One of the many things I've learned over the years in internal communications, employee engagement and business in general, is how powerful a strong internal brand is.
In my time in Virgin Trains for example, we used the Virgin brand to overcome inertia, to engage people in a new vision - and help them understand that the future could indeed be better than the past.
In London Midland we created a brand from scratch to tell a story about our values, beliefs and behaviours.
And in Carlsberg UK, we're using the collective power of some fantastic brands to engage people in our story and strategy.
That's why I'm particularly interested in a half-day conference happening on April 21 at the Brewery in London, called the Transform Conference Europe, from our friends at Transform magazine - who also produce Communicate magazine.
It's a half day breakfast conference, focusing on the science and art of great branding. But not just the theory. Speakers will be sharing practical and sensible insight in how to perfect the language and tone of voice of your brand.
They'll also be exploring how branding can evoke the senses from expert speakers Martyn Ware and Dr Charles Spence – a world famous experimental psychologist. The coherent programme will then move through maintaining brand sustainability and reputation, to the branded environment and experiential branding, all the way to managing your employer brand to fit with your internal comms, HR and marketing communications.
As you'd expect, there's a session dedicated to employer branding, with speakers from IHG and EDF Energy.
This session will explore how an employer brand can align with the culture of an organisation, whilst working for both the internal and external audiences. EDF Energy and IHG are doing a fantastic job in employer brand management and will draw on their own experiences.
If you fancy popping along for what will be a very useful and inspiring half-day, readers of this blog can get a 10% discount using the code TRANSEURO10 at checkout. Book your place here now, but you'll need to get a move on; as you would expect, places are going fast.
You can follow the event on twitter @TransformEvents and #TransEuro and find out more in the short video below.
If you fancy winning a ticket to the event, head over to my other website at hiyu.co.uk and click on subscribe. More information over there once you do!