Who is a Project Ambassador and does your business need one?

Sooner or later, young projects face the challenge of expansion. Modern businesses often intend to immediately enter the international arena bypassing the local market stage. 

Perhaps you, like most entrepreneurs, are sure that it is enough to hire specialists who can effectively apply working business strategies for success. However, if you create innovative solutions, it is not enough to make a good product and get punchy sales-managers. It is important to build an ideology through which your decision will fill the hearts of the target audience, form or support people personal values. To solve these problems, you need a Project Ambassador.

Who is a Project Ambassador?

Generally speaking that is a person who develops and spreads ideology of a project at industry-specific events, conferences, exhibitions.

Project Ambassador responsibilities may vary, either focusing solely on speaking or building up a full cycle of ideology creation and implementation. Details will be discussed below.

* A successful example of a strong ideology I consider the one of Bitcoin, reflected in the White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto: "Yes" to free money regulated by the community, "no" to intermediaries as financial structures. Although Satoshi is not a businessman (it seems), but a volunteer of good will, a huge number of honest and not very commercial projects have developed on the ideas he created.

It would be interesting to hear your opinion about companies with a well-developed and well-built ideology. Please share examples in the comments.

When and who needs Project Ambassador?

Let's imagine that you are creating software for equipment that produces clean energy. You have a good innovative product, excellent talented employees, investments, and most importantly – you are really ambitious. Your PR manager hints it would be useful to travel to conferences or exhibitions... Or maybe to negotiate with interested communities in different countries and hold a series of master classes. But how to organize this work?

Here happens a "shut up." Let's be honest: in young IT-teams there is rarely a person with strong presentation skills, who knows the product well and most importantly – understands where to go with which presentation. I watched a talented tech-lid who gave a professional, but completely useless speech at an expensive event, because the presentation did not correspond to the specifics of the target audience. I also saw a huge number of frankly boring performances and just stupid hypocrisy. 

Choosing not a correct place, people and content are the three evils for young companies. Poor understanding of why and where are they heading and how are they going to "feed" the audience. But this applies not only to startups, "adult" companies also waste their budgets for an improper performance of wrong people.

In order to avoid embarrassment, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the company's ideology and the tools for its distribution. If you see live communication with the community as one of the tools to promote your product, you need a person who will set up this work - a Project Ambassador.

Not to be confused with an Influencer. An Influencer is an opinion leader that advertises different products among particular target audience. In my opinion, such cooperation is not very profitable for a young project, because in this way the project does not build its unique ideology and reputation, but tries to bite off a piece of the reputation of Influencer. Of course, to enlist the support of famous people is not a bad idea, but only after becoming strong enough to stand on ones feet. Up to this point – hire a person who will deal with the creation and promotion of your own values, will create the ground for the work of advertisers and sale-managers. 

Returning to the question of who still needs Project Ambassador, I believe that this position is mandatory in companies that create an innovative product, the success of which largely depends on idea popularity behind it. We are talking about teams that have the audacity to challenge the traditional way of life, for example, the creators of innovative IT-products or solutions for alternative energy sources integration and promotion.

What does Project Ambassador provide to the company?

The main function of Project Ambassador is to present a company and a product at industry-specific events. He should pack the main idea of a product and present it in the most attractive way. Project Ambassador is not a "hired speaker", but a person deeply immersed in the specifics of the company. And necessarily in love with the product. 

As mentioned above, the responsibilities of Project Ambassador can be limited only to performances, and may include a full cycle of preparation for events and organization of his own. The second option involves a more complete involvement of the employee in the work of the company, so, in my opinion, such cooperation is preferable to the "cut" option.

Main tasks for Project Ambassador:

1. Joint development of company/product ideology with the team.

2. Analysis of the promotion environment – locations and communities where the product can "enter".

3. Definition of methods and tools - what activities to attend/organize, how to build communication.

4. Joint development of brand-book and promotional materials for performances with the team.

5. Preparation and implementation for the presentation, from the development of methodology to direct live work with the community.

Project Ambassador result of work should be a loyal target audience, which discovers the values and beliefs corresponding to the ideology of the product, as well as interested in their own distribution

* I like how United Nations Development Program works in terms of forming a loyal target audience. This organization funds local public organizations, setting them to form volunteer groups, which in turn spread the ideas of UNDP among the local population. 

One of the projects in the framework of UNDP, in which I participated "Energy and biomass". The task was to form a loyal attitude of the target audience to the use of bio-fuel as an alternative source of energy. The long term perspective supposes encouraging people to install bio-boilers. 

Project Ambassador Competencies 

Project Ambassador competence depends on the the fact how broad are the tasks set by the company. The minimum task - an applicant must have the skills of public speaking, the maximum task – a good understanding of the company specifics, marketing and event-management and practical psychology.

How to find a Project Ambassador?

The first option is to work with people who provide such services. I am happy to advise you on any issue, from creating an ideology of the product, ending with a speech at industry-specific events or a preparation of your speakers. Please contact me with PM or comments. 

If you feel the strength to cope with the tasks of Project Ambassador, use a simple five-step algorithm of preparation, so as not to be trapped with a ridiculous performance. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the main idea for the speech?

2. How will you embody her life?

3. Who are you performing for?

4. What do these people want/need?

5. What should change in their life/perception as a result of what you give them?

Have a look at the speeches of speakers at events close to yours on the subject. Mark what you like and train the most attractive skills. By the way, if you are not a professional speaker, do not waste time on eliminating weaknesses, focus on strength. During the period of preparation for the performance you hardly can get rid of frequent blinking or burr, besides, the human body in a stressful situation is more likely escaping to its usual behavior, than to those which has been recently learned. Work on strengthening the strong, transforming your weakness into highlights.

And remember the main rule of Project Ambassador– love what you say!

* The idea of a five-step algorithm I noticed in Adam Leipzig speech, Director of Entertainment Media Partners at TED. Adam recommends using these questions to discover life goals. His approach conveniently extends to smaller tasks.