I'm going to go out on a limb here but I bet most of your colleagues can’t agree on or properly verbalize your company’s key brand attributes. Companies worldwide spend many billions of dollars every year trying to consistently communicate brand and product messages to their current and potential customers yet often fail miserably at accomplishing this internally.
Let’s test my hypothesis with a very simple experiment. Independently ask some co-workers (the more the better) the following two questions: 1) What are at least five words that describe your company's primary brand(s)? 2) What five things that you want every current and potential customer to know about your primary brand(s)?
If your colleagues can't provide you with the exact same answers to the above two questions, then I won the bet . . . and your company has some ‘Brand Tap’ work to do. Brand tapping is what I define as a company’s ability to successfully educate employees regarding key brand attributes and to also ensure that the employees embrace and believe in these attributes. If companies can’t accomplish this internally, then they will certainly not be as effective accomplishing this externally.
Every company president should mandate an internal Brand Tap program that ensures that each employee is able to effectively communicate what the company and its brands stand for to anyone (and everyone). Anything less should be deemed unacceptable. So, go ahead, reach out and brand tap someone!
- chillin' at the cooler. Mark Willingham
