Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

1994). Ability of public sector organizations to perform and satisfy its customers determines customer satisfaction and
eventually the level of confidence and trust that customers/citizens have in their government (Heintzman & Marson,
2005). Trust in the public sector organization or brand can lead to favourable feelings, willingness to donate, support,
volunteer and so on.
Attracting and Retaining Talent. Beyond the clients, public sector organisations all over the world are greatly concerned
about their ability to attract and retain the best talent. In the US, a McKinsey report highlights this challenge
(Dohrmann, Kennedy & Shenoy, 2008). Cutbacks, hiring freezes, lack of meritocracy and lower compensation are
often cited as causes of declining employee morale in the public sector. Strong brand reputation not only will create
closeness between the customers and the organization, but it will also make it easier for an organization to attract and
retain talent. In today‘s social media driven world, brand reputation makes an organization attractive or unattractive to
both customers and employers.
As evident from the service-profit chain literature, customer satisfaction is dependent on internal service quality and
employee satisfaction (Heskett, Sasser & Schlesinger, 1997). However, unlike the private sector where profit is at the
end of the service-profit chain, in the case of public sector it will be trust and confidence in government or public sector
(Heintzman & Marson, 2005) or even a greater level of citizen engagement.
Framework for Public Sector Branding
The author‘s experience in helping a Canadian public sector agency with their brand building and stakeholder brandengagement
strategy forms the basis of this section. This organization is located in an eastern province in Canada,
employs over 1000 people across more than 40 offices and serves nearly a million citizens.
Initial discussions with senior management, who expressed an interest in branding, revealed that not all of them had a
common understanding of branding or why it was needed. After several discussions with senior management,
consensus was reached and a model (which draws from the public-sector value-chain) was created to show how a strong
brand can help the organization (see Figure 1). Then the following steps unfolded (see Figure 2).
Step 1: Discovery. Brand building requires knowledge of the organizational culture, employee perception of their
organization and work, client perception of the organization, organizational mandate, resources, opportunities and
challenges. This internal and external analysis is crucial to creating a brand that everyone can believe in and embrace.
Focus groups and surveys of employees, focus groups with clients as well as analysis of strategic and business plans
formed the discovery phase.
Step 2: Defining the Brand DNA and its Architecture. Having gained deep knowledge of the mindset and culture,
Brand DNA was developed. This included articulation of brand values, purpose, brand value propositions and brand
identity. Instead of defining the brand only from the point of view of the external customers, the relevance of the brand
for employees was also defined through employee value propositions. This is based on the notion that building brand
reputation will take whole-hearted support of employees. While all stakeholders provided input, brand DNA definition
was developed mainly through facilitated sessions with senior management. However, to get feedback and ensure buyin
from middle managers, facilitated workshops were conducted.
A corporate branding architecture is more appropriate for public sector organisations that do not have individual
products which are branded separately (cf. Whalen et al. 2010). In this specific organization, there are five unrelated
service areas – each of which historically had its own unique name, identity and even service location. Citizens did not
see these five entities as belonging to one organization or part of a single brand. This necessitated a master-brand - subbrand
structure, with the corporate brand serving as the master brand (Aaker, 2004).
Step 3: Brand Implementation. This step involved the following phases.
Phase 1: Identification of brand steward (senior most official) and brand champions (all Managers) and their respective roles. The brand
champions went through a training session which involved discussion of how adherence to the brand values and brand DNA will impact their
work.
Phase 2: The brand champions trained all employees in their domain. Employees developed a list of on-brand and off-brand behaviours.
Phase 3: Employees received skills training required to provide meet service standards and provide superior customer experience. This included
―soft‖ skills as well as subject matter (program knowledge) training.
Phase 4: A redesigned customer-friendly web site was a major component of the new communication and brand engagement strategy. There was
no mass media campaign. Consistency in brand logo was established.
Co-location of services (one-stop) and investments in information technology (to enhance customer experience) are
currently underway.
Step 4: Stakeholder Brand-Engagement Initiative. Mechanisms for ongoing interaction of stakeholders and their
involvement in the creation and delivery of services (co-creation in some areas) are being established. Guidelines for
obtaining regular feedback from stakeholders have been established.
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