MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Employer Branding Is the New Marketing Imperative

Brands are now knee-deep in social and political issues that, until recently, they wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole. Conventional wisdom has it that the increasing number of consumers motivated by social values is goading brands to support the greater social good. While there is some merit to that claim, there is arguably another equally powerful vector of change: the employee. For instance, after much waffling, Disney’s position against the state of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law was spurred on by pressure from its employees.

Employees are not only empowered and agitated; they are restless. More than a third of all employees (41%, according to Forrester’s 2021 Future of Work Survey) expect to look for other opportunities in the next 12 months. As companies face an employee exodus, talent acquisition and retention concerns have burst into the C-suite from the confines of human resources.

About the Author

Dipanjan Chatterjee is a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, where he leads the brand strategy research practice. He is also a fellow at the Kautz-Uible Economics Institute at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business. Melissa Bongarzone and Alex Schanne are researchers at Forrester Research.