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The third ITU Public talks #Frankivsk event took place in Ivano-Frankivsk offline with a parallel broadcast on the Facebook page of the Association. The event was focused on the promotion strategy through team branding and communities. It aroused the hudge interest among people from Frankivsk and online audience. Representatives of business, IT and creative industries, regional clusters, PR and HR specialists, the student community, in particular students of Educational and Scientific Institute of Economics and Management of the National University of Food Technologies attended the event.
Marianna Konina, Chief Public Engagement Officer, TECHIIA holding; Yevhen Yefimenko, co-founder and art director of branding agency Brendari; Vladyslav Zymovets, Community Team Coordinator, Beetroot Academy; Yuriy Fylyuk, CEO of Promprylad.Renovation joined our discussion, which was moderated by Natalia Muhitdinova, Head of the Ivano-Frankivsk office of Eleks.
The discussion revolved around the issues of the brand and its viability, whether the brand needs a community or whether it is possible to develop a brand through communities, whether it is worth separating the internal and external brand, what meanings networking and community formation acquires now, how to position teams.
According to Marianna Konina, a brand is about feeling and interaction. Therefore, it is inappropriate to talk about using the community to promote the brand, we are talking about mutual exchange: for the development of the brand, you need a community, to feel the needs of the audience, you need to interact with it. In the new conditions, the values that the company and its employees support, as well as how the company interacts with people and creates internal communications, come to the fore.
A brand is an opportunity to get to know the people that a brand (company) needs and at the same time it is an opportunity to open doors to places where these doors were previously closed. For a brand to be alive, it needs to maintain relationships with the community. The relationship with the community is maintained through exchange: when the brand is useful, the community meets its needs with a help of the brand. The team brand is not only about the formation of the employer’s image, it is about the formation of the general perception of the company, its expertise, and its capabilities. But at the same time, this is a way to open doors, because experts whom people trust, who share their expertise, others will also trust more, Marianna Konina emphasizes.
Yuriy Filyuk supports the position of his colleague. A brand is about dialogue and exchange, a two-way communication format. The community creates high added value for the brand because it is more than just a business. A strong employer brand allows you to build a team brand, and here it is not necessary to make a division into internal and external brands, since they are organically intertwined.
For Yevhen Yefimenko, the success of a brand depends on its compliance, and the presence of a community is a good indicator of a brand’s strength. The brand of the team is the brand of the people who work in it. Therefore, the company’s internal brand must be developed, and the experience of IT companies can be exported to other industries.
Vladyslav Zymovets is convinced that if the community is used only for branding – this is not a long-term story, it will not work. A community is an organic combination of people. A company can increase the interest of a community that is loyal to the brand from the beginning, but not on the contrary.
Three key conclusions of the discussion:
The topic of team brand development has become even more important in times of pandemic and war. Teambuildings, which are familiar to everyone, are no longer effective, new realities require non-standard decisions and actions from management. We had a great opportunity to talk to representatives of various businesses at ITU Public Talks #Frankivsk. Many thanks to organizers! – said Vitaliy Bulda.
The series of ITU Public talks #Frankivsk mentoring meetings is a joint project of the Western Ukrainian representative offices of the “IT Ukraine” Association and UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group, aimed to develop regional IT potential, expand networking, share the experience and creative ideas.
In the strategy of the BNP Paribas Group, of which UKRSIBBANK is a part, one of the key directions is investing in new technologies. Modern technologies are a product of the IT industry. By supporting the IT Ukraine Association and today’s event, we are helping to build our future. According to our internal calculations, we serve 30% of the IT segment and have offers to serve individual entrepreneurs who are employed in this area, including freelancers, said Maryan Khomin, Head of the Marketing Department of UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group.We are grateful to our informational partners Urban Space Radio, Beetroot Academy, Galka.if.ua, CASESMedia, Mind.ua, Ivano-Frankivsk IT Cluster, Dnipro IT Community, Kharkiv IT Cluster, Chernihiv.IT, IT Association Vinnytsia, and Work.ua. We remind you that two events from ITU Public talks #Frankivsk series have already been held: about Diia.City – a unique legal and tax space and about IT Education in War Realities. Traditionally, this topics were popular among our audience. The next event ITU Public talks #Frankivsk will be held on September 8 and it is dedicated to the strategy for entering international markets in conditions of war and investments.
