Brands are increasingly aware of their humanistic component and the importance of it in their positioning.
Social networks demonstrate it by showing the day to day of their employees that feel happy and proud to be part of this or that corporation. That is why having brand ambassadors is a guaranteed success investment.
Companies started to be present in the social media in an advertising way, showing its merits with a studied and planned corporate language. But nowadays, in the Knowledge Age, the needs have changed and brands now have to share quality content with their communities leaving aside any commercial intention. Communities soon reacted by feeding back this content and creating the need to the brands to interact with their users.
So there is no longer a company selling their products to a consumer, it is a brand having a dialogue with a user. And it is in this two-way relationship where the key point is: it is about one person connected to another one. It is a relationship that connects values and ideals and is at the crossroads of the user’s expectation and the brand’s promise where the crux of the matter is.
But not only users have expectations and dreams, also the employees can feel pride of belonging to a certain corporate culture. Therefore it is extremely important not to ignore that employees themselves can become loudspeakers of the brand values.
When the employee’s expectation is aligned with the image that the company wants to transmit, the corporate pride gets feed and it has more credibility than any advertising campaign because employees are often considered the most trustworthy spokesperson. What they say is considered real and transparent and driven by the company’s values and not by any promotional event.
Keeping in mind that people are the most valuable resource of any corporation.
The brand image projected to the employees must be treated with the same rigour and approach than the image projected to the clients. Human resources departments call this employer brandingand it is focused on designing the brand image for the potential future candidates.
As designers we must be aware of the needs of any strategic identity to know how to transmit not only to the team but also to providers and clients all the values of the brand to make them understandable, and able to embrace them properly.
We are capable to transmit in a corporate way all the intangibles of the brand seamless, through different tools such as Brand Coaching for the teams or style-meetings with providers which are essential to empower the employee and turn him to a brand ambassador. Because bearing in mind that brands are made out of people and collaborators can be very influential members is basic to strengthen their positioning and to ensure a brand’s continuing success.
