Posts Tagged ‘Brand Promise’
What Stop Signs Tell Us About Communication
Tags: Brand Evolutionary, Brand Promise, Communication, Customer Service, Employee Relations
Posted in Employer Branding on February 23rd, 2009
With the exception of a few drivers, most people obey stop signs. Responsible drivers understand that stop signs are a signal to act in a certain way. While waiting my turn at a four way stop, I wondered what signs we should use to get employees to act in a way that supports our brands.
Many companies overlook the importance of internal brand communication. How much more effective would an organization be if the employee and their families fully understood the brand promise, sales strategy and customer service standards?
Today’s employees are the product of an evolutionary change in the sophistication of media and production values. While the old company newsletter still stands as a stalwart of communication in many organizations, intranets and internal blogging are now valuable real-time tools.
Eli Lilly and Company uses digital signage in the form of TV screens (LillyTV) that feature company news in the places their employees linger. While waiting for coffee, the elevator or an ATM, employees turn to LillyTV for the latest headlines, pictures and videos of company news and local or international events.
Not only is LillyTV an instant way to distribute company news, it reaches employees who don’t sit in front of a computer. “In manufacturing, people don’t have their own computer, they don’t sit at a desk often, so they don’t see the company website, e-mails or newsletters,” says Chris Bias, senior internal communications associate at Lilly. “But [now] they can get the information too, because it’s in their break room.”
Eli Lilly is using a cellular TV system from MediaTile, which has been around since 2002. Its website claims to offer “Digital Signs in a Box” that are easy to install and connect to a cellular network.
Internal communication needs to reach beyond just the desk or the break room. Repetition of the message should be delivered at home and to the family. Expanding your brand message to the circle of influence, or as Seth Godin calls it the Tribe. When done successfully, the entire family communicates your brand attributes in their social circle, thus expanding your sphere of influence.
Ideas to create a family of brand ambassadors include:
- Communication sent to the employee’s home that engages the entire family
- Text messaging or posting on an employee’s Facebook page to acknowledge a job well done or an anniversary date
- Posting a YouTube message to the employee and their family, again acknowledging the role they played in the company’s success
- Encouraging employees to bring family members to the office so as to engage further with your brand
- Sponsorship of employee softball teams, charitable events or other social activities sends a clear message that your brand is human
Western civilization craves information. Communicating the company brand promise, new initiative or sales goal, keeps everyone engaged and involved. Keeping the employee’s family engaged creates a supportive home environment. How you communicate is as important as what you communicate. And like the four way stop sign, when understood, it keeps everyone moving forward.
Tripping In The Dark
Tags: Brand Evolutionary, Brand Promise, Internal Communication, Vendor Relations
Posted in Customer Service, Internal Communication on February 16th, 2009
I had an interesting discussion over coffee with an executive in the waste management industry. We were talking about brand promises. Specifically, how do we ensure our front line people faithfully deliver the brand promise everyday?
He shared with me a story about how his wife had tripped in dimly lit hallway of a local restaurant. Her fall resulted in broken bones and a period of unconsciousness. (Since her husband is a reader of Mind Share, I’ll take this moment to wish her a speedy recovery.)
The restaurant manager sprung into action, calling an ambulance and assisting in everyway he knew how. He gave the husband his business card and said the restaurant will take care of everything. If the story had ended here I would be writing to tell you how this restaurant manager epitomized customer service and ultimately the delivery of the brand promise.
Unfortunately, and perhaps unknowingly, the restaurant brand took a decided turn for the worse. After the trip to the emergency room, doctor visits and follow-up care, a representative of the restaurant’s corporate office/insurance company contacted the executive. The first words out of the representative’s mouth were, and I paraphrase here, “Sir you must have misunderstood the manager. He did not say that we would take care of everything.”
With one phone conversation the brand perception of this restaurant changed. This brand damaging event did not need to happen. Failure to provide brand education to everyone in your organization and your contract suppliers can wreak havoc on your reputation.
Training every employee in the proper way to treat a customer is essential. Training your vendors to deliver your brand promise is a completely different challenge. When we partner with a third party supplier it is critical that we have the brand promise discussion as a component of the overall deliverables. Here are few a thoughts that can help reduce the odds of getting that angry call from a loyal customer.
- Make sure project managers, supervisors and all front line people understand the brand promise.
- Empower your team to make decisions quickly and remedy mistakes before they escalate.
- Coach staff on how to be empathetic to a customer’s pain.
- Timely and regular communication, internally and externally, can actually turn a negative situation into a positive experience for your customer.
- Senior involvement tells your customer that they are important.
- Secret shopping your vendors is a great way to audit the delivery of your expected products and services.
We all spend a great deal of time, thought and resources to ensure that our brand is communicated. Sometimes we forget customer touch points extend far beyond the sales, marketing and project managers. The last thing we need is for one of our customers to trip over failed communication because we kept a department or vendor in the dark about our brand promise.
What’s Your Brand Promise?
Tags: american marketing association, Brand Promise, corporate culture, customers, execution, expectation, greatness, Internal Communication, promise, vendor communication
Posted in Branding, Communication, Copy/Content, Creative, Customer Service, Employer Branding, Internal Communication, Marketing, Recruitment on October 20th, 2008
The American Marketing Association describes a brand as a ”name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.”
I like to simplify that by saying that a brand is a promise. And since it is a promise, then it must also be an expectation.
It is critical that your brand promise is clearly defined and articulated to internal and external stakeholders. Stanford professor and author Jim Collins, speaking on how to develop the brand said, “First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn’t the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.”
In a down economy, buyers of products and services can’t afford to take a risk. They will stick to the brands that have kept their promise. Although noted here previously, it is worthy of repeating. A well-executed branding campaign delivers a myriad of dividends including:
Giving people permission to buy
Reinforcing preconceived notions
Establishing your promise deep in the subconscious of your audience
Helping you recruit and keep the best and brightest talent
Enabling you to charge premium pricing
Thriving during economic downturns
Easily extending into new markets
Branding is too important to leave solely to the marketing department. Branding is the delivery of your promise. It is why you worked those long hours in a garage before bringing your product to the market place. It is your vision. It is your passion. It is what gets you out of bed every morning. Whether you are the founder, partner or captain of the ship, it is critical that the team understand your vision of the brand promise.
Getting your organization to embrace, proselytize and consistently deliver your brand promise, starts at the top.
Define Your Brand Promise – According to Derrick Daye, managing partner at Brand Strategy, “the brand promise must meet three criteria in order to be effective. The promise must be unique, compelling and believable.”
Identity Must Support the Promise – Your logo, colors, tag lines, sell sheets, press releases, all must reinforce your promise.
Do Your Customers Connect - Assuming that you are targeting the correct customers and prospects, how does your promise affect them? Market research and your employees can help determine the relevance of the promise.
Internal Communication – Can your employees fully articulate the brand promise and the value to your customers? Have your new hires been fully educated on the brand promise?
Partner Communication – Do your channels understand your brand promise? And better yet, have you chosen channel partners that are aligned with your promise?
Corporate Culture - Does your corporate culture support the promise? Critical to success is that all members of an organization live the promise in thought, actions and deeds.
Measure Your Efforts - Peter Drucker said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Internal surveys, customer benchmarking metrics and peer review, will tell you if you are moving the needle in the right direction
Top Down Execution - It’s your promise. Be sure that you align your communication and activities around your brand promise. Champion your promise with unbridled enthusiasm. You’ll find that it is a highly contagious way to ensure adoption and execution by your team
According to Collins, “focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.” If you stay true to your brand promise, which is uniquely you, then you are not guaranteed success but you will be on the right path to earning success.
