How to Create Brand Ambassadors

By Rick DeMarco

 

I’ve written previously about the importance of focusing on both your employees and your customers in activating your business and brand strategy.  The internal focus involves engaging all employees to passionately deliver on the brand promise through every touch point with the customer.  For that to happen, it’s not enough to simply communicate the strategy to employees.  You need to turn all of your employees into true Brand Ambassadors.  The world really is a small place.  And that has never been as true related to marketing and brand strategy as it is today with the proliferation of the internet and the blurred lines between our social and professional lives.   No longer is the failure of a brand to deliver on its promise confined to the geography in which it occurs.  Social media gives employees and customers the opportunity to share their disappointments with the world with the click of the send button. And because our lives are so busy and because of the explosion of mobile technology, our social lives and our professional lives are often completely entwined.

For a brand to deliver on its promise to its customers, the employees must believe in that promise and represent that brand consistently through every touch point, whether in a social setting or a business one.  For that to happen, the company must make a concerted effort to create Brand Ambassadors.  Creating Brand Ambassadors takes an investment and a commitment by the company, but the payoff in increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and increased sales will return that investment many times over.

So how do you effectively create true Brand Ambassadors?   There are 5 specific requirements for someone to be a brand ambassador.  For all 5, both the company and the employee share the responsibility to insure that these requirements are achievable and reflected in interactions with the customer.

1.    KNOW THE COMPANY AND ITS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

The employee must know the company’s vision, strategy, and history.  He/she must also have a basic understanding of all of the products and services the company offers to its customers and understand and believe in the brand promise.  The company must take the time and effort to communicate to employees and train them.   New employees should be required to spend time learning about the products and services during the onboarding process.  And existing employees should be kept up to date through the company website or other regular communication methods like all-employee meetings. 


2.     REPRESENT THE BRAND PROPERLY AND CONSISTENTLY

The employee must speak about the brand and represent it consistent with its promise.  That means using the proper brand identity system, including the approved  logo, in written communications, as well as the right brand voice, as defined by the brand strategy.   One of the most effective ways to insure that employees represent the brand properly is to encourage them to actually use the products and services when possible.  A company should offer its employees a significant discount to dissuade them from using like- products from competitors.    If I sit next to an HP leader on the plane and he/she is using a Dell computer, my confidence in the brand is certainly impacted negatively. 


3.    BECOME A CUSTOMER SERVICE ADVOCATE
 
All employees should take ownership of the brand, not just the customer service staff.  When at a social or business event, employees should know how to respond to someone who has an issue with the products or services.  I was at a branding conference last year and a major insurance company talked about a program in which every employee had the 800 customer service number programmed into their cell phone.   Most people always have their cell phone with them, so no matter what the venue, if someone had an issue to be resolved, the employee could provide them with a contact to resolve that issue, whether it’s a service problem or a product recommendation question.

4.    BREAK DOWN BARRIERS TO SERVE THE CUSTOMER

Often, the solution to a customer’s problem or issue involves collaboration                 across functions within the company.  Brand Ambassadors break down functional silos        and focus on addressing the customer’s concern.  I can’t tell you how many times I have spent hours on the phone, being passed from one department to another trying to resolve an issue.  Some of my most positive brand experiences have occurred when the person handling the call made the organizational structure transparent to my issue and just resolved it.  An employee can own the customer experience by breaking down organizational barriers that get in the way of serving the customer.


5.    PROACTIVELY CREATE A POSITIVE BRAND IMAGE

Brand ambassadors share positive perspectives about the brand to new employees and co-workers and demonstrate their support for the brand positioning and promise.   Social media provides an opportunity for employees to create positive buzz about the brand in their business and social circles.  The company should also provide a community that allows employees to share their stories and experiences and ask questions to clarify their position as a brand ambassador.

 

When companies spend the time and resources required to insure that employees understand the company vision and strategy, believe in its ability to deliver on its brand promise, and reflect that belief in all interactions with each other and with customers,    they can create true Brand Ambassadors who become invaluable in making their vision and strategy a reality.

It Won’t Happen On the Outside If It Doesn’t Happen On The Inside

By Rick DeMarco

When companies develop marketing strategies, they spend a significant amount of time creating plans to position their brand to the market and to their customers with extensive media planning and communication initiatives.  All of these initiatives form the foundation for increasing brand awareness and preference and growing market share.  Clear messages and campaigns are developed that let the market know about the Brand Positioning and the Brand Promise and the related goods and services that support that Brand Promise.

However, if equal importance is not placed on developing plans to activate the brand strategy internally, there is a high risk that there will be a disconnect between the brand promise the company makes and the successful delivery of that promise by the employees.   Employees and customers both play an important role in the successful activation of a Brand Strategy.  Every touch point between an employee  and a customer must consistently deliver on the brand promise.  This means that the company must make a concerted effort to educate, inspire, and empower ALL employees around a consistent strategy and brand promise.

 As Brand Manager at KitchenAid, I was part of a powerful multi-brand team that managed all products and services for Whirlpool, KitchenAid, and Roper to insure that each brand delivered on its promise and focused on taking share from competitors, not each other.  Much effort was placed on aligning the senior leadership team around the three- brand strategy and the activation plans for each.   However, an equal effort was not placed on educating, inspiring, and empowering ALL employees so they consistently represented the brand in the manner in which the company wanted it to be represented.  One day, a service employee was taking care of a problem with a KitchenAid dishwasher when the customer asked him why she should buy KitchenAid and not Whirlpool or another brand.  The answer the service technician gave her resulted in my worst nightmare. All of our hard work differentiating between the three brands was for naught when this customer was told that all brands were alike.

