Brand Culture Uncovered: Why HR Owns It (Not Marketing)

Ever felt the gap between a polished ad and a clunky customer experience? We go straight at the myth that brand “belongs” to marketing and unpack a more useful truth: brand is the promise you make, culture is the proof, and HR shapes the reality customers feel. Through vivid stories and practical steps, we show how belief is built from the inside out—and why that belief, not a clever campaign, is what drives loyalty and growth.

We start by reframing brand beyond logos and taglines, using the Ritz-Carlton “Joshy the giraffe” story to show how employees bring a promise to life in small, unforgettable ways. Then we look at Patagonia’s conviction: paid time off to vote, on‑site childcare, even lawsuits to protect public lands. Those choices aren’t marketing—they’re operations that make the message true. When culture and promise align, customers don’t just buy a product; they buy into a belief system they can feel.

From there, we map why HR is uniquely positioned to lead brand culture. Hiring, onboarding, recognition, development, performance, and exits—these moments either create belief or erode it. Southwest Airlines proves the point by hiring for humor and heart, rewarding personality, and giving employees space to be human at 30,000 feet. We wrap with a simple, high‑impact action: ask three to five people, “If a friend asked you what it feels like to work here, what would you say?” Use the answers to check consistency and alignment to your brand promise, then close the biggest gaps with targeted behaviors, practices, and policy tweaks. Marketing can amplify what’s real, but HR makes it real.

If you’re ready to turn values into velocity, press play, take the one-question audit, and tell us what you find. Subscribe for more brand culture playbooks, share this with your HR and marketing partners, and leave a review to help others discover the show.

Brand isn’t marketing’s playground anymore, it’s HR’s secret power move! 

The Real BS is the podcast flipping brand strategy on its head, hosted by Jaclyn Scrivens—brand strategist, experienced marketer, and the HR hype woman you didn’t know you needed. 

With each episode, get bold insights, no-fluff strategies, and straight talk on leading brand from the inside out. Because when HR owns brand, people stay, talent chases you, customers notice, and the who

That’s a wrap on this week’s Real BS! 

If you loved it, hit subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs a little brand boss energy. For more, visit BrandCulture.org or head over to LinkedIn and follow Brand Culture Association, or connect with me personally. I’d love to keep

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Brand starts with HR, not marketing.
On The Real BS podcast, we cut through the fluff and get real about how culture shapes the brand more than any campaign ever could.

Hosted by executive leader, brand strategist and experienced marketer - Jaclyn Scrivens - you’ll hear bold truths, fresh strategies, and no-BS conversations designed to help HR professionals and leaders step up as strategic brand powerhouses to change the game inside your organizations.

If you're ready to flip the script on brand and elevate your HR and leadership role, you're in the right place.

>>> Explore more information at www.BrandCulture.org.

>>> Don't forget to subscribe, share with a colleague, and keep building the brand from the inside out.

Chapters

• 1:50 Kicking Off Brand Culture
• 2:33 Brand vs. Marketing: The Core Truth
• 4:13 Promise vs. Proof: Defining Brand Culture
• 5:44 The Ritz-Carlton Joshi Story
• 7:29 Campaigns Fade, Culture Lasts
• 8:29 Why HR Owns Brand Reality
• 9:34 A Simple HR Action to Start

