Need a story to reassure you in these recessionary times? Try this. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, US oil company Texaco was looking for a way to boost business. At the time, no single oil business stood out and Texaco wanted to change that. So they asked designer Walter Teague to develop a new kind of service station. His striking response combined modernist lines with white porcelain-clad walls, canopied pumps, service bays and rest rooms. The new gas stations also had plate glass displays for products like tyres and batteries, making the most of alternative revenue potential in hard times. And, of course, each was crowned with the distinctive red Texaco star. The template was set and some 500 of these art deco icons would appear across the US by 1940, cementing the brand in the popular imagination.

The moral of the story appears to be that if you invest in your brand, returns will follow even in tough times. There are more recent examples. Apple’s iPod (a risky brand extension) and the pioneering MTV channel (a whole new brand experience) were both launched in downturns. And while airlines licked their wounds in the post-9/11 slump, Virgin Atlantic invested in developing the Upper Class offering that’s now a market
leader and the spearhead of its brand.

OK, fine for purveyors of petrol, music and flights, but what about recruiters? Caught uncomfortably between people who don’t want to risk changing jobs and companies who don’t want to hire, their business is especially vulnerable to economic ups and downs. At a time when it seems only insolvency practitioners are expanding their payrolls, the temptation to hunker down and ride out the storm must be strong.Certainly, that’s how it’s gone in downturns past, says Peter Dolphin, who saw several come and go in his time at recruitment ad agency TMP Worldwide: “We would do some employer brand work with people like Manpower and Brook Street but at the first sign of trouble it was the first thing to get turned off. Recruitment is cyclical and that works against branding, which is a long-term thing.”

But could things be changing? A Recruiter poll (Recruiter, p5, 21 January) suggests that recruiters see attack as the best form of defence. More than two out of three expect to invest in marketing and brand in 2009, compared to just 23% who say their money is going in to IT and just 13% planning to invest in office redesigns.

By common consent, though, it will be investment that’s overdue for an industry that seems to realise it has ground to make up when it comes to brand building. “Two driving forces in the commercial world have passed the recruitment business by. One is IT and the other is brand and marketing,” says Sholto Douglas-Home, marketing director at Hays, quoting his chief executive Alistair Cox. Research underpinning Hays’ own current root and branch brand review bears out this withering assessment, adds Douglas- Home, himself a recent arrival in the sector: “The majority of brands aren’t differentiated. Scan through the websites and they all look the same. There’s very little innovation. You wouldn’t look to the recruitment sector for case histories of winning marketing activity — name me one that’s won an industry-wide award.” In contrast, he says, sectors like telecoms and white goods are far more innovative. “You don’t survive there without a good brand.”

That’s all very well coming from a multinational business with annual net fees of £786m, but what about smaller businesses with budgets that are tight and getting tighter? “Brand and marketing shouldn’t be confused,” replies Douglas-Home. “Good brand management — making sure clients and candidates understand what makes you unique — is a fundamental business discipline. Of course, the amount of money you might put behind a marketing campaign to support a brand can be significantly affected by economic circumstances. But understanding what you offer, what makes you different, articulating that and living and breathing it in the organisation doesn’t have to be a big expensive campaign. It’s a misconception that brand means big budgets.”

Ralph Ardill, who heads The BrandExperience Consultancy, takes a broadly similar view: “Branding is still in its infancy in recruitment,” he says. Like Douglas-Home, he advises businesses to think first about the message rather than the medium. “It’s easy to get hung up on logos and aesthetics, but to me it’s best to see brand as a culturally-driven and people-centred thing, not communications-driven.”

And that gives recruiters a great opportunity, he believes: “What’s exciting about recruitment is that it’s a people-centred business, so the opportunity for a more people-centred approach is there to be taken. The recruitment brands that stand out will be the ones that really understand the hearts and minds and aspirations of people and organisations.

“The real investment should be looking to create the most distinctive and relevant experience that brings candidates, clients and the people in their own organisations together.”

The way a brand is actually expressed — corporate identity, advertising, marketing and so on — is just one of ‘four Ps’ (p for promotion in this case — the others are people, product and place) that are the cornerstones of the brand experience and must all get equal attention, argues Ardill. “You could push promotion further than the others, but if the people haven’t changed, the product is still the same and the place isn’t
innovative you’re just putting a new wrapper on business as usual. Most people I know who have been disillusioned by branding have been led to believe a one-dimensional approach will work.”

Branding is harder than it was, says Ardill, because brands are now much more open to scrutiny. “It’s so easy to see behind the veneer. If I want to know what it’s like to work for a business, for instance, I can just look up the employee blogs. I’m from a generation that just accepted that Persil washed whiter, that BMW was the ultimate driving machine and that Heineken refreshed the parts other beers couldn’t reach. But the next generation won’t believe empty promises and brand bravado. So brands need proof of value and reasons to believe.

“I’m less interested in differentiation than how brands become relevant. You can be different without being relevant. This is incredibly important in a people-centred business like recruitment.”

Some of what he’s getting at could well be embodied in what David Clubb, managing director of Office Angels, calls the ‘OA [Office Angels] Factor’. In fact, one of the five golden rules he has given his branch teams to get through the recession is to ‘live the OA Factor’. “It’s how I define our core values. Everything stems from that,” says Clubb. The business’s values are reviewed periodically, with all staff involved, and individual offices can pick which ones they want to emphasise out of a list of 10.

“We have always put a lot of importance on building our brand because it reinforces clients’ and candidates’ perception of us. If you get it right, you get a premium image and a premium price, and you’re seen as a great company to work for. And it gives you the right to extend into other areas,” he says, referring to OA’s recent forays into call centre services and executive recruitment.

Office Angels appeared as a perky, even cheeky, newcomer in the 1980s, using a PRintensive approach to getting itself noticed. A visit to the website confirms that costeffective recipe is still in place, with a steady stream of survey-based press releases still getting attention. “It was all about being individual and unique in a market that had plateaued and needed freshening up, and it’s still as relevant now as it was then,” says
Clubb, who concedes the industry in general is “probably not the best” at exploiting its brand potential.

So how can it get better at it, even in straitened times? Ardill suggests some basic headings to get thinking moving: “When I talk to businesses, I start with three questions: reason — why are we here? This brings out the business’s vision. Difference — what makes it relevant or compelling? The focus here is on the offer, positioning and differentiation. And finally, how do you do things? This is where culture and values lie.”

And if you’re still in doubt about the importance of branding, take this as a call to action from Hays’ Douglas-Home: “Anyone in recruitment understands the importance of the role we play. In hard times, it’s a level playing field. We’re helping companies find candidates that could increase sales and we’re helping candidates take the next step in their careers. But does the sector get recognition for that role?”

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE

• Your brand doesn’t start with your logo, but with understanding what you offer and whatmakes you unique
• Branding isn’t the preserve of marketing, HR or the MD. It should involve the wholebusiness
• Establishing the basis of your brand is notexpensive
• The more your staff feel they own and understand your brand, the better they’ll be at projecting it to clients and candidates
• Good branding helps attract staff as well as customers