Aligning employees with your brand’s identity is essential to a company’s success. But too many employees don’t know what you stand for.
from Gallup Business Journal. By John H. Fleming and Dan Witters
Yesterday, I was asked “what is the biggest challenge as a Transformational Leader”. My answer? “Cascading the brand message throughout the organization.” According to Gallup research, the world’s best brand ambassadors are your employees. Unfortunately, most of them are under-prepared for the job, and they could be costing companies millions of dollars in lost opportunity.
To maximize the power of this resource, however, you must arm your employees with the knowledge and resources they need to be effective brand ambassadors. They must:
- know what your organization stands for and what makes it different from others in the marketplace
- understand your brand promise and be able to explain the most important elements of your brand identity
- be empowered to deliver on your brand promise
These items fall under the general heading of brand alignment. In a previous article, we reported that American consumers who are familiar with a brand and who can successfully identify its key elements give about double their business to that brand compared with consumers who are equally familiar with the brand but unable to identify those elements.
Kurt Schusterman 