“Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.”
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework
A brand isn’t a name or a logo: it’s the perception people have of your organization. Everything your company and employees do contribute to this perception: how an associate greets a customer at checkout; how your television ads looks and feel and what they say; how you respond on social media; and even what the mailroom clerk tells their friends about what it’s like to work at your company.
Everyone in the company can influence perception, so they can influence the brand. In other words, everyone in the company plays some role in your company’s marketing.
To make everyone an effective marketer, everyone must be on the same page. This is why it’s so important to understand your Brand DNA (the human core of your brand and the problems you solve) and and then translate it into both a vision (what you want the company to become) and a set of core values (what the company stands for) that are understandable by every person in your organization.
With an easily-understood vision and a set of core values that are rooted in human needs, every person in your company can be motivated by your ultimate goal and understand what behaviors contribute toward and what behaviors work against what you are trying to achieve.