I worked for a major university at a time when they were revising their brand. They had a huge campaign to indoctrinate the employees: webinars, workshops, posters, flyers, and e-mail teasers. Overall, it required compliance training on the new image the university wished to portray. It was a comprehensive campaign and emphasized how the university's employees were friendly, caring, and it was a happy place to work.

Unfortunately, the brand and reality did not match. My division, which consisted of about 500 people, took the branding attempt as a joke and proceeded as normal. Why? Because the university treated their people in enrollment like telemarketers: minimum telephone outbound dials, minimum client talk time, assigned breaks, periods of nothing but outbound dials regardless of student appointments, and so on.

It was, in all aspects, a boiler room with high turnover and low moral. It left a feeling there was no time to talk to students in a relaxed manner; that would decrease dials. It was, basically, the type of sales job where the boss is focused only on numbers.

How does that affect branding?

Simply, if a company spends thousands of dollars creating an external image and does nothing about how the employees see the company internally, a sizable portion of that branding investment is wasted. The attitudes projected by a company’s image toward the public must match the company's culture on all levels. If it is not simpatico, the customer will see a disconnect between its perception of the company and reality. This leads to distrust, lost sales, and wasted efforts.

Branding is not just a marketing tool. Again, it must be part of the company culture, or it loses much of its effectiveness.

At the university, lack of employee moral was a constant concern for HR. In my two-and-a-half years there, I became aware of at least four HR investigations into employee treatment. Nothing changed on the floor, except the company launched a rebranding campaign that projected the university as a friendly place.

If employees do not feel they are treated well, the customers will know. Besides, if 7,000 employees tell 10 friends the job is awful, and they, in turn, tell five friends -- well, that is a lot of negative PR the branding needs to overcome.

Of course, the solution for the university comes right out of their MBA program (and probably their undergraduate classes as well): Practice what you teach.

In the case of a business, practice what you brand. If it isn't real, people can tell.