Book Reviews
The employer brand: Bringing the best of brand management to people at work
Simon Barrow and Richard Mosley John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, UK; 2005; 214pp; £29.95; hardback; ISBN 0470012730
Journal of Brand Management (2007) 15, 150–151. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bm.2550125; published online 2 October 2007

The interface between brand management and human resource management is brilliantly explored here by consultants Simon Barrow and Richard Mosley. They structure their book into two main parts: Part 1 presents the rationale for the introduction of the employer brand concept and outlines the key challenges that emerged during this early phase, while Part 2 is titled the ‘How To’ guide, comprising seven chapters detailing practical steps in such issues as positioning and communicating the employer brand. Author Simon Barrow and Tim Ambler of the London Business School define the employer brand as ‘the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment and identified with the employing company…the main role of the employer brand is to provide a coherent framework for management to simplify and focus priorities, increase productivity and improve recruitment, retention and commitment’. Barrow goes on to describe the initial resistance that the employer brand concept encountered from many HR professionals, who perceived marketing to be an artificial and manipulative practice. While this is clearly a widely shared view of marketing and branding, it would have been equally valid for the authors to acknowledge that the HRM discipline is hardly immune to manipulative practice. A vivid example of the need for nurturing an effective employer brand is given in the opening chapter, where
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Sainsbury’s is held up as a case study in how to do things wrong. The reference is to Sainsbury’s television advertising in the late 1990s featuring John Cleese in hectoring Basil Fawlty-mode, haranguing a store employee. The authors’ view of this is