Rolling Out a New HR Brand via Consumer Marketing

One Brand Key to Building and Sustaining Culture and Growth

Despite being a global powerhouse in the accounting field, our client’s HR department operated as nine separate groups. And because they worked independently from each other with little to no planning and coordination, all their communications varied in look, feel, tone, and style.

To operate as one HR brand meant this organization needed a big transformation. Through our initial fact-finding conversations, we identified three primary goals for this change: 

• Build solid workforce capabilities accessible to employees 
• Sustain the company’s timeless and impactful culture 
• Address potential industry and technological disruptions 

Cohesive and Unifying Key Attributes of Transformation

Undertaking such a big transformation required us to work closely with our client as they took the first steps in revamping their existing benefits website.

All HR department efforts, big and small, were integrated into the new consolidated platform. This ensured a cohesive and unified effort among all HR business units.

Next, we executed a unified HR brand that included guiding principles, copy style, and visual identity that tied into the organization’s powerful external brand, one that is clearly recognizable around the world. It was instrumental that we took this approach, as their HR partners wanted to leverage—and complement—the full power of the company’s external brand.

With an approach rooted in consumer marketing, we created an HR brand that made it clear to employees who HR is, what they do, and why they do it. This work included:

• Guiding principles that drive their new brand, impacting the tone, look, and feel of every communication sent to employees from HR
• A voice that is clear, confident, and personal 
• Engaging headlines to grab employee attention and motivate action
• Bite-sized, easy-to-read chunks of content using a warm, conversational style 
• Visual identity with colorful icons and design elements that give HR an elevated, modern look
• Photo library with imagery that illustrates everyday life at work and at home to incorporate into their communications
• A tagline that emphasizes the “human” in HR and assures that nothing is more important than their organization’s people
  
  

A communication strategy was developed to ensure our client could successfully introduce employees to the new benefits website and HR brand. The strategy included launch tools for their intranet: banners for announcements and an HR toolkit to make sure all communications were consistent in messaging, voice, tone, look, and feel.

The key to our success was working collaboratively with key stakeholders in HR and marketing to obtain buy-in and approval on the HR brand before finalizing the deliverables. The new brand was carried through all benefits communications and annual enrollment campaigns, making it easy for employees to quickly recognize any HR and benefits communications.