Yesterday I met with the VP of Human Resources at a Fortune 500 company. I asked him how many people he had working for him and he said “About half.”Labels: BRANDEMiX, Employee Engagement, Research
Labels: BRANDEMiX, Branding, engagement

The year was 1994 and something called a job board was being
launched- specifically CareerMosaic, named after the web browser credited for
popularizing an old thing called the Internet.
In a meeting with top executives, Bernard Hodes, a brilliant marketeer and the CEO of the agency that bore his name, shared his rationale for creating the pricing structure for his new category of recruitment advertising.
"We’ll price the postings as a $100 add-on with any newspaper ad” he said. (At the time a 1” by 3” classified ad in the NY Times on Sunday was probably about $1,500.) He continued, “Who doesn't have an extra $100 to experiment on a new media?”
Unknowingly, he was establishing a precedent for what is today a $6+ billion business. (Factoid- CareerMosaic was eventually sold to headhunter.net which was eventually bought by CareerBuilder, as of today one of the 2 giant oaks still standing.)
However, equally important was his underlying reminder that everyone has a budget for failure- aka experimentation ... a lottery ticket fund that smart people can sometimes leverage into big payouts.I call this a budget for failure because that way if the outlay fails to generate a positive return on its investment, at least you can take solace from having known it in advance.
For me, it is the amount of money I set aside for a potential bad hire- someone who doesn’t meet my exact requirements but has a kernel of an idea that might take me new places.
It's important because the BRANDEMiX brand is a culture of ideas and execution.
Also included in my failure budget is an amount I can spend on something I’ve already tried that didn't work out. That’s also important to our brand since one of our brand pillars is “solutions that leverage technology.” In the fast changing digital world, though experience is a great teacher, it is not necessarily a great predictor of future outcomes.In case you haven’t yet drawn the connection, my budget for failure is also part of my plan for success. Without funding for my failures, I am unable to succeed at delivering my brand.
Labels: BRANDEMiX, Branding, Employer Branding
So if a CEO is the figurehead of a company’s brand, who is the figurehead of a company’s employer brand? You might guess HR or Marketing, when in fact it is again, the CEO.
Without top down inspiration, the brand can flounder like a ship lost a sea.
So what’s HR’s role? First Mate.
HR must take the captain’s orders and radiate the brand out to the labor market and to the internal employees. Just as marketers have insight and knowledge about communicating to consumers, HR should understand better than any department how to talk to jobseekers and employees.
Figuring out the brand is the easy part – you already have it – communicating it is the creative part. It takes a constantly evolving understanding of the people you’re talking to.
Marketers have always relied on their ad agencies for this insight and expertise in communicating with consumers. Now HR has a secret weapon too.
Labels: BRANDEMiX, Branding, Employer Branding
Branding, which started as a way to distinguish products from generic alternatives now it has the exact opposite effect.Labels: BRANDEMiX, Employer Branding

Labels: BRANDE Awards


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