Marketing Profs

Business is about people, not machines. It is about relationships, not transactions.

Strong brands understand that having regular communication—conversations—with all members of their brand communities is critical to successful branding. Your brand community is made up of your executives, employees, partners and alliances, customers, prospects and shareholders.

Branding is about connecting with these people. It is about conversation. The more relevant that conversation and the longer it continues, the stronger your brand will be.

The thing is, that conversation is two-way. In conversations, we talk and we listen.

Effective conversation, then, is not just about sending out a series of messages to members of your brand community in the form of advertising, email, direct mail, etc.; it is about engaging people in two-way discussions so that you can refine brand strategies and provide these constituencies with what they need to become your company's brand stewards.

In this article, we will focus on your employees, a group that is critical to ensuring a clear and consistent message about your brand both inside and outside the walls of your company. In future installments, we will talk about other members of your brand community and ways you can engage them in conversation.

Have Conversations With Your Employees

Your employees are probably the most underutilized brand assets your company has. Employees who deeply understand the brand and proactively apply it to all that they do are critical to brand building.

Just look at companies that have a staff of brand evangelists. Yahoo employees wrap their cars in Yahoo advertisements as a symbol of their pride and commitment. Apple employees talk daily with friends and family and even strangers about how incredibly cool and different Apple products are. The first chapter of the Virgin brand manual is titled Our People Come First.

Having brand evangelists working for your company instead of ordinary employees serves two functions:

• First, employees who understand the brand are better able to deliver on-brand work each day. Whether they answer the phone, design your products or support your customers, true brand evangelists know how to deliver on your company's brand promise. The result: a more consistent brand message and positive experience for your customers and prospects.
  
  
• Second, brand evangelists build your brand both inside and outside the work environment. They talk to friends and associates about the brand. I know one brand evangelist for Lotus software who would show his company's latest TV ads to houseguests over cocktails.