I was at a talent management conference and listened to an insightful presentation from PepsiCo’s Paul Marchand, Global VP Talent Acquisition, about PepsiCo’s employment branding “Refresh.” Afterward I talked to Paul about his experience going through this employer branding initiative and he mentioned to me that “Sometimes HR should divorce itself from employment branding,” which I thought was an interesting observation.
When I looked at how PepsiCo integrated many tactical elements into their employer branding strategy, I was reminded how even the largest company’s need to make sure that there is critical alignment between marketing and HR. In the case of PepsiCo, it was clear that they incorporated a unified effort which included their HR, marketing and communications teams as well as their external (ad) agencies. However, I got the sense from our conversation, and perhaps knowing what he knows now (about going through a major rebranding campaign), that he might have preferred to have marketing “own” this particular program.
The Gist of the Matter
Marchand reviewed a very comprehensive and well thought out employer branding initiative, but I am only going to touch on a few elements of it. Specifically, I will review a few areas and highlight some top-line insights from the presentation that I think are important to think about.
Alignment with Business Imperatives
First and foremost, it was clear in the presentation that PepsiCo’s employer branding strategy was configured with PepsiCo’s strategic business objectives in mind. This is an important consideration with any type of strategic initiative and is something that is particularly relevant for an employer branding program. Since most organizations’ overall positioning and value delivery – to their numerous stakeholder groups (internal and external) – typically emanates from marketing, syncing your employer branding efforts with these two areas is critical.
One way PepsiCo articulated this alignment between their business vision and
talent acquisition strategy, was by creating a clear message and theme
with their employer branding tagline: Possibilities
Their “Possibilities” theme was a result of some solid employee insights and research which provided them a global view on what important messaging elements to pursue, while answering the following questions:
- Why talent joins the company?
- What is it like to work at PepsiCo?
- What’s interesting about the Company?
- Why are employees still there?
- What’s good and bad about working at PepsiCo?
What Do You Want From Me?
There is no question PepsiCo, like many other organizations, sees the need (and value) of connecting with passive talent. One key to achieving better engagement with passive candidates is by improving your capabilities to reach and provide value to them. A good way to think about this, especially as it relates to your employee value proposition, is to remember that part of the employer branding objective is to articulate and deliver a promise between both parties – employer and talent. In the case of PepsiCo’s employer branding, Marchand mentioned that they need to be very clear with “what the employer expects of employees, as well as what employees should expect from the employer.” Does your employer branding and messaging address this two-party equation?
Build It, and They Will Come
Another element of PepsiCo’s employer branding strategy has to do with involving candidates and employees in part of the process. With PepsiCo being such a large global enterprise, their talent acquisition efforts often times involve trying to identify and reach internal (passive) candidates who might not know about relevant career opportunities that could be mutually beneficial for the employee and the employer.
Employee-generated content, and enabling employees the ability to tell, “their own story, in their own ‘voice’ is key,” and can provide a fairly low-cost, high-impact vehicle that engages employees. To help reinvigorate this part of their employer branding program, PepsiCo tapped into its own employees by asking them to submit their own testimonials about their work experiences. One example of this content entailed setting up a booth at a company event, with a sofa, large television monitor, and video camera. Once inside the booth employees would sit on the sofa and watch five or so brief video segments of “employee stories” on the screen. After the viewing them, employees would then be prompted to record “their own story” to share with others in the PepsiCo talent community.
It Takes Two
One more well thought out part of PepsiCo’s employer branding rollout is their ability to embrace and connect with their multiple talent markets. Internal (employee) and external (candidate) audiences are provided unified messaging about their employment “Possibilities” with PepsiCo, but utilizing separate vehicles. An online example of this is where they have a specific website geared for and targeted to external candidates and another, separate, online internal web property for employees through their “My Possibilities” employee intranet and blog.
Who “Owns” Employer Branding?
Even if employer branding initiatives require certain capabilities and expertise, which may be above and beyond the core competencies of HR or talent acquisition, the real goal is to make sure the respective functional areas that are involved with an employer branding program work in a unified manner. However, it does appear that some organizations are realizing the enterprise value of employer branding and are instituting marketing leadership roles that specialize in and have direct (budgetary) ownership of the employer branding function.
Knowing all of the complexities, resources and oversight required to develop, deliver and manage a comprehensive employer branding initiative, this makes sense. PepsiCo’s overall, at-large, “Pepsi Refresh” branding campaign, which most likely included employer branding elements, has a tab that reportedly cost around $100 million.
In summary, PepsiCo’s employer branding initiative demonstrated that by having marketing and HR teams work together, and in conjunction with their outside agencies, they were able to develop a very sound employer branding program. It has been very well received and has performed well, including an improvement of their sourcing channel performance, as well as engagement increases from both internal and external talent pools.
At the end of the day, and presentation, the real question for me was not whether HR should “divorce itself from employer branding,” but rather: Should there be one “owner” of the employer branding process?
