Impacts of Brand Building on the Employee Experience
It’s no secret that modern brands are leveraging events and live experiences to attract customers and fans. We are quite eager to roll up our sleeves and see what opportunities this new decade of experiential marketing will bring for brands.
The last decade of marketing proved that human connection to a brand and in-person discovery about a brand’s values and essence is an imperative part of the modern consumer journey. What may be less obvious, though, is that the real stewards of the brand, and the heart of the business, are the employees.
Our colleague, friend, and owner of Collective Culture + Communications, Amanda Bates, says
“Every brand has its own story. The trick is to ensure the employees know it, too. Engaging employees in opportunities outside of the boardroom and corporate offices strengthens the employer-brand value proposition. The heart and soul of your activations start from the inside. Succeeding externally means thriving internally. Allowing employees to be a part of your initiatives gives them real-time proof points that your company is succeeding!”
It is entirely possible in the current landscape of brand building for corporations to master a cult-like following externally by first and foremost enabling brand evangelism internally. Employees who have access and contribute to the heart of the business and the soul of the brand are more likely to authentically talk about their love for the brand wherever they go than those who don’t.
What better way than to give the employees something values-based and authentic to talk about than to let them get inside of the benefits of experiential marketing, partnerships and events, and allow them to use their own experiences to amplify the brand story?
Employee Inclusion
One of the most well oiled machines in a corporation is often the brand marketing team. It’s usually a team filled with educated creatives who have big ideas, bolstered by agency retainers throughout the life of a campaign, continuously looking to the future of the business strategy in order to stay a step ahead of what’s needed.
In tandem with this team are often portfolios like strategic sponsorship, the team that looks for opportunities to partner with an external property in order to build brand. Another level is community investment, the team that seeks ways to storytell through giving. Each of these levers presents exciting opportunities for live experiences, events, and gatherings, in order to generate engagement, execute, and prove ROI.
The magic, though, comes when there is a voice for the employees at the table. This is when the brand adds depth.
Here’s an example.
Brand building through sponsorship, for instance, gives companies an opportunity to activate the investment in tangible, experiential ways. A solid 360 degree activation plan has to include the employees and this part is often missed. When employees are given opportunities to engage with a strategic sponsorship investment, the employer brand comes to life.
Tactics
A few ways to generate employee pride in strategic partnerships, events and activations are:
Enable a mechanism for employees to give their opinion and play a role in big decisions
Offer opportunities to volunteer within the activation
Ensure there are exclusive benefits and experiences just for employees
Design a contest asking employees to storytell about your brand to gain further access
Engaging employees in human experiences outside of doing the work has proven to boost their overall satisfaction, give them something to be truly proud of about the business, and aid in top talent acquisition efforts.
Giving employees an inside look and active role within strategic external events and activations (with the right amount of controls and parameters, but that’s for another blog) will naturally lead to them telling their own authentic stories about the brand and spreading their excitement for and support of the strategy.
Isn’t this the essential goal of modern marketing, after all?!
