So where the Bloody Hell are You?

Most of you (if you are based in Australia or New Zealand) will probably have some memory of the 2006 advertising campaign from the M&C Saatchi agency for Tourism Australia. The campaign cost somewhere in the region of AUD $180M. It received massive publicity, not for the great cinematography nor even for Lara Bingle in her swimsuit but mainly for the fact that it was initially banned in the UK for using the words "bloody hell".

It took extensive lobbying from Tourism Australia as well as a visit to the UK by the Tourism Minister, Fran Bailey, to have the ban lifted although even then it was limited to showing after a 9pm "watershed" timeslot. If you want to have another look at the ad, here it is. Whilst the campaign itself was deemed by Tourism Australia to have been a success, others were not so sure. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is quoted as saying that the campaign was "an absolute rolled gold disaster".

So why am I revisiting an old and polarising campaign? Well, the Australian Federal Government are about to do it all again; this time with a tender for an AUD $20M campaign that will attempt to show Australia's entrepreneurial spirit, rather than just the standard fare of Uluru, Sydney, kangaroos and koalas. This got me thinking about the nature of brands and how powerful or problematic they can be, especially when thinking about HR operating as a business. HR has struggled for a long time to create an identity for itself. We seem to be unable to decide on even the basic descriptor for our profession. We have had, and still have in a variety of different companies and industries, Personnel, Human Resources, Human Capital, People and Culture, People and Talent. The list probably has many more variables.

Myself, I happen to prefer Human Resources.

However my point is not that there are many variables in describing our profession, but that in managing HR as a business, we need to market ourselves with a brand image within the Company. This has two purposes. Firstly it helps to provide a totem or cultural identity for the HR team against which they can begin to define themselves and their role. Second, it allows the HR business to begin to define itself and its products, solutions and service offerings to its Customers. The brand does not have to be clever, smart or cost large amounts of money. It does have to be clear, succinct and definite. Whether that brand is attached to a label that says Human Capital, People and Culture or even that old chestnut, Human Remains, is immaterial. It is, in the end, the actions aligned with the brand that do the talking.

Of course, we should not stop there. Having defined its own internal brand, HR has a key role to play in working with the CEO and Executive Leadership in defining the Employment Brand for the Company, but that's a discussion for another time.

Whoops!

Another advertising mishap but this time for Microsoft, who have been forced to apologise for altering a photo on its website to change the race of one of the people in the picture. Click here for the full story.


And Finally...

Any brand that is eventually adopted lives, or dies, through the actions of those associated with that brand. Having said that, I leave you to contemplate a quote from Antoine Saint-Exupery:

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral"

All the best,

Jim