Photo Credit and Caption by Ep_jhu, Flickr and Crestock.com

HR we'd like to introduce you to Marketing. Marketing, meet HR.

As two of most valuable functions driving ROI for your company, we thought it was about time your paths crossed because we believe the time has come for you to explore the commonalities between your departments. We are certain that once you break down some barriers, you'll begin to see that both HR and marketing, in a collaborative effort, can drive business success. With all you have in common, your ability to work together may just hold the key to the future of your business.

Disclosure: Before you read on, we want to get this out of the way: yes, we are a consulting company and part of the reason we became one was to help HR and Marketing teams work better together. We hear a lot from our clients, colleagues and friends in the marketing communities.  By communities, we mean two specific sides of the organizational house. On one side we have HR and on the other, we have Marketing. Both extremely passionate about the roles they play for in their companies and, in many cases, both functions remain at odds. As we've listened to challenges from both corners, we wanted to take some time to help you see the opportunities in front of you.

First, if you have roots in either of these areas, you know full well you're smack dab in the middle of an evolution. You know this because you're either paving the way as an early adopter or struggling to figure out what all this emerging 'social' stuff means to your brand and your marketing strategies.  Regardless of where you sit, you've probably figured out that it's all coming down to people. People with perceptions, opinions about their experiences, and most importantly influence over your brand. Meanwhile, social networks have become the most popular outlet for customers and employees alike to share their perceptions. You may also be realizing that your brand image now lies in the eyes of these influential beholders. Hence, elevating the need for cross-functional transparency and participation like never before.

So as each of you move forward to lay out your goals, strategies and tactics for 2010, we have some consulting advice for you: Go out for coffee together. Grab some lunch. Whatever just make time to talk.

Start to examine your two areas of expertise. Look at the distinctions and the overlaps. Ask whether or not either of you can continue to afford building your brand strategies in silos and allowing ongoing redundancies, mixed signals and fragmentation in your markets. As you become more familiar with the other, you'll likely see that you stand on common ground, there is hope opportunity for collaboration and that you truly are dependent upon one another for long-term success.

To help you, we've outlined these definitions that will hopefully begin to illustrate just how you might begin to develop some shared competencies:

Human Resources and the Employer Brand
You have an employer brand and that brand is the sum of all experiences employees (past, present and future) have with your company. By properly managing the employer brand you position your company in a way that is meaningful and authentic to attract the right people to the right jobs within your organization. But it doesn't stop there. Because a key element to the employer brand is again, experiences. Once that candidate becomes a new hire, the way you on-board, train, manage, lead and communicate to them over time, affects their relationship with your company. Their feelings and attitudes about their work impact their daily behaviors that in turn affect your company culture, individual and team productivity and ultimately, the experience your customers have with your people, products and services, which then begins to translate to – ta da!  - your consumer brand.

Marketing and the Consumer Brand
You are accustomed to managing the consumer brand and that brand is summed up as the cumulative experiences customers have with your company. As the brand guardians, you are charged with the goal of the positioning your company’s products and/or services in a way that is meaningful, relevant and authentic in order to attract and retain customers in both B2C and B2B environments.

The bottom line is, every company is in business to sell something to someone a product or service and experiences with those products and services are what connects customers with your organization. In the case of the employer and consumer brand, there is an emotional and rational connection that increases the likelihood that people will purchase from you or work for you. And in both instances, what matters most is the relationship both audiences have with the brand. The key to building a solid relationship with the employee and the customer, as in any relationship, is trust. It doesn’t happen overnight but instead is developed over time through positive experiences that help you retain employees and keep customers coming back for more.

A perfect illustration of how this convergence is working in the real world is Best Buy. The big box retailer has successfully completed the convergence between the employer brand and the consumer brand by making good use of its human capital across multiple touch points inside and outside of the organization. They realize that the most important brand is the company brand. They also understand it’s not about the marketing department assuming full control of the brand because they know employees are key to delivering the customer experience and behaving in ways that make those experiences consistent.

As you view the Best Buy commercial below or communicate with them through any online channel, listen closely to what the employees say about how they develop a relationship with the customer and create an ‘experience’ that is different from what customers will experience at competing retailers. Then take a trip into a Best Buy store and see for yourself.

The brand convergence trend is real and it is one that will take time for many companies to realize. For some the effort to transform will be slow largely because of company cultures that are not ready for the change. But one thing is for sure, change will come and we believe it is better to be on the front end of this process rather than on the backend when it just may be too late.

Zappos is another example of one of the most widely recognized companies that understands the importance of culture and employee and customer involvement in brand strategy.

Both Zappos and Best Buy have embraced the concept of putting employees’ out front and as a result, are reaping the rewards of their brand-based businesses. And by allowing customers to not only see inside the organization but to actually communicate with employees in a way that brings them closer to the people behind the brand.

Hopefully we've inspired each of you to think about your shared goals. And maybe, just maybe, you can take off the gloves and take on the role of game-changers in your company signifying a new partnership dedicated to reaching truly holistic business objectives.