Now that incident happened at a time when social media was not as prevalent as it is today.  So even if a customer had a bad experience, it did not necessarily mean that the experience would be shared to a broader audience.  Today, social media and the proliferation of use of the internet could make that incident become instantly available to millions of people and could dramatically impact the success of that brand strategy.    

If it doesn’t happen on the inside, it will not happen on the outside.  In order for a company to successfully activate its brand strategy and deliver on its brand promise, it must place equal emphasis on both the customers and employees to insure a consistent experience with the brand.

Internal Alignment and Employee Engagement Are Not the Same Things

by Rick DeMarco

I have spent many hours talking to both CMO’s and SVP’s of Human Resources around the country and one theme constantly emerges regarding the biggest challenges facing them in the activation of their business strategy and delivery of their brand promise.  How do we engage our employees to passionately represent the company in a manner consistent with our values, culture, and strategy and deliver on our brand promise?   Not since the movement around quality and Six Sigma have I seen such energy around a business issue that has such a profound impact on a company’s success.

But I often hear internal alignment and employee engagement used interchangeable, as if they are the same challenge.  In fact, both of these challenges are equally important, but also very different.  Employee engagement means finding the solution to educating, inspiring, and empowering employees around a common vision and  culture and reinforcing the appropriate behavior so the company provides superior products and services to its customers, defined by their business strategy and brand promise.  Internal alignment is the process in which a company insures that all of its functional groups and operational groups are aligned around a consistent message, look and feel, and actions and behaviors.  For employee engagement, the focus is on the individual employee.  For Internal alignment, the focus is on the functional departments and the operational business units.

Efforts to engage employees are focused on understanding how to create an environment in which the employee feels passionate about the vision and corporate objective and understands how he/she contributes to and participates in the company’s success.  There is now very strong research that supports the belief that a highly engaged workforce leads to higher sales growth, higher margins, lower turnover, and higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. Employee engagement efforts are often championed by the Human Resource Department as part of managing an effective and efficient workforce.   However, unless these efforts are coordinated with the brand strategy and communications efforts, there is a high degree of risk that functional silos will exist and the company will not speak with one voice to its customers.

That’s where internal alignment comes in.  For a company to present one face to its customers, it must rally around a common vision, culture, and set of objectives and goals.  When I assumed the position of VP of Marketing for Carrier Residential Heating and Cooling, the company had no fewer than 28 different brands, many of which competed with each other for the same market segment.    The power of a multi-brand strategy in which specific brands in the portfolio were positioned against different market segments created a unified business strategy in which the company took share from competitors, not from itself.

To create a unified workforce, there must be a common vision, strategy, and brand promise that serves as the foundation for all messaging and actions and behaviors.  In order to present one face to the customer, all functions must look and feel, speak, and behave in a manner consistent with the brand attributes and characteristics.  And this alignment will not happen naturally.  It requires a concerted effort by a cross-functional group of leaders who proactively drive this consistency throughout the organization. 

Employee Brand Engagement: How to Create Passionate and Inspired Employees

By Rick DeMarco

Much has been written about leadership and about the ability to create a productive and passionate workforce.  The outdated concept of leadership relied on a strong autocratic style in which the leader very clearly articulated his/her demands and others either delivered or suffered the consequences.    The obvious problem with this approach is that you can order someone to do something, but you cannot order them to be passionate about it.  And in order for employees to deliver on a brand promise and brand strategy, they must believe the vision and must understand how they contribute to and participate in the organization’s success.  Only then will employees transfer their passion and excitement to your customers in the manner in which they interact with them, in both business and social settings.

As you read about efforts to engage employees and create brand ambassadors, you often hear leaders talking about “motivating” the workforce   I don’t believe that anyone can actually motivate anyone else.  Motivation comes from within.  The most effective way to get what you need from an employee is to first provide them with what they need.  A leader’s job is to determine what it is that motivates the people he/she leads and then provide it for them.  In order to do this, leaders must truly know the people they lead.  And I’m not just talking about what they do on the job.  I’m talking about knowing about their passions, their families, their shared values, and the things that keep them up at night and wake them up in the morning.   The only way to provide an environment in which an employee is motivated is to fully understand what it is that motivates him/her and insure that his/her needs are met.  I recently talked with a friend who had been disenchanted with the leadership style of his manager for some time.  Finally, with no attempt to address his needs, the employee made a decision to leave the company.  When he told his manager about his plans, the manager put a full court press on efforts to convince him to stay.  But at this point, the employee made it clear that it was too late.  He had already made his decision based on the leader’s insensitivity to his needs and inability to provide what he needed in order to be passionate about his role with the company.  I’ve seen it over and over again.  An employee decides to leave and the immediate response is to offer him/her more money, when in fact, money had nothing to do with the motivation of the employee to leave.

If you truly want your employees to deliver on your brand promise and business strategy, take the time to understand what motivates them and then provide an environment in which their needs are met.  You can then create true brand ambassadors who are passionate and inspired about your vision and objectives and relay that passion to your customers.