The most important audience for your narrative is your own team
Experienced executives know that motivated and aligned teams are a critical driver of growth for any organisation. When a business has that internal energy it shines through its people. Customers can feel it in the experience they get, and shareholders can too.
As you start 2024 it is worth asking whether you have a compelling, and operationally organising narrative that gives your business that advantage. A north star and blueprint that ensures everyone knows and believes in what they are contributing to when they get to work each morning.
Unfortunately, too many leaders haven’t experienced the benefits a clear positioning brings to their organisation as it is not as common as you would think. Instead, they have gotten used to positioning being ‘brand’ and a marketing matter. They associate it with fluffy ambitions, logos, buzzwords, generic statements and punny taglines that anyone in the category could say. It means that many ‘brands’ are simply familiar names, products or platforms offering a deluge of features that match their competitors. They rely on recognition rather than something more meaningful that your team can stand behind. It’s a huge miss.
What does an operationally organising positioning feel like?
When you have got it, you get it.
Ask any seasoned Johnson & Johnson executive what makes that business so successful and it's not long before they will reference ‘The Credo’. Written by Robert Johnson himself in 1943, the J&J Credo with its ‘Four Responsibilities’ sets out the values & ethos that have lit the business’ pathway as it grew to become one of the world’s largest and most enduring healthcare organisations, with a purposeful mission to change the trajectory of health for everyone.
The J&J Credo
Decades ago Johnson had the vision and discipline to articulate what role he wanted the business to play in their category and community, and how to go about it. In the rough and tumble of healthcare, across hundreds of markets and divisions, this thinking has kept everyone moving in the direction he wanted the business to go. The importance and impact of defining that direction at the brand level are clear in both business performance and longevity. Johnson & Johnson has held a place on Fortune World’s Most Admired Company list for 21 years in a row and is #1 on the Pharmaceutical Industry list.
Another example, this time from amongst the many financial services brands I have worked with, is the ‘Help’ positioning for NRMA Insurance. The brand recently ranked #2 in Australia’s 100 strongest brand index (source: Brand Finance Australia 2024). Credit goes to the marketing team and their partners who brought this back to life over recent years.
Financial Services can be a difficult category to find a compelling and organising proposition. In ‘Help’ NRMA Insurance has a promise that inspires and guides the staff in their engagement with customers. Whether on the phone in a moment of crisis, or decisions about policy and pricing, ‘Help’ keeps everyone focused on the customer and meeting the expectations of policyholders.
At its heart ‘Help’ defines the contract the business makes with every one of its customers:
“I pay the premium in exchange for the confidence that on the day disaster strikes, you will stand up and help me & my family”
This promise creates a unifying focus for thousands of staff across NSW and Southern Queensland as they support people through the disasters we are all to used to seeing in our news feeds.
Every time the brand keeps that promise it builds the trust and advocacy the business depends on.
With both J&J and NRMA Insurance I am deliberately avoiding the taglines or campaign examples. Those things come and go. I am talking about the enduring belief that lies at the heart of their organisation and the principle that guides and shines through their staff every day.
I have been lucky enough to work with many brands over my career. Sometimes we have developed new strategies and promises, in other projects we inherited long-standing ones to refine and reinvigorate. My learning from that experience is that the most powerful brands are built on a deep and immutable truth about the role the organisation wants to play for customers, and the staff across all departments believe in and are committed to that mission. They aren’t faking it or tacking it on, it’s sewn into the carpets of the place. They commit to it and make it a compelling argument for the customers they want to win with.
The growth opportunity in a positioning strategy is not grounded in a tagline or marketing accessories. It is now it organises and inspires the team. Your own people are its most important audience. In return, you get the engagement and focus of the front-line staff, the passion and consistency of the service, and the ideas and energy of product and marketing.
Does your positioning work from the inside out?
1) Are you clear about where and how you will win your category challenge?
2) Have you built a compelling argument that defines the contract you are making with your customers, and which you are asking your team to deliver on?
3) Is it expressed in a narrative and language that everyone in your team (whatever their role) feels comfortable speaking?
4) Have you embedded that strategy throughout the whole organisation?
This is the critical work that, when done well, will accelerate the whole company, and set your brand on a path to category leadership, and in the challenging business environment it is a move you can’t afford to miss.