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Turning Employees into Brand Champions

From VentureRepublic:

Brand champions are internal and external story tellers who spread the brand vision, brand values and cultivate the brand in an organisation. Every organisation needs committed and passionate brand champions. The more employees the organisation can turn into brand champions, the better will it be equipped to build and maintain strong brand equity. Singapore Airlines, L’Oreal, Harley Davidson, Nike, Google and LEGO are well-known examples of companies which benefit tremendously from their employees being strong and dedicated brand champions.

My company has more employees than it has customers. These employees leave work every day and have conversations and interactions with complete strangers in homes, bars, stores, restaurants, etc. Some of those people know our company exists, and some are getting their first glimpse of us.

employee brand championAre they saying good things? Are they telling the world how amazing it is to work for this company? Are they enhancing our reputation?

I hope so.

Some people recommend hiring great people and inspiring them to do amazing things. Sounds like a plan to me. Find a way to make brand champions out of your employees. You won\’t regret it.

Photo by pinksherbet

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Comments

7 responses to “Turning Employees into Brand Champions”

  1. karla Porter Avatar
    karla Porter

    You can print a gazillion tzotchkes with your logo and put up a huge billboard in your community say how great you are. But just like advocates for any product, brand champions are grown organically and the message spreads by word of mouth and social media.

    More companies would benefit to listen to the message to hire great people and inspire them to do amazing things. All too often, employers want “turn-key” new hires.

    This post has a great message and the little one is a cutey :-)

    @karla_porter

  2. Ted Avatar
    Ted

    I think the key to brand champions is simple – a remarkable product. It’s easy to talk about products and experiences that are awesome.

    I don’t think this is something you create a process around, I think it’s something that happens from creating stuff worth talking about.

    Good article, made me think.

    1. Ben Avatar
      Ben

      @Ted So if we can give employees an amazing work experience that they can tell a story about, then we’re golden? Great comment. Thanks for stopping by!

  3. Amanda Hite @sexythinker Avatar
    Amanda Hite @sexythinker

    Nice post. Glad I stopped by!

    1. Ben Avatar
      Ben

      @Amanda And thank you very much for doing so! Appreciate the comment!

  4. Culture, VHRG, and a funny | UpstartHR

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  5. working girl Avatar
    working girl

    Even more important with social media: http://ls-workgirl.blogspot.com/2010/07/got-passion.html. A Lufthansa employee once won me over with his excitement about the fact that Lufthansa serves Swiss chocolate. I prefer Belgian chocolate and the Lufthansa seats are too small for my 6 year old but his enthusiasm was infectious.

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