Employer Branding – the Fairy Tale for Executives
Employer Branding resembles a grand self-help group for companies incapable of retaining their people.
It is the corporate equivalent of a motivational seminar: staged, overpriced, and entirely unable to solve the underlying malaise.
Instead of altering structures, they erect a career portal with hipster photography.
Instead of addressing toxic leadership, they release a purpose-driven video.
Instead of creating genuine meaning, they pour barista-grade coffee into the brand narrative.
The result: The office smells of flat whites – yet the minds remain empty.
It is the perfect illusion: the façade of modernity, the perfume of “new work,” the carefully curated aesthetic of cool company life.
But beneath the gloss lies a fundamental vacuum. Culture cannot be sprayed on like air freshener. It cannot be filtered through Instagram reels. And yet, executives cling to branding as if the act of marketing were a substitute for the act of leading.
The Absurd Rituals
Employer Branding is the art of translating problems into glossy veneers.
It is not about solving the issues – it is about disguising them until they look presentable enough for LinkedIn posts and award submissions.
- Poor salary? – rebranded as “competitive compensation.”
The linguistic sleight of hand attempts to make mediocrity sound aspirational. - Micromanagement? – reframed as “individualised support.”
The very pathology of distrust is reimagined as a sign of personal care. - Overload? – recast as “dynamic environment.”
Exhaustion becomes energy, burnout is reframed as passion, and collapse is spun as commitment.
This concoction is then christened “employer brand.”
But strip away the design, the slogans, the mock-ups, and what remains? Employer Illusioning.
It is branding not as communication but as camouflage. A collective exercise in corporate theatre where the actors are executives and the audience is every unsuspecting applicant who falls for the performance.
The Grand Paradox
Here lies the bitter paradox: corporations spend millions to appear attractive – blind to the fact that the very theatre of attraction exposes their unattractiveness.
A lavish campaign is itself a confession of weakness: if we truly had culture, we would not need to brand it.
Every applicant perceives the discrepancy by day one.
The “Great Place to Work” story was a trailer, not the feature film.
And in the real production, the star is Chaos, while Burn-out delivers a devastating supporting role.
This is not the tragedy of miscommunication; it is the tragedy of misplaced priorities. Organisations invest more in cultivating an image than in cultivating an infrastructure. They buy the costume instead of building the character.
The Theatre of Attraction
One could almost admire the effort. The employer brand is meticulously staged:
- High-definition recruitment videos featuring laughing teams in sunlit offices.
- Stock-photo diversity that looks suspiciously more curated than reality.
- “Day in the life” montages where employees never seem to open Excel or suffer through another Teams call.
It is a film set – not a workplace. And like any set, it collapses when reality intrudes. The office politics, the unspoken hierarchies, the opaque decision-making, the endless email chains – none of this features in the glossy narrative.
Applicants arrive expecting Silicon Valley vibrance and encounter administrative swamps. They were promised agility but discover bureaucracy. They were sold collaboration but inherit silos. They were seduced by promises of well-being but find themselves queueing for a mental health webinar while their workload doubles.
The greatest irony? The more money is poured into the spectacle, the less believable it becomes. Authenticity cannot be bought at an agency rate card.
Algognostically Clear
From an algognostic perspective, the error is brutally evident.
- Culture cannot be branded.
- Leadership cannot be designed like a logo.
- Meaning cannot be posted as a hashtag.
Branding operates at the surface; thinking operates at the core.
Only structures can be thought.
And when structures are lucid, when processes align with values, when leadership reflects clarity, branding becomes redundant.
Clarity possesses the scandalous quality of resonating without branding. It needs no colour palette, no campaign, no executive photoshoot with arms crossed in faux confidence. Clarity, unlike branding, is self-sustaining. It is verifiable in every meeting, observable in every decision, tangible in every structure.
Beyond Branding: The Missing Architecture
The obsession with employer branding is symptomatic of a deeper intellectual laziness.
Instead of constructing cognitive architecture, organisations prefer narrative architecture. They spin stories rather than craft systems.
True culture is not a claim; it is a consequence.
It arises from the way decisions are made, the way conflicts are resolved, the way responsibility is distributed.
No brand consultant can manufacture this. No campaign can compensate for its absence.
If leadership is toxic, no slogan can detoxify it.
If pay is unjust, no “competitive compensation” slide will erase resentment.
If overload is endemic, no “dynamic environment” pitch will stop burnout.
It is not branding that rescues organisations; it is architecture.
Conclusion
Employer Branding is the make-up applied to the corpse of a culture long deceased.
It is the expensive disguise concealing the one question executives dare not ask:
“Would we ourselves wish to work here?”
Most do not. That is why the branding budget grows: to make palatable for others what insiders quietly endure.
Instead of glossy slides, organisations require cognitive architecture.
Instead of employer illusioning, they require structural lucidity.
For those who feel compelled to brand themselves are already burnt.
R2049 