John M. Bremen and Thomas O. Davenport

Marketing sage Philip Kotler defines a brand as an organization’s promise to deliver a specific set of features, benefits, and services to consumers. A brand also functions as a complex symbol that conveys up to six levels of meaning: attributes, benefits, values, culture, personality, and user. When the consumer can visualize all six dimensions of a brand, his or her perception of the brand is deeply imbedded; otherwise, it’s shallow.

Organizations adept at developing and marketing their external brands were among the first to recognize that employees can feel strong connections to their organizations’ internal brands. Via the internal brand, employees can associate the company with a variety of organizational attributes (“our strengths/differentiators”), benefits (“what you get for working here”), values (“what we stand for”), culture (“how we operate”), personality (“who we are”) and user (“what kind of people work here”).

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