When Your Team Betrays Your Brand

In 2024, we worked with a major Swiss-based retail brand. To keep it anonymous, we won’t mention it in this article. But this company operated close to a hundred physical locations where it interacted with customers every single day.

Our mission was to support the brand’s strategy so it could differentiate from competitors—its market was highly saturated—and reach more customers.

We deployed our DARE method, built around four phases:

The brand wanted to be “available”

During the first phase, we defined the brand’s DNA through several workshops: its way of speaking to customers, its personality, its emotional territory, its promise, and its values.

These workshops were conducted with the executive team as well as several senior managers and leaders, all of whom had been in the organization for years.
Broadly speaking, the brand wanted to be:

Inspiring
Encouraging
A good listener
Available

It didn’t want to simply sell to customers. It wanted to be a partner in their lives—to support them day to day.

Once that foundation was defined, we moved to the second phase of our method. But then… things didn’t go as planned.

We ran around fifteen “mystery shopper” visits across different stores. The goal was to evaluate whether the brand DNA defined on paper was truly reflected in the field—through the teams in direct contact with customers.

An arrogant, cold brand

Unfortunately, the results were shocking. Across all the locations we visited, we encountered situations that felt unreal:

Having to wait 15 minutes at the entrance before anyone greeted us

Employees watching videos on their phones instead of advising customers

Extremely aggressive sales behaviors

The brand that was supposed to come through in frontline teams was not aligned at all with what we observed. Not slightly off—but in total contradiction.

Our field analysis allowed us to define how the brand was actually perceived at store level through our undercover visits:

Unavailable
Arrogant
Pushy
Cold

The problem? Around 80% of this company’s employees were almost constantly in contact with customers.

Marketing campaigns might have communicated a message aligned with the brand as validated on paper—but in stores, customers were living a completely different experience.

And when the gap between messaging and reality is that wide… you pay a high price.

We had to move into the third phase of our method to ensure that, at the very least, all managers were aware of this gap. We also had to design tools and support materials they could use to continuously ensure their teams were delivering the right brand experience.

A massive piece of work that took us nearly a year—but today, it’s paying off.

How can you make sure you don’t fall into the same trap?

Your brand is constantly in contact with customers—on the phone, by email, or face to face. Your teams interact with your clients regularly.

Your product or service solves a specific need, but your teams’ behavior is what builds—or destroys—your brand.

In an era where AI is becoming more and more present, the emotional dimension matters more than ever. Here’s a step-by-step guide to make sure your brand is perceived the way you want it to be—rather than slipping out of your hands.

1. The cornerstone of your brand: its DNA. If you haven’t done it yet, bring your teams together—employees, managers, the executive team, and even a few long-time loyal customers if relevant—and define the essence of your brand. After these workshops, you should know by heart your brand’s tone of voice, personality, promise, mission, values, and character.

2. Define key behaviors. Based on your brand DNA, write a clear list of behaviors to adopt—and behaviors to avoid—so your teams reflect what your brand is meant to embody and what it should make customers feel.

3. Train your teams. Share these behaviors and explain the logic behind them. The goal isn’t to impose “mandatory” behaviors, but to raise awareness, re-energize, and activate your teams. They need to understand why your brand wants to be perceived in certain ways and how specific behaviors can build—or destroy—it. That’s how ideas are transmitted most effectively.

4. Make it easy for your teams. Support them with physical materials, training programs, and anything that regularly reminds them of your brand DNA. For this client, for example, we created a “Brand Pack” for each store, visible to all employees, reminding them what the brand is, what it stands for, what it embodies, and the role it must play for customers.

5. Test and realign. This is where the magic happens. It’s not micromanagement—it’s brand alignment. Make sure your teams—on the phone, by email, or in person—reflect what your brand must be in the eyes of customers. If you sense a gap, take the time to understand it, translate it, explain it, and raise awareness so it can be corrected.

Powerful brands aren’t built through a polished PowerPoint presentation or LinkedIn posts. They’re built on the ground.

DARE is a branding and consulting agency based in Switzerland, in Forel (Lavaux). Since 2018, we have been supporting brands in their launch or refresh through an approach rooted in entrepreneurship, collective intelligence, and real-world feedback.

At DARE, every project truly matters. That is why we only take on one project per month. More information www.madebydare.com.


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