoom understood as it grew, it would need to try and maintain that company culture.
So it created what it calls the happiness crew and they maintain culture at each separate location. They maintain culture with a series of events, celebrations, community involvement, and volunteering for worthwhile causes.
With each new hire being paired with a mentor who helps them to understand the company culture and also some of their outreach programs and Zoom also hosts regular days where they invite their employees to think about somebody who inspires them in their personal life friend or family member and bring those people into work so that their coworkers can meet them and see who inspires their coworkers.
Key takeaway don’t leave company culture to chance. Zoom works hard to keep their company culture strong so much so that they’ve created the happiness crew. A dedicated team that are there just to keep culture on track. As the company grows, you don’t have to build a team to look after your culture. But if you’re just mindful about, as you grow as a company, some of these things will come up.
You can address them as you grow as a company.
Ikea Now Ikea is known the world over for its down to earth approach. And it’s embodiment of the, every person archetype and this lines up with their company purpose to create a better everyday life for the many people and this purpose. Isn’t just an external one.
This purpose forms the basis for that internal company culture and is why they celebrate new product designs. Why they encourage hugging in the company. Celebrate new store openings globally. And why they play music from 3:00 PM on Fridays so that their employees know that the weekend is just around the corner.
Their purpose is something that defines everything they do as a brand from the internal to the external and creating a better everyday life for the many people is something that Ikea believes for its customers for its employees. And for the planet, key takeaway is to be purpose-driven. Now Ikea purpose is at the core of everything they do.
And by them instilling that into their employees, by helping them to have a better everyday life. What they’re doing is, is they are ingraining in that in employees so that when they deal with their customers, it becomes the employee’s goal to do the same for their audience. And therefore the purpose is generated throughout everything they do.
So be purpose driven as a brand and change the internal culture to match what it is that you stand for and what you’re trying to achieve.
The first step to a strong company, culture is a well-defined and aligned brand if you’re unsure on how aligned or effective your brand is, we actually have a link in the description below, which will take you to a free brand assessment, and that will provide a free report for you a personalized report.
Based on the questions you’ve answered. And that’ll give you some indication about how aligned your brand is, how effective it is and what are some of the areas that are holding you back from growing your brand. So if you’re interested in that, and there’s a link in the description below, if you’ve enjoyed this video and you’d like to see more, please subscribe using the button below and hit the bell notification so that you’ll be notified every time a new video drops videos come out weekly and they’re designed to help you unlock your brand’s potential.
So you can stand out from the competition and create impact, have a good week catch up soon and keep those brands unified.
