Consumer Services
Building a behavior
How to brand your company with a strong vision
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business South Florida | February 2009
Page 1 of 2
Keith Gerson
president, PuroClean
Keith Gerson discovered a
thing or two about leading a company while rocking on
stage in a cover band.
“I’ve learned so much about
the performer’s uncanny ability
to connect with an audience,”
says Gerson, a rocker by night
and the president and chief
operating officer of PuroClean
by day. “A good leader definitely has that ability.”
Gerson’s performance-honed
charisma has helped him unite
1,050 employees in 236 franchises under a single vision. He
led the company, which provides emergency property damage restoration, through an
assessment to define its brand.
But he didn’t stop there.
Gerson continues to measure
whether the PuroClean brand is
living up to its promise.
“If I’m right that your brand is
people’s perception of who you
are, then basically a living brand
is a pattern of behavior,” he says.
“It’s not a stylistic veneer.”
As a result of the ongoing
branding, PuroClean keeps growing. After reaching 2007 revenue
of $51.2 million, the company
grew 34 percent in 2008.
Smart Business spoke with
Gerson about how to brand
your company with a vision.
Gauge employees’ conceptions. One of the first things that I did
when I came into the company
was to take the organization
through the complete assessment and definition of the brand
and come out with an articulation of what that meant and
then ensure that everybody gets
on same page.
I started by going out with five
questions to all of my employees.
The five questions were basically:
- What is it about the culture
that you think we should preserve and why?
- What is it about the culture
that you think we should
change and why?
- What do you hope I will do as
your president?
- What are you afraid I’m going
to do as the president?
- What advice do you have for
me?
If you did nothing else, the
answers to those questions
could be the basis for the development of your strategic plan.
But I took it a step further, and I
shared the answers that I got
from our entire system with my
network leadership council.
I had 10 franchisees, five of
my executive team members
and some outside experts that
had industry experience or marketing experience.
Assemble a branding team. I identified people that I knew were
influential within the network.
We publish who our top performers are on a monthly basis
on our intranet site ... but that’s
only part of it. You’re going to
have people within your organization that are not necessarily
your best performers but certainly have a lot to say.
This is just learned and
observed by asking the questions, ‘Who do you respect?
Who do you listen to within the
organization?’
The other way is just watching
where and how people interact.
You can really see who people
tend to gravitate toward.
