Brand building

OK, none of us are experts at brand building (Sarah appointed herself Head of Fonts but that’s as close as it gets!). But we’ve nevertheless ended up with a solid brand within our business, so here are some thoughts on how that happened.

As a consulting company, building a strong brand requires two things:

  1. Delight your clients.
  2. Be visible.

Both are needed. If we only delight our clients, but aren’t visible to the world, then the brand won’t get strong (except to those few that already know about us). If we are highly visible but not delighting our clients, then the brand won’t get strong either. Well, OK, there are companies that can pull off that trick, but it’s not our style.

How we delight clients

We kind of cheat here, because our model only attracts the type of people that were already pretty good at delighting their clients - with or without Organa. In fact, that’s a requirement (see recruiting). We don’t have an army of sales people chasing down clients for you, and you don’t get any kind of base salary if you don’t have a client, so it really is in your own interest to delight your clients.

Also, our model attracts the kind of people that like to learn things and spread knowledge. And clients appreciate that.

How we make ourselves visible

Visibility happens as a result of two things:

  1. Provide plenty of ways for Organa Members to communicate with the world (website, blog, workshops, etc).
  2. Make sure nothing gets in their way, so they can shine.

Again, because our model attracts the kind of people that like to learn and spread knowledge, all we have to do is make sure nothing gets in the way. That way, a bunch of cool stuff happens automatically, such as:

It’s all about co-branding

As Members (consultants) we’re super proud to be at Organa, and super proud of our colleagues, which is why we list everyone on our people page.

Many companies hide their individual employees (especially individual contact info) because they’re afraid employees might be called by recruiters and leave for greener pastures. We do the opposite - we encourage each person to expose themselves as much as they like. The idea is that people should stay at Organa because they want to, not because the headhunters haven’t found them.

We believe consulting doesn’t have to be a market for lemons and our philosophy is to be as transparent as possible. You will never be assigned an anonymous consultant from Organa - it will always be Sandy or Sarah etc, people with heart. If you want a CV from one of us, they’re likely to look different, which may seem unprofessional, but we will always be individuals under the same umbrella.

So the Organa brand is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts - a bunch of creative people sharing stuff with the world, and indirectly building up their personal brands.

Definitely a win-win-win. For the individual, for Organa, and for the world (because of all the free stuff :)