When Employees Become The Main Marketing Force

Under the influence of new media, customer power has been attached importance to by enterprises, and a strength employee closer to enterprises is also worth more attention.

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In recent years, the trend of putting employees into the brand marketing plan and reaching the overall communication effect is beginning to appear.

Enterprise pairs

Employee endorsement brand

Employees are often on the front line, directly contacting consumers, especially in service industries.

Now, they conform to the trend of development and are directly taken to the front of the glare. As the spokesman of the company, they appear in front of consumers.

The fragile economy spawned a sense of mistrust among consumers. At the same time, more interactive society calls for humanized enterprises. These factors make more and more companies start to speak their brand advertisements.

As early as 2009, Ajay Bhatt, a star employee of Intel, played the leading role in Intel's global advertising. He was one of the main contributors to the invention of USB socket.

But the Ajay Bhatt in the advertisement is not himself, but is played by others.

After the notorious oil spill in 2010, BP hired its employees in advertising to create a more humane and pparent corporate image.

In October 2010, Pizza Hut launched a new brand slogan, "your favorite, your pizza" instead of the previous "America's most popular pizza". At the same time, they also launched a brand advertisement. This is the only announcement that the pizza hut has not seen any new products or discount information in more than ten years.

The main character of this advertisement is 8 employees of Pizza Hut Inc.

In order to shoot this advertising film, Pizza Hut first launched a Star Contest in the interior: two months before the start of the marketing campaign, Pizza Hut issued a notice to its more than 7500 restaurants in the United States to encourage employees to submit a video showing their unique personality and participate in the selection of new advertisements.

Among the hundreds of competitors, a total of 8 athletes aged 20 or above were selected. They are also the target consumers of pizza hut.

"If we really let the leader of pizza hut tell the audience that we care about you and your food, I don't think that sounds credible," explains Kurt Kane, marketing vice-president of pizza hut.

In this economic environment, if people spend money, they need to know what value they get.

This is to show consumers that we really care about their food. "

In addition, this advertisement also played a role in the internal communication of the company. For example, Kane introduced the 8 advertising stars to dealers at the recent dealer meeting.

Based on these 8 employees, pizza hut has also set up the hiring criteria for new employees.

Collecting marketing ideas

Now, the "crowdsourcing mode" of customers seeking advice through various new media tools is common. But as pointed out by Venkat Ramaswamy, a marketing professor at the Michigan Ross business school, the company should extend this "crowdsourcing mode" to more links in the industrial chain, including employees.

Before, the information of the company's marketing activities is often confidential to employees, so as to prevent information leakage. That era has passed. On the contrary, the company began to solicit staff's suggestions on marketing activities in advance.

Kraft, a food company, has launched an online community called Foodii, which is open to more than 2000 employees of Kraft. It collects employees' views on brand marketing. Kraft Corporation will first solicit opinions from their employees in the community before they do marketing activities.

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Foodii's latest mission is to choose names for a new product. In just 24 hours, Kaf's staff contributed more than 100 ideas, some of which were selected to the Kaf Market Research Center.

Finally, the name of the new flavor is "Chocolate Mint", which comes from an ordinary employee of Kraft.

Kaf official said that the main goal of building Foodii community is not only to enhance the chances of product marketing success, but also to enable employees to feel that their own opinions have been valued, accepted or even adopted, and have played a positive role in boosting morale.

Similarly, before launching every marketing campaign, Southwest Airlines first collected creative advertisements through internal network SWAT life, or conducted marketing previews. For example, when they launched the latest "Bags Flyers Free" ads, they first conducted tests on SWAT life and collected feedback from employees.

At ordinary times, Southwest Airlines will issue some survey questions from time to time to collect ideas, such as "telling the most serious complaint you have heard", or "why your customers like Southwest Airlines" and so on. Sometimes employees will spontaneously discuss the views of the company's brand activities.

"Not just the marketing department, all employees need to understand and appreciate the brand.

It is necessary to organize various activities within the enterprise to ensure that every employee does his best to support the brand.

Marketing campaign

What is the effect of a marketing campaign? You can first test among employees. How can a marketing activity achieve good results? Let all employees mobilize to help you deliver brand information.

For a company that sells millions of dollars for marketing, it is logical to put a small portion of its marketing on its employees.

But in the view of Carson marketing group CMO Mike Kust, "the situation should be too small."

At the same time, he also warned that the new media provided a platform for each employee to vent their emotions. If they were not satisfied with the brand, they would cause great harm to the brand through these platforms.

Therefore, prior communication between marketing activities and employees can be adjusted according to staff feedback, and can also maximize the integration of employees' marketing power.

By the end of 2009, there was still two days before Christmas. Most Pepsi employees had gone home to prepare for the festival, but at PepsiCo's headquarters, a group of people were working day and night.

Their job is to surprise others when they come back to work.

At the end of the holidays, employees entered the company and found that the company had changed greatly: there were huge blessing bands hanging around, and new signs on Pepsi were on the horizon.

This is Pepsi's "Word Play" rehearsal for employees in the upcoming new logo marketing campaign.

As a matter of fact, a month before Christmas, PepsiCo summoned its employees online and held more than 10 Online seminars. At the same time, a number of related posts were posted on the mail communication system and MyPepsiCo.com platform of the company. The purpose was to introduce PepsiCo's new brand information to all employees, so that they could feel the real changes brought by this new activity to the company and help Pepsi convey the new information to the outside world.

As Alan Siegel, chairman of global brand consultancy Siegel+Gale, said, "the first level test should be employee testing. If they do not believe this information, you need to adjust the information before sending it to the outside world."

PepsiCo's senior marketing manager, Bill Wyman, said, "if you want to succeed in the market, you need to feel the Pepsi brand with all your employees.

We try to communicate with employees what we are doing, why we do it and how we will do it through any opportunity.

In 2010, Fidelity launched the "Turn Here" marketing theme in the first few weeks, and launched an employee oriented "Turner Here" campaign inside the company.

The company uses internal websites to introduce to employees the origin of the idea of "Turn Here", the positioning of marketing themes, and the role of employees in the process of brand information pmission and marketing.

According to statistics, more than 28 thousand employees study on the Internet.

Fidelity employee Jim Speros said that employees need to become an important part of the marketing chain, and many companies do not realize that their employees are the ultimate spokesmen for brands.

Tucker, a master of strategic brand management and a professor of marketing at Dartmouth University School of business, Kevin Ryan Keller, interviewed by Nelson in 2009, pointed out that communication between brands and marketing activities between enterprises and employees needs to attract the attention of enterprises: "not just the marketing department, all employees need to understand and appreciate the brand.

It is necessary to organize various activities within the enterprise to ensure that every employee does his best to support the brand.