Transcript

Jaclyn Scrivens: 0:55

I'm so excited for this episode. We get to finally dive right into brain culture content. I'm not going to lie, I struggled with last episode because I really didn't want to talk about myself. But I have been getting a lot of questions on why I decided to take a step back from marketing and really focus on supporting HR. So I was getting a lot of questions, and then I had someone near and dear to me encourage me to share my story. So if you want to know how and why Brain Culture Association came into existence, you can hear that in the first full episode of this podcast. But in this week's episode, we finally get to dive into brain culture content, which I am so excited about. I can talk about this topic for hours on end, if not days. So with that said, let's go ahead and dive right into the misconception around brand and marketing. Most people have been told and truly believe that brand is marketing. But here's the truth: your brand is how people feel about your company. And that feeling is shaped every single day on the inside. It's not your logo, your tagline, or your latest marketing campaign. Think of your brand like a book. Marketing is the cover art, the blurb on the back. It may get someone to pick it up, but it's the story inside, the chapters your employees live and write every day that make someone love the book, recommend it, and come back for more. Think of HR like the author of the story. You set the characters, the tone, and the plot through hiring, development, recognition, and leadership practices. So marketing may publish the book, but you are writing it, not marketing. In this episode, I'm going to flip the script on what you thought brand was, explain why brand is the most powerful business strategy you have, and show you why HR, not marketing, is uniquely positioned to lead it. By the end, you'll walk away with a new perspective and a simple action step you can take today to step into your role as a brand culture leader. So let's start by setting the record straight. I mentioned in last episode, I really oversimplified brand and said brand is really who you are and what you stand for. What that really boils down to is the purpose you serve as a brand or the promise you make to the world as a brand. So you will hear a lot of people say, oh, our brand promise is XYZ, our brand purpose is XYZ. So for the sake of this conversation, yes, brand is who you are, what you stand for, which equates into your brand promise or brand purpose. So if brand is the promise you make to the world, culture is the proof of that promise inside your organization. You put those two together and you get brand culture. That's what we mean by brand culture. It is the lived employee experience that shows up in every customer interaction. It really drives how customers feel and employees feel about your company. It's not just what you say in ads, it's what your people believe, embody, and deliver every single day. It's how they show up, it's how they perform. Think of it like a house. Your brand is the foundation. Marketing may be the fresh paint, the landscaping, or those gorgeous photos we all love on Zillow. But if the foundation is cracked, no amount of curb appeal will hold it up. Customers always feel what's underneath. No marketing department can fix culture either, because culture lives throughout the entire organization in every department and how people are led, managed, supported, and treated. That belongs to HR. Let me give you a real example. Ritz-Carlton. Their brand promise is all about luxury and personalized service, but what keeps guests loyal isn't the glossy ads or the logo. It's the way employees bring that promise to life. I'm going to share a famous Ritz-Carlton story. I absolutely love this. This truly is a prime example of bringing the brand to life. A family was staying at one of their hotels when they realized their child-stuffed giraffe, Joshi, is that not the cutest name in the world? Joshy the giraffe was left behind. Instead of simply mailing it back, the staff went all in. This is so fabulous. They sent Joshi home with a photo album showing him lounging by the pool, getting a massage at the spa, even working security around the hotel. Now that is not in a marketing playbook. That's employees living the brand promise. It's culture showing up in small human ways that customers never forget. That's brand culture. That family will never forget that experience. And think about the impact, the word of mouth, think about the people they told and what they shared on social media. That's brand, and it came from an experience the employees delivered. Now, marketing can then take that story and tell it to the world. That's the difference between brand culture and marketing. So now let's talk about why brand culture is more powerful than any campaign. Here's the thing about marketing campaigns: campaigns are temporary, they're short-term. Culture is constant, and it's a long-term game. Campaigns can grab attention, but culture creates loyalty. Campaigns tell a story, but culture is the story. It's kind of like your health versus makeup or your outside appearance. Marketing can give you a polished look for a moment in time, but culture is the nutrition underneath. It's what keeps the brand alive and thriving long term. Patagonia is a great example of this. Their external message is all about saving the planet. But what makes people believe it is how employees live it inside the company. Patagonia has been known to shut down operations on election day to give employees paid time off to vote. They also offer on-site childcare, they've bailed employees out of jail for protesting environmental issues, and they've even sued the U.S. government to protect public lands. That's not a marketing campaign. That's conviction. And because employees believe it so strongly, customers feel it. They don't just buy a jacket, they buy into a belief system. That belief, not a clever ad, is why Patagonia's brand is so strong. No campaign can match the power of a lived culture. This is why brand doesn't belong to marketing. Marketing can amplify the story, and they absolutely play an important role, but they can't create the belief. Belief lives in how people are hired, trained, supported, and led, all of which lives in HR's wheelhouse. So why do I keep saying all of this belongs to HR? Well, it's because marketing might design the billboard, but HR designs the experience that makes that billboard true. Marketing might sell the book, but HR writes the chapters. And HR sits in the perfect seat to shape culture because you touch every part of the employee lifecycle: hiring, onboarding, recognition, development, performance, and even how people exit your company. Those are the moments that create belief. And belief is what customers and employees feel. And at the end of the day, what every brand is trying to do is to get customers and employees to choose them. This is why all of this matters. Because HR can see across the entire employee lifecycle, you have a vantage point to connect the candidate experience, to the employee experience, to the customer experience, all to drive brand and business growth. Southwest Airlines is a great example of this. They're known for their fun, laid back, human service. But that's not a campaign cooked up in a boardroom. It's because HR hires people with humor and heart, rewards them for bringing personality into their work, and builds policies that give employees freedom to be themselves. The result is a culture that customers can feel at 30,000 feet in the air. And this is your superpower as an HR leader. You are the architect of belief of the brand. You can either design experiences that make the brand promise true or leave it cracked at the foundation. Marketing may shape the perception, but HR shapes reality. And that reality is what customers feel and employees feel. When HR owns brand culture, you're no longer just the department of policies and paychecks. You're the foundational support growing the business. So since you are that foundational support, let's make this practical. I'm going to give you a challenge for this week, but I promise it's a simple one and shouldn't take much effort. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to ask three to five people in your organization this one question. If a friend asked you what it feels like to work here, what would you say? Again, if a friend asked you what it feels like to work here, what would you say? I don't want you to ask what's our culture like or what do you think about the company. That's too vague. We need to go straight for feelings. Yes, I said feelings. Here's the thing: most people think brand and culture is all about the fluff and the feelings, but feelings are the truth serum of culture. Why? Because we're all humans and we all have feelings, and our feelings impact the choices we make, whether we decide to be employed by a company or we decide to buy products and services from a company. So feelings matter. Once you ask that question, I want you to do a gut check. First, are the answers consistent from those three to five people? The second thing is do they align with what your brand promise or brand purpose is? So let me back it up. One, ask the question to three to five people. If a friend asks you what it feels like to work here, what would you say? Two, gut check time. Are the answers consistent? Three, do they align with what your brand stands for? If they don't, you've just uncovered the brand culture gaps your organization has. That's your starting point. That's not marketing's job to fix. That's yours. But the good news, you're uniquely positioned to close those gaps. And we are here with the knowledge and skills and support to help you every step of the way. I hope this has all helped you see that brand isn't marketing's job. It's yours. Marketing may decorate the house, but HR pours the foundation. Marketing may sell that book, but HR writes the chapters. When you step into that truth, you're not just managing policies. You're shaping the very brand your customers and employees believe in. And that's the ultimate HR superpower. And we're going to continue diving deeper on this because culture is the brand. And HR, you're in the driver's seat. So stay with us. We have a lot more to come in the next episode.