Back in the days before TikTok and Soya Chai Lattes, I worked with a copywriter who reckoned that most employer brand campaigns were generated by taking two or more of the following words ‘Difference, Together, Make, Better, You’ and creating a strapline.
Or, as he also said, just put ‘together’ at the beginning or end of your statement and for most enterprises, it is job done.
His view was that there is little or no employer brand differentiation.
Let’s take a look at one particular employer brand message that seems to be fairly ubiquitous.
Like contestants on Love Island, many organisations love going on a journey – and there will be many more in the future who want you to feel that joining them really is a emotional / spiritual / developmental journey. (And I too have been guilty of ‘starting a journey’ with one large healthcare company.)
After a quick Google search, here are five.
Bookaway
Join our journey
Rolls-Royce
Join our journey
TT Electronics
Join our journey
Stone King
Join our journey
Eastward Partners
Join our journey
Of course, you can say that there’s no way that Rolls-Royce are competing against Eastward Partners for talent; or TT Electronics are butting up against Stone King for the majority of their hires.
But by using a generic and much-used term, there’s always the possibility of being indistinct. And what exactly is the journey? Where does it start and where might it end? Is there a data point? Or a vivid description of what that journey will be?
Don’t be silly.
Bookaway
“Bookaway is changing the way people travel and taking them to new places. Come aboard and help us make a real difference in the travel industry.”
Rolls-Royce
“Be a part of our journey; challenge the status quo; help us simplify how we work and free us to focus on the things that matter, so that together we can co-create a brilliant future.”
TT Electronics
“Achieve your goals, contribute to the lives of others, and build a brighter, smarter future – together.”
Stone King
“We are an ambitious, collaborative and friendly firm recognised as leaders in our field with offices across the country.”
Eastward Partners
“I firmly believe that in order to achieve greatness in any area of business, it’s essential to surround ourselves with skills professionals who can act as a mirror to help us navigate the complexities of the modern world.”
[Fair play to the CEO of Eastward Partners; he’s on a journey to some kind of parallel universe.]
Right now, there’s been a healthy discussion raging between Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp over the difference between differentiation and distinctiveness.
Ritson puts differentiation as the most important factor for brands; Professor Sharp has written a book putting distinctiveness above differentiation. One LinkedIn user described differentiation as the substance; distinctiveness as the style. It is slightly more nuanced than that, but whichever camp you sit in, there’s an emphasis on creating some distance between you and the competition.
In employer branding, everyone talks about authenticity – as though the office of one accountancy firm is so different from another. Authenticity has become a watchword for lazy marketing – here’s a Day In The Life of a trainee; here’s my lunch; here’s my fabulous team; here’s me running an extreme marathon; here’s a dog. It’s like Be Real has taken over the world of employer branding, and we are stuck in a loop of employee love.
Of course, authenticity is important. After all, there’s no more powerful employer branding platform than employee advocates sharing their experience. But let’s not confuse authenticity as being distinctive or differentiating (unless of course you want to spill the beans about the Christmas party). It’s employer branding 101.
Differentiation (and even distinctiveness) comes from developing a value proposition that plays to your supporters but also grabs the attention of the passers-by, the waverers, the talent who might not give you a second look, the high flyers who had previously had their hearts set on other brands.
Let’s leave you with the propositions from two brands who are born of from the same family – the Saatchi brothers – but now seems poles apart. M&C have gone all vanilla, while Saatchis have retained the essence of what made them famous in the first place.
M&C Saatchi
We are a creative solutions company, like no other.
Saatchi & Saatchi
A creative company making the most influential ideas in Modern Britain.
I know which one I’d want to work for.
Written by Henry Davies, Founder
