Brand from the Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business

This is one of the premier books on brand development. The authors are spot on in advocating that brands are most effective when built from the inside out. If we do not engage our employees in the procees and get their buy-in we do not have a brand. Too often brand development is a communications and marketing effort. We need to make sure that we include HR as our brand partners, or brand leaders. There is a reason why Southwest Airlines is traditionally one of the first companies that comes to mind when we think of a case study in branding, and why it is consistently profitable. If I am not mistaken, it is the only US airline to be profitable each year since 9/11. I have seen Libby present before and she is one of the real pros in branding.

This predictable book on branding has a slight twist: aim your branding efforts at your employees as well as at your customers. Simple enough. Authors Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann have boiled employer branding down to eight essentials. Generally, they focus on their core concept with a positive orientation toward employees, although their lists, checklists and lists within lists do get repetitive. Maybe all those lists are intended to help the staff in human resources, where they place much of the responsibility for internal branding. We recommend this book to branding and internal marketing newcomers who want a rundown of the basics, and to human resource professionals who may need to learn about marketing to harness the impact of internal branding.