Each part of 2021 will be a distinctive marketplace with a discrete set of opportunities. Brands must plan accordingly. The ‘More COVID’ Part Of The Year Each part of 2021 will be a distinctive marketplace with a discrete set of opportunities. Brands must plan accordingly.

I've always thought about building an Oblique Strategies deck for EB folks. What, you don't know what the OS cards are? Designed by Brian Eno (the guy who turned "alien" David Bowie into "genius" David Bowie), they are cards you select when you're stuck. Designed for musicians originally, they had instructions designed to spark thinking like "go to an extreme and work your way back" or "change instrument roles." Sometimes they were very... high-minded like "twist the spine" or "question the heroic approach." I love it because it assumes that the right answer is inside you already and you just need to clear out the clutter of your own mind to find it. Anyway, if you're stuck, here are 10 strategies to re-spark your thinking when trying to turn around your employer brand.

Because employer branding as a function is so incredibly complex, it seems like the people who do it each have their own "process" for development. Some people are copy-writers, some people approach it more visually. Some people leverage their tech stack. And others work the internal politics side to develop something that will have immediate buy-in. Those are all possible ways to do it. But what if you had something stronger, something that yo could build creative on top of, something that was tech agnostic, or could shut down petty squabbles internally quickly? Because such a thing might exist? What is your employer brand built on?

Why should you think more like an anthropologist? Well, no brand can survive without feeling, sensing, and talking to their people. The anthropologist understands the development of humans in societies or cultures, which is what happens when people come together. That sounds like the sort of thing every employer brand pro should aspire to be.

Myself, I don't get too wrapped up in scripting the brand experience, mostly because I don't know how much you can really script the brand experience. But if you need to get a handle on the idea, here's a nice write-up on how to script your own.

There are a lot of reasons you might communicate as to why someone should work for your company. But have you considered that they'd want to work here because you're a thought leader? Here are some guidelines to consider when building out your thought leadership connected to your brand.

Our jobs often feel lonely in a sea of people (because we're the only ones who understand what we do). So essays that discuss what someone has learned in their job and journey are so valuable. Jazmyn Mijuskovic talks about her first year at Publix.

Our jobs often feel lonely in a sea of people (because we're the only ones who understand what we do). So essays that discuss what someone has learned in their job and journey are so valuable. Here are two: Lilian Mahoukou talks about his work at Mondelez,

How does your brand change what it values? Here are six possible ways to approach how you change in light of the crisis (based on a study of how brands changed in 2009 after the initial housing collapse). Thinking through these ideas is how to position your brand to be far more effective and valuable once things calm down.

"If this is how we consume content in our busy, daily lives, why would we behave differently in our even busier work lives?"

"When you think about your brand values, firstly have it clear in your mind that values for your brand will be as integral as they would be for a human being."

Employer branding is a game of fast and slow: jumping on the latest channel or talking point, but also in making sure the long-term strategy is yielding results. Of course, we always talk about the fast stuff (it’s a weekly newsletter, after all), but here is a case for remembering to be slow.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned brand tone much in this newsletter, but that’s because there isn’t much written about it more than anything. Your tone expresses a great deal about your employer brand, so getting that tone right matters. Except it seems like most employer brand tones are either “stiffly professional” or “your wry friend,” as if there’s a singe spectrum between formal and informal. Where’s the introspective tone? Where’s the cheerleader? Or the bureaucrat? Where’s the professorial tone or the underdog? If our brands are complex, why are the tones so simple?

Metrics, anyone? EB Rock star Shaunda Zilich writes up a nice piece on EB metrics. I was going to quibble with it until I realized that the best part of the article is unstated: Metrics are gibberish until you decide what your strategy is first. You can measure oodles of things and easily get batted around like a leaf on the wind unless you have clearly defined what you are trying to do and deciding the metrics on that. Once I saw that, I realized how great the article was.

It heartens me to see how even Recruiter is connecting the dots around how who you bring into your company is how you build a culture (turns out making posters doesn’t do much). This might make for some nice light reading when your culture team meets to talk about the next (virtual) picnic.