Your brand offers
a promise to customers: service excellence, quality
products, a great experience. So when a customer comes
into contact with an employee – it is a real test
of that promise. So how can employees really help to
make the brand live? It may have started as a dream
from the marketing department but its internal comms
which needs to engage the employees.
When employees are the last to know
Branding is very much the responsibility of
marketing. Whether it’s a new product or service,
or more importantly, a corporate re-branding, much research
and development will have gone in to developing the
new positioning. When it comes to rolling out the new
brand, employees are often last in line for consideration
– if they are even told. This is not surprising
as the work done is usually market and customer facing.
However employees are the standard bearers, whether
or not they come into direct contact with customers.
Where the brand is a blue chip or well-known name,
any change usually makes the news. An employee will
often end up being asked to explain the change and the
need for it to sub-contractors, friends and neighbours
or, dare we say it, prospective customers? This is where
an employee can be embarrassed enough to be cynical,
if they have no real understanding beyond that provided
by an internal company announcement. In fact, what we
are really looking for at this point is pride in the
brand and an opportunity to promote its values.
What can internal comms offer?
When branding is on the agenda, internal communicators
need to take the initiative and get involved. What can
they offer? They need to argue the case for keeping
employees informed on why re-branding is needed and
what sort of values the brand will be promising. It
would also make sense to get this onto every team agenda
as a discussion point, well before the final branding
is unveiled. This is a fresh opportunity to educate
around the promise of the brand and enable employees
to explain it to others based on a real understanding
of purpose and promise.
Pointers
- Ensure that employee engagement is part of marketing’s
re-branding exercise – employees can even be
a test bed for trialling ideas.
- Develop, in association with the branding team,
an internal comms strategy.
- Ensure that communication covers the period during
brand development as well as including an internal
launch.
- Provide collateral to explain, educate and support
the internal launch.
- Don’t be afraid to include potential criticism
– it provides an opportunity to give the answers.
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