Imagine someone who adores the organization they work for. They recommend it, talk about it at the family dinner, get excited about its achievements. Now ask them what sets that organization apart from its competition, or how an important decision is made between two areas. If they cannot answer, we have high enthusiasm resting on a blurry perception. Brand Imprinting holds that this enthusiasm, however sincere, does not turn into contribution: love without understanding does not know which way to push.
From that comes a principle of the model: a moderate emotional bond combined with a correct understanding of the brand is worth more than high enthusiasm built on a mistaken perception.
Two halves, measured separately
The model organizes commitment into five levels and splits them into two stages. The functional stage gathers what a person knows and understands. The emotional stage gathers what they want, what they take part in and what they advocate. The functional stage is the foundation, and the reason is practical: without it, emotion has no concrete object.
That is why the instrument does not boil everything down to a single “satisfaction” score. It measures knowledge and emotion separately and puts them in relation. A person can be high on one and low on the other, and each combination calls for a different response. Someone who knows a lot and feels little needs reasons to get involved. Someone who feels a lot and knows little needs information and context, not more motivation campaigns.
A hypothetical example
Think of two teams in the same organization. In the first, people know the products well, know who the customers are and understand how their work connects with other areas, but they speak about the organization with distance and little emotion. In the second, people are proud and speak wonders of it, but cannot explain what makes the organization different or how decisions are made.
Both teams have a problem, and it is not the same one. The first lacks a reason to get involved. The second lacks a map. If the organization offers both the same solution, say a pride campaign, it will help the first little and the second almost not at all. A single “engagement” index would show them as similar. Measuring the two halves separately shows them as different.
What “understanding” means
Two dimensions form the base.
What do we do? (business knowledge). What people know about what the organization does: products and services, customers, competitors, environment, how it wants to be perceived, overall objectives, and their own role, duties and benefits. The typical warning sign is people who know their own task but not what sets their organization apart.
How do we do it? (processes). The tools, the value chain, the role of each area, how decisions are made and the consistency between what is done and what is promised to the public. Its warning sign is working in silos: each person understands their part but not anyone else’s.
Notice that neither asks for “knowing about strategy”. They ask for knowing enough for daily work to have a destination. And silos are especially treacherous, because a person can be strongly committed to their team and, without meaning to, contradict what the team next door needs.
What the evidence says, and what it does not
There is general support for taking engagement seriously. Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis (11th edition, 2024) brings together 736 studies, 183,806 business units and more than 3.3 million people in 90 countries. It compares teams in the top quartile of engagement with those in the bottom quartile. At the median, the former show 23% higher profitability, 18% higher sales productivity, 78% lower absenteeism and 63% fewer safety incidents. Turnover is 21% lower in high-turnover organizations and 51% lower in low-turnover ones.
It should be read with care. These are differences between teams, not a promise that raising engagement will produce those results. And it measures engagement at work with Gallup’s instrument, not “knowledge versus emotion”. Nothing in that research proves that enthusiasm without understanding has no effect. That is a proposition of the model, and the way to test it in each organization is to measure both halves and see whether they separate.
How to apply it
- Run the dinner test. Ask five people from different areas what sets us apart from the competition. Note how many answers match.
- Draw the value chain with your team in one hour. Have each person mark where their work comes in and who it depends on. Silos show up in what nobody can draw.
- Explain decisions, not just orders. When something changes, say who decided, on what criteria and what was set aside.
- Build the base before the campaign. If business knowledge is low, a pride campaign will be blown away. Inform and align first.
- Measure both axes. A global score hides exactly the difference that matters. Compare what people know with what they feel, by dimension and by area.
Where it fits in the model
This article is about the levels of inform (I know) and align (I understand), the two functional dimensions. They are the least glamorous part of the model and the most neglected, because communicating “inspiration” usually seems more attractive than explaining how a process works. But they are what allows emotion, when it finally appears, to have somewhere to go.