YOUR BRAND ON THE INSIDE
YOUR BRAND ON THE INSIDE
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 02:01
by Hajila
Grace Harding wrote an article in the Feb/Mar 2007 Journal of Marketing (SA) about internal marketing, and why you should take your employees seriously, and not treat them like ‘second-rate citizens, when in fact they should be first-rate customers’. She states, and I quite agree, ‘that companies will spend millions promoting special services and products to their customers and then send their employees a boring three-page email about’ the same thing.
I thought that was really interesting. If your brand originates from an intensive 3-day strategy session with the entire marketing department, and yet the delivery of the promise lies with people in production and customer service who barely know what it is they are supporting and why, you are certainly more likely to end up with an extremely hollow interpretation of a beautiful vision.
The inside of your brand, i.e. the teams who are charged with making the brand come to life must be fully on board with you. Why is this so important? Grace Harding puts it very succinctly: ‘staff members who believe in the company, the brand and its products and services will spread more goodwill more believably than any television ad or direct mail shot ever would.’
It is your role as brand custodian to ensure that anyone in your company who comes into contact with the customer is a walking talking brand champion. This means actually every single employee in your company… picture them going home after work sounding absolutely thrilled about a brand activation that you did at the office. Feeling appreciated that you took the time to acknowledge their place in the food-chain.
Put it this way, if you have 300 employees, and you handle it well… you have 300 billboards, articulating the promise from a deeply personal perspective walking around different towns spreading word one-on-one.
That right there is authenticity… that means believability. No money in the world can buy that.
