Instilling cultural quirkiness through corporate values

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” said Peter Drucker. Commvault agrees. So after its leaders penned an initial outline of a purpose and values, they worked with PartnersCreative to turn that into a full-fledged employer brand fitting of their quirky culture. We began by conducting a series of interviews with employees from around the world. From there, we presented territories that expressed the culture and energy of what we’d learned.

That led to drafting a tight version of Commvault’s “People Purpose,” and aligning it to a set of corporate beliefs. Next, we worked with Commvault’s head of talent to draft a set of values. The values were far from traditional, and were illuminated with off-beat ideas like “Be infectious (no really, it’s okay.)” and “Turn obstacles into launch pads” and “Ignore shiny objects” and “Tap your inner Gandhi.”

The employer brand was verbalized in a comprehensive playbook that included the purpose, values, audiences and even sample recruiting ads. But the cornerstone of the effort was a series of videos for Commvault’s career site. It featured employee submissions of funny, off-beat clips broadly conceived by PartnersCreative, and performed by Commvault’s people around the world.