Creating and Managing Brand Advocacy

What I Learned from five experts at the Silicon Valley Brand Forum, hosted recently by Citrix. The subject was “Creating and Managing Brand Advocacy within Your Organization”

1. The building blocks of internal brand activation are: employees have a collective sense of purpose – their work is meaningful; employees have personalized and internalized the company culture as individuals; active dialogue occurs across the organization. Preston Lewis/Intactic
2. Questions to ask when crafting a compelling employee value proposition: Is this our core DNA as envisioned by our founders? What is true about us today? What do we want to be true of us tomorrow? What is true of us that is uniquely “us?” Is our message simple to remember and align on? Jennifer Johnston/Salesforce
3. How to build a team and deliver inspiration: hire for relationship skill as much as brand skill; listen, teach, respect, engage, serve; the brand is theirs - help them own it; design great tools and let them go; brand love is a bottom-line issue; advocacy is not a program, it’s a way of being. Pam Van Orden/McAfee
4. To connect employees to the company and each other: Help employees feel like they all work for the same company; establish a “one team” feeling; know your values, express them clearly and repeatedly, create programs to support them; supercharge the company programs with leadership. Laura Manzanilla/Western Digital
5. Ultimate owner of the brand is the CEO - it needs to be part of their day job; work from a shared vision of the right DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed); branding success is a collaborative exercise, not a consensus driven event; think of your constituencies as follows: A. employees; B. customers; C. everyone else. Employees are the most powerful tool and resource you have for living your brand as they engage with customers and provide solutions and delight. Harry Pforzheimer, Chief Communications Officer at Cypress Semiconductor, Symantec, Intuit