ACA Communicatie houdt zich bezig met wervingscommunicatie.

bron: www.hodes.com

Mark Hornung, senior VP strategy at Bernard Hodes Group (ACA Communicatie represents The Netherlands office), has explored the shift in employer branding (as well as branding in general) away from the linear Brand Funnel model to today’s chaotic, multi-platform, mash-up culture. Just as product marketers and corporate communications specialists must grapple with the changes in how people consume media, so must employers as well. He created a model which describes what he calls The Employee/Candidate Journey. The ideas are based on a study completed by McKinsey & Co. in 2008 on the Customer Journey. McKinsey consultants studied several industries worldwide to determine how advances such as social media and online shopping had impacted sales of automobiles, cosmetics, PCs, insurance policies, and wireless services. The study found that instead of a linear funnel, the best model to describe the interaction of customers and brands was a loop.

Whenever someone decides to buy something, according to this model, they begin with an Initial Consideration Set. These are brands that offer goods/services that presumably will meet the customer’s needs. Because information about brands is so easy to find online, people will turn to the Web to find out spec’s, pricing, and often order online. During this exploratory phase, other brands have the opportunity to gain consideration by being recommended by other users, reviewers or even astute ad keyword campaigns.

Once the consumer makes a purchase, the old Brand Funnel was done. The presumption was that the consumer was largely satisfied. As the Brand Funnel theory evolved, marketers realized that a purchase was really only the beginning of a relationship. They learned that if you took care of existing customers they would become repeat customers. Loyal customers. The airlines leveraged this after de-regulation in the 1980s by creating frequent flyer programs. Today, it seems everyone from the grocer to your corner gas station has some type of customer affinity program.

The reason marketers support affinity programs is that we now know— and the McKinsey study affirmed— that customers are continuously evaluating brands based on their experiences. If they accrue enough negative data, customers will re-evaluate the relationship the next time they plan to purchase and try a competing brand. In employment, the model is remarkably similar. Unfortunately, many employers fail to recognize the need for relationship marketing with their own employees, much less candidates at large. The belief is that, with high unemployment, employees “are lucky to have a job.” So, when it comes time to trim budgets, internal branding programs such as learning and development, rewards and recognition, or even simple status updates are among the first line items to be cut. What this callous attitude fails to recognize is that while it is true that many employees are captive, the most talented and skilled workers are not. They can, and will, continue to seek out better opportunities simply because they can. They are good at what they do and they know it.