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Once upon a corporate time, there were internal consultants to help management understand their people and help their people understand management’s goals. When the consultant¹s internal efforts were finished, they handed management a deck, took their check and wished the CEO well. Sometimes the effort died right there.
Often, management would take the information and send out RFP’s designed to find a branding and/or PR or an interactive partner to help spread the new mission statement or revised logo or tagline around to potential customers. Likely you have been through this process and, if you’re still reading, obviously something didn’t work.
We have been on every side of the crossroads, both with ourselves and with many clients. Through years of trial and error, R&D, internal and external research, experience and a talent for corporate archeology chased by inspired communication, we’ve found that treating the internal and external as separate entities is the foundation of the problem. The world has changed, and hundreds of business gurus have written thousands of books trying to make heads or tails of that change. So we took what we know and created Glue.
Glue has three steps: GlueVision, GlueAlignment and GlueAction.
Internally, things can’t function successfully when people don’t understand the vision, truth and core of the company. It’s like working with corporate blinders. That misunderstanding is a recipe for branding disaster, hamstringing efforts in every department. It takes inspiration to motivate
action built on your vision.
Top management must take the lead. Management and HR, sales and distribution, operations, marketing, branding and customer service, etc. -- they are all one functioning body, not a gaggle of hands and legs and brains.
If your left hand thinks you are one person and your right hand thinks you’re another person, how will your brain ever get you to be who you really are? So you have to align them all into a powerful machine for living your singular vision. And you have to Glue them together.
GlueVision begins with a corporate archeology dig. We ask a lot of questions inside and outside your organization. We listen a lot. We talk to your management, your people, your customers and even your competition. We look for brand aficionados. We search out your truth, and clarify the soul of your reason for being. We use this to create an inspired GlueVision, expressed in a power film that is an emotional and rational anthem for your truth.
So many companies go straight from efforts to clarify their vision right past their own people and rush to the consumer. Big mistake. And that’s where we differ from most other branding partners.
If your internal is misaligned, your external will suffer. But if your own people don’t deeply understand your vision, your branding messages will never connect with customers. Your people have to live the truth of your company when they interact with customers. That takes GlueAlignment.
When you align and Glue your internal vision with your own people first, then your external messages and branding will stick to customers - because people believe people only when those people have a common bond.
It doesn’t matter if you¹re doing TV, interactive, radio, print, design, direct response, promotions, sales programs, messaging, PR, guerilla branding, social media, whatever. You must Glue your vision to action both internally (with your own people) and externally (with your customers and
potential customers) to have successful and measurable communications.
When you Glue inspired, creative external communication to inspired, compelling internal vision, to meaningful and relevant execution, you will propel your company past almost any crossroads you encounter.
Want to learn even more? Click here.
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