Employee engagement and brand ambassadors are often mentioned in the same sentence.
But we often see how those who work in Marketing, and those who have ‘Internal Communications’ on their business card don’t seem to breathe the same oxygen. Maybe they eat in the same cafeteria, use a common email server, and are a few degrees of separation from each other. But they appear to have very different marching orders.
But that will soon change.
Internal and External communicators –the former from an HR track, and the latter from marketing communications –now have the tools, and sometimes the permission, to jumped tracks, so to speak.
The best companies don’t put them in different parts of the building anymore. Jay Baer made a great point last week, referring to the problem of ‘information asymmetry’ that businesses face. Basically it means that people outside of the company seem to have more information than those inside. What this means, he says, is that “it really requires companies to have more than one set of antennae for the organization.” Companies today need to unleash host of ‘unofficial marketers’ to represent their brand.
The Org Chart, however, does not let this happen.
Robert Scoble, while he was at Microsoft, used to be part of a video team that profiled employees and products –more or less an internal communicator. Yet he was able to jump tracks, engage with customers, and become the unoffiial voice of Microsoft, despite NOT being in PR or marketing.
I’ve come across scores of companies that absolutely forbid employees to respond to customer service issues, starting with making social media off limits. They are all for employee engagement –encouraging them to interact internally — but only assign a few to respond to customers.
It’s time for these firewalls to come down!
Our definition of branding is still stuck in the lock-down model, even though the line between internal and external communication has all but been erased. As Interbrand recommends, internal branding shouldn’t be bogged down in restrictive brand guidelines. A brand ambassador is not just someone who could promote the company via a press release. It is someone who could respond at 2 am in the morning, when a customer has a question –a question that cannot wait for the person with ‘marketing’ on her business card to respond later that day.
It may be time to reprint your business cards, and refresh the org chart. There may be brand ambassadors in your organization just waiting to be tapped!
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