Brand identification among employees as a starting point for conversations
The philosophy of the Conversation Manager is clear: brand identification is the key to positive word-of-mouth about his brand. Once people feel there is a strong match between their personal (aspirational) values and the values of a brand, they start to talk more positive about that brand. Word-of-Mouth is the consequence of good brand identification and not the other way around.
So, the key challenge of the Conversation Manager is creating brand identification between its brand and its consumers.
Zappos.com, the largest online shoe retailer in the world, succeeded in creating brand identification by creating a very focuses company culture among its employees. The management of Zappos makes it very clear to all employees that there is only one company goal: create happiness among our clients. Their policies to create this result go pretty far, here’s a great example: after you’ve been working at Zappos for a month, you can get a bonus of 2500$ to leave the company. They created this policy to make sure that people don’t stay at Zappos just to have a job. No, they want dedicated people who are proud of working at Zappos and who are willing to support the company goals.
It’s just one example of what they do to focus on ‘creating happiness among their client’s. The strategy worked, Zappos has one of the best NPS scores in the world and they were able to sell the company to Amazon.com for more than 800 million dollars in the summer of 2009.
In short: focus on internal brand identification is probably the key to external brand identification, which leads towards more positive conversations about your brand.
To learn more about their philosophy, here are some interesting stories:
Why Zappos pays new employees to quit – How I did it: Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos.com