A few years ago, I went looking for my first job. Originally from Switzerland, I was quickly faced with this Cornelian dilemma: banking? chocolate? watches? Looking to get into watchmaking, I managed to get an interview for a six-month internship: total excitement!
But then, things strangely started to go wrong…
The first telephone assessment went rather well, except that the recruitment manager suddenly lost control when I lacked the inspiration to find a third flaw. “You know, if I don’t have three flaws to write on your interview sheet, there won’t be a second meeting.” I complied in the face of this Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
For my second interview, I headed to the head office of this large watchmaking company located in La Chaux-de-Fond. Somewhat naively, I expected treatment worthy of the brand’s global renown and international prestige. I quickly became disillusioned when I had to wait alone for most of the day for the hiring managers to decide to give me some of their time. Ten days after this interview, still no news. I followed up with the hiring manager, who coldly told me that I had not been selected.
The bitter taste I have from this experience is not due to the fact that I was not selected. This refusal pushed me to open much better doors later on. It was rather the arrogance of the employees and the lack of respect towards the candidates that generated in me a real aversion to this brand. I no longer see its watches in the same way and it would never occur to me to offer one to someone. “You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression,” they say. This saying also applies to brands.
This story made me realize that brand management cannot rest solely in the hands of a communications-marketing department. The identity and reputation of an organization are built over time by the sum of all its multiples and all its tiny interactions with its internal and external environment. Whether it is the management of human resources, suppliers, partners or customers: each action contributes to spreading a message, to generating an interpretation by an audience.
The best advocates of a brand are perhaps no longer the celebrities paid on the nail, but simply the employees. They are the ones who have the power to embody the brand to the various stakeholders of the company and to create a good first impression. Brand management should be seen as a transversal activity, which would ensure the proper incarnation of its values at all levels, in an authentic, coherent and constant manner.
In his text The Emergence of the Totalizing Brand, Pierre Balloffet rightly returns to this subject, saying “in a transparent world where every company becomes a media, everything ends up becoming a brand”. Having a community of employees committed to the brand can therefore represent a certain competitive advantage. Not worrying about it can, conversely, give rise to major risks in terms of reputation.
Major brands are now masters in the art of promoting their commitment to “making this world a better place”. But when a contradiction arises between the values communicated and real actions, the mask falls and trust is broken.
