Don’t Forget About Internal Branding

David Lane Keller writes in Strategic Brand Management that one of the biggest mistakes companies make in branding is assuming that a brand is built only in the minds of customers. In reality, a brand must be built both in the minds of customers and in the minds of the employees who represent it.

🔹 If you fail to align your employees with your brand principles, you simply cannot succeed in branding.

🔹 In other words, external branding—shaping your brand in the minds of target customers—is not enough on its own. To succeed, you also need internal branding, which means embedding the brand in the minds of your employees.

🔹 Internal branding is especially critical in service‑based companies, where employees interact directly and frequently with customers. If employees in a service organization do not fully understand the brand, they can unintentionally cause serious and sometimes irreversible damage.

🔹 This is why many companies invest in internal branding just as much as they invest in external branding.

🔹 For example, Panda Express—one of the most successful restaurant chains in the United States—allocates significant financial resources to internal branding to ensure that every employee, especially those who interact with customers, understands the core principles of the Panda Express brand.

🔹 Since one of Panda Express’s brand promises is offering healthy, low‑calorie meals, the company pays its servers and staff to regularly go to the gym and maintain their ideal weight.

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