What is Britain’s best known brand? According to Millward Brown’s annual index of brand recognition, it’s Google, and has been two years on the trot now. But when was the last time you saw Google advertise on television, or in a newspaper, or even on a billboard?

Google

In fact, Google spends less than £16m per year on advertising. It’s home truths like this which have gone a long way to shatter the way we think about brands and the role they play in our lives, and the emergence of digital as a medium in its own right is a key driver.

But what the Google example goes to show is that whilst the public consumes digital just like any other medium, advertisers and brand owners treat it the same as any other medium at their peril. It works differently. What works for a brand offline won’t necessarily work online; conversely, things that brand owners could only have dreamed of offline are suddenly possible online.

Brand reputation

This is equally true of employer brands. Until quite recently, the best known employers were almost certainly the ones with the biggest wallets. They had sheer stage presence through big tower blocks in the City – remember how Natwest shaped what is now Tower 42 like the Natwest logo when viewed from above – and branches in every High Street. They conspired to get reps into colleges and universities at crucial junctures. They jostled for position in big broadsheet newspapers’ careers supplements. And in terms of whether the reality matched the glossy rhetoric – well, the only real risk to that reputation was word of mouth – which moved slowly.

What a difference a decade makes. Today, the big corporate HQ in the City is fast falling out of fashion with large corporations favouring smaller, fragmented offices in strategic regional locations. Those still occupying centralised facilities are looking to purpose-built complexes like Docklands over City Centre locations for the lower rents and better quality of life on offer. Branches in High Streets are closing as more and more retail moves online. Students at colleges and universities aren’t interested in meeting reps, having already done their research online. And, crucially, word of mouth – good or bad – spreads many thousands of times more quickly.

And yet the broad challenge for employers remains the same: drive and create awareness of your brand, and manage and fearsomely defend your brand’s reputation. The key difference is that it’s now harder – much harder. No amount of money guarantees cut-through, and the chatter surrounding your brand is faster, louder, and taken more seriously. This creates an interesting scenario; small companies can suddenly see their employer brand in the ascendant in a way never thought possible before, and workplace reputation – good or bad – can hit the public domain virtually overnight.

So on this new level playing field, how can employers best drive that awareness in the first place? Well, if an employer brand’s reputation is now made or broken online, it makes sense to try to create that initial awareness online, too. But whilst advertising individual vacancies online can work well, they succeed only in capturing the attention of those actively seeking work at that time. What about those who aren’t – but who might want to work with that employer in the future?

It is unwise to ignore eyeballs simply because they are not ‘of the moment’. Whereas a consumer may respond to television advertising by subconsciously noting the product or service, and then altering their purchase decision when they are ready to buy, the instantaneous nature of online means that such delayed recall is harder to achieve. Instead, many brands consider online ad placement to be a means to begin a relationship, the message being, “even if you are not ready to buy now, I want to know you.” This is particularly true of big purchasing decisions like buying a car. Nobody will ever buy a car as a result of a single banner advert on a web site; but they might well buy a car as a result of continued, targeted communications over a period of time.

Miller Shanks

Employer brands can look to build relationships in the same way. Done effectively, it not only builds employer brand reputation, it can also provide a powerful talent pool for future recruitment. Consider a fictional advertising agency, Miller Shanks. It is independent, privately owned and employs around 150 people in its London offices. It has excellent retention and low turnover, and high levels of satisfaction amongst its staff. And yet outside the immediate industry it is not well known. Its main web site (www.millershanks.com) does of course post all current appointments, and has profiles of key personnel, but it gives off a functional, utilitarian air.

Miller Shanks might well consider launching a spin-off site – www.lifeatmillershanks.com. The sole purpose of the site is to communicate just what it’s like to work at Miller Shanks – to ‘sell’ the employer brand, not advertise any specific vacancy.  So, naturally, it would feature a tour of the facilities; vox pops with staff; video and photos from nights out; ‘a day in a life’ type documentaries – the list goes on.  It’s not just for people looking to work there right now – it’s for those who might be a good fit at some point in their career. To that end, a short-but-sweet bit of incentivised data capture (within data protection guidelines) asks some crucial questions to help build up a picture of the candidate, and how to talk to them in the future.

One particularly effective way of garnering initial traffic is making use of social media, and in particular the targeting opportunities of the likes of Facebook; paid-for adverts can be shown only to those who meet strict criteria. Miller Shanks may decide it wants to target all those working at any of its competitors across the globe – virtually all of whom will have Facebook profiles. By simply telling the Facebook ad engine the names of its competitors, Miller Shanks can reach just those pairs of eyes. Those pairs of eyes will soon find their way to the microsite to discover more about life at a competitor agency; many will choose to register their details, and as a result Miller Shanks can begin the process of ongoing prospect engagement. That may or may not lead ultimately to employment – but at least employer and (possible) employee can keep each other updated as to what’s going on in their respective lives. Should a good fit arise, one can easily contact the other – at any point in the future.

So having built awareness amongst its most important audience through targeted digital communications, how can an employer manage and maintain reputation to ensure that brand awareness is associated with positive brand qualities?

In truth the qualities which define employers with strong reputations are enduring. My father Roy has many years’ experience leading HR programmes at blue chips both before and after the digital revolution, and now runs his own consulting practice, RLT Associates. He notes:

“The John Lewis Partnership is a good example of an organisation that has over a generation or more steadily worked at being effective and to espouse the positive values of a good employer. When the management refers to staff as partners, you don’t smile cynically, but know exactly what they mean and how that is reflected in their reward system and their attitude to customers. But you may find it hard to recall how John Lewis describes itself externally, other than as ‘never knowingly undersold."

Digital channels

So if the fundamentals of building employer reputation haven’t changed, what has? Put simply, it’s the speed with which changes to that reputation can travel, and the breadth and depth of the domain in which they can spread. Whereas fifteen or twenty years ago a negative experience with a brand – be it a consumer product brand or an employer – could take weeks or months to disseminate through to other eyes and ears, it can now be measured in hours. And so digital channels – social networks, blogs, forums, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr – these become a vast bear-pit of commentary from those in contact with the employer brand; not just employees, of course, but recruitment agencies, suppliers and, of course, customers. This eternal and ever-changing symphony of positive, neutral and negative commentary has a direct and immediate impact on the employer’s reputation – and also potentially the reputation of the larger brand in the eyes of consumers, too.

Online reputation

This is where effective online reputation management comes into play. You can’t shut down negative commentary, but you can manage and brace for its impact. You can’t bring positive commentary to the fore, but you can help enhance its impact and ensure wherever possible it grows roots. The key is early detection and identification; one lone negative comment in the blogosphere might have zero impact, or it might start a domino effect leading to a PR nightmare. Where a given piece of coverage lies on that scale is a complex formula; it takes into account (amongst others) the brand in question, the online channel used, who authored the piece, when they authored it, the tone of the piece, the type of language they used – the list goes on.

This is not easily tackled. Online reputation management is an emerging discipline, but one that some of the biggest names both in digital and in PR are starting to add to their arsenal of skills. Doing it in house might seem appealing on the surface, but a well known American cable company will attest just how dangerous that can be; a video of one of their technicians falling asleep on a customer’s couch whilst waiting on hold to his own tech support line went viral overnight, and said cable co unwisely responded by firing the technician.  Any aspiring engineer who saw the sorry tale unfold might reasonably have thought twice before winging over his or her CV.

Media space

The key lesson in all of this is that consumers’ media space is changing – fast. The way in which brands build relationships with those consumers is changing with it. But, as yet, the big employer brands haven’t caught up. If they don’t soon, they may just start finding they can’t attract the best talent any more, and that their smaller, more agile competitors will secure it instead.

For those now biting finger nails, a little advice; use common sense, be proactive not reactive, and above all, don’t be afraid to get external help in when you need it. The digital revolution has started, but you don’t have to sit back and watch it unfold.