Advent Blog

[musi­cal interlude]

Linda Benthall: Welcome to this episode of Experiential Marketing Today. Today, we’ll talk about the the­ory and prac­tice of using expe­ri­ences to engage audi­ences with the authen­tic nature of a brand or com­pany. We believe that it may be the most pow­er­ful tool mar­keters have, but it’s also some­thing of a mys­tery. My name is Linda Benthall, and I’ll be your host for this episode.

[musi­cal interlude]

Linda: Episode 4: Brand Ambassadors. A new way of look­ing at which roles are impor­tant in an orga­ni­za­tion. Just about every expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing event involves peo­ple meet­ing peo­ple, usu­ally, it’s our tar­get audi­ence inter­act­ing with our paid rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Often, the peo­ple that staff these events and the train­ing they receive are a last-minute con­sid­er­a­tion. However, they become the face and voice of the orga­ni­za­tion once a cus­tomer comes in. Let’s join John Roberson and Todd Austin as they dis­cuss the con­cept of brand ambassadors.

Todd Austin: All right, John, so we’re going to talk about this con­cept of brand ambassador.

John Roberson: I think, we should start by defin­ing it.

Todd: That’s a good idea.

John: What do we know about the def­i­n­i­tions that are out there?

Todd: Well, from what I’ve seen, there are lots of def­i­n­i­tions of what a brand ambas­sador is, and they don’t all seem to go together. So, maybe, we should talk about those first, because our audi­ence may have seen some of those already. One of the first ones that you’ll see is some peo­ple define a brand ambas­sador as an unpaid vol­un­teer fan or a cit­i­zen mar­keter. They almost exclude some­one that you’re pay­ing. They say they are not qual­i­fied to be a brand ambassador.

John: I don’t like that def­i­n­i­tion, because I feel like those folks might not fit our brand model. They may not be immersed in the mes­sag­ing or in the style guide of the brand.

Todd: And we sure don’t have much con­trol over what they’re saying.

John: Correct.

Todd: Another def­i­n­i­tion that we’ll see out there some­times is they’ll use a celebrity, an endorse­ment and define that per­son as a brand ambas­sador. So, Michael Jordan might be con­sid­ered a brand ambas­sador for Hanes.

John: Again, for­give me. I don’t like that one, because it’s almost as though Michael Jordan’s brand is com­pet­ing with the brand that he’s rep­re­sented. He’s not Hanes. He brings his own equity and aware­ness and val­ues and def­i­n­i­tion to the equa­tion with Hanes, but he’s not Hanes. So, again, I don’t like that one either.

Todd: Yeah. There’s value in “Be like Mike, and wear Hanes,” but you’re right, they’re not the same. Another one that you see, almost as much as the other two, is this trend of folks like Microsoft hir­ing col­lege stu­dents to be a “brand ambas­sador” on cam­pus and basi­cally go around knock­ing doors and spread­ing the word about Microsoft products.

John: I think, we’re get­ting closer, but I still don’t think we’re there.

Todd: Another one that you’ll see is, some­times an orga­ni­za­tion will define every employee world­wide as a brand ambas­sador. There may be some truth in that, but when you see that online, when I’ve seen it online, it’s usu­ally just the word “brand ambas­sador” and it doesn’t carry with it any kind of mis­sion or direc­tive for what that means.

John: Right. There’s no inten­tion to it. There’s no delib­er­ate­ness to it.

Todd: How would you define a brand ambassador?

John: Well, as we talked about prepar­ing for this episode, I think that it is some­one who has to appointed. The rea­son that we like the word “appoint­ment” is because they don’t have to be paid, they can be a vol­un­teer, but the com­pany, the firm, the brand has to appoint them to rep­re­sent the brand to the poten­tial audi­ence. And they have to be an ambas­sador that under­stands that this is like an offi­cial role that they take on. And I think, in doing so, what they do is, they bring the brand to life. They ani­mate the brand.

Todd: I don’t think there’s any other exam­ple of an ambas­sador, in any other use of the word “ambas­sador,” where that per­son hasn’t been appointed by a king or a pres­i­dent or some offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of gov­ern­ment. So, it doesn’t make sense for a brand ambas­sador not to be appointed, either.

John: So, in sum­mary, it’s an appointed rep­re­sen­ta­tive of your brand to your poten­tial audi­ence, that ani­mates or brings the life to the brand.

Todd: OK. So, here’s another ques­tion for you. Why should I care? What does it mat­ter what I call some­one? I mean, we used to call peo­ple “employ­ees,” and then we got all touchy-feely and called them “asso­ciates.” We’ve got other names for them, too. Is this just another new name for employees?

John: Well, it’s not, because it is per­son­al­iz­ing and ani­mat­ing and bring­ing the brand to life. This is a major touch­point. You ref­er­enced an expe­ri­ence that you had had with your gro­cery store. Talk about that for a moment.

Todd: Sure. This hap­pened about a week ago. Let’s just think about gro­cery stores for a sec­ond before I get into it, though. I mean, these guys spend, I don’t know how many thou­sands of dol­lars every week in mar­ket­ing, in try­ing to get peo­ple into the stores. Just think about how much is spent on the Sunday cir­cu­lar that goes out with the newspaper.

So, they’re very active mar­keters, and yet my expe­ri­ence was, I get there, I get my gro­ceries, I get ready to pay, and the low­est rung on the food chain in the gro­cery store, the per­son who’s bag­ging my gro­ceries, com­pletely con­trols the expe­ri­ence I have with that store. If they do a lousy job — this hap­pened to me a week ago; they did a hor­ri­ble job — that has more influ­ence over my per­cep­tion of that gro­cery store than all the money that was spent on get­ting me in through the doors. And it has more to do with whether I come back than any money they’ll spend next week.

That bag­ging clerk, you know, is an entry level posi­tion for them, and it may be easy for them to ignore the train­ing, but it’s the last inter­ac­tion I have with an employee of that firm before I leave, and it’s critical.

John: It’s so inter­est­ing, because some gro­cery stores, like Publix, have scripted their brand ambas­sadors — the folks who are ring­ing up and help­ing you to process your gro­ceries at check­out. And what’s inter­est­ing is those employ­ees ask the ques­tion, “Did you find every­thing OK?”

Todd: That’s right.

John: And it is an open-ended ques­tion that’s allow­ing you a chance for express­ing either pos­i­tively, “Yes, I found every­thing OK,” or a con­cern that you may have that oth­er­wise they may not have pro­voked and asked for. But, that’s a scripted thing. It sug­gests that, at that moment, that employee, that cashier, is much more impor­tant to the brand encounter than the man­ager is, than the buyer is, who buys the gro­ceries. They’re really impor­tant. They’re at the vor­tex of that touch­point. The way that they become an ambas­sador for your brand at that point is so critical.

Todd: And they have the power to com­pletely undo every­thing you’ve spent money on in your mar­ket­ing plan for the last year.

John: That’s right. Also, I’m so impressed with the fast food restau­rant Chick-Fil-A. Whenever you say “Thank you” to their employ­ees, they say, “It’s my plea­sure.” Again, that’s a scripted response. It’s almost out of fash­ion. It almost sounds old-fashioned and out of date, but it’s such a warm expres­sion. It’s as though they’re sin­cere, that it really was their plea­sure to serve you. Again, it speaks to their cul­ture and their brand and their core values.

Todd: So, if we’re trans­lat­ing this to why it should mat­ter it to me or to our audi­ence, we’d say, when was the last time that you thought about the entry level posi­tions in your orga­ni­za­tion, and how much con­tact they have with your cus­tomers? What kind of train­ing have you done for them? What is the inter­ac­tion your cus­tomer has with your com­pany like when they inter­face with these peo­ple? They can become very impor­tant when you think about it in those terms.

John: I agree. I also think, we’ve got to encour­age our audi­ence to think about who are those peo­ple that are com­ing in con­tact with their audi­ence on behalf of their firm. In an event sit­u­a­tion, it could be the trade show booth staff. It could be the hired folks who are there hand­ing out water or dis­trib­ut­ing cof­fee, as we’ve seen so many times. It could be some­one who’s in charge of an in-booth event, like the mas­sage guy. But, often these are the for­got­ten peo­ple, Todd. They draw a dis­tinc­tive con­trast to me, we often — and we mean this with no dis­re­spect — it’s a term of endear­ment and a lit­tle bit of a jar­gon for our industry.

But, this is not the booth babes or the booth hunks that are hired to just be there and to look pretty, even though they may have on a branded T-shirt. These are peo­ple who have a knowl­edge of what the brand rep­re­sents, and how we would like peo­ple to move through our event. They have a level of empow­er­ment, and they may ask ques­tions, like the cashier does at Publix, “Did you find every­thing OK?” Or they may close with some sort of very warm script like they do at Chick-Fil-A, “It’s my pleasure.”

But, there’s some­thing much more knowl­edge­able. Somehow, the con­cept of just this kind of ‘hired’ help. This paid gun, this booth babe, or booth hunk really doesn’t exe­cute the brand. They’re really not an ambas­sador. They’re almost plas­tique. They’re almost a fig­urine, if you will, that really doesn’t know how to rep­re­sent the brand. Do you have any other thoughts about that?

Todd: Only that it’s inter­est­ing to me, also, that even if you know the Chick-Fil-A person’s “It’s my plea­sure” is scripted, it still makes an impact.

John: Sure, it does.

Todd: Even if you can see right through it, it still makes an impact. It’s so much bet­ter than the unscripted, untrained response.

John: And part of the rea­son why it makes an impact is because it’s dif­fer­en­ti­ated, which is part of what we have alluded to early on as a key attribute of good brand mar­ket­ing. The rea­son we make a big deal out of it is, the other fast food restau­rants don’t say “It’s my pleasure.”

Todd: Right.

John: Your gro­cery store did not say “Did you find every­thing OK?” The fact that it’s dif­fer­en­ti­ated makes it all the more clear. Well, if you were giv­ing our audi­ence some guid­ance strate­gi­cally as to how they could imple­ment a brand ambas­sador pro­gram and train their peo­ple to be more reflec­tive of the brand, what would your advice be for them?

Todd: I think, my first piece of advice would be look around and see who is doing this well now. We can learn from Chick-Fil-A. We can learn from Publix. But, Disney, an exam­ple we’ve used on this pro­gram sev­eral times, Disney does a great job of this. Their approach teaches us to switch our mid­dle gears from busi­ness to the­ater. And that has a lot of implications.

So, when you go from look­ing at this as busi­ness to look­ing at it as the­ater, then you go from inter­views to audi­tions. Your job is not to hire; it’s to cast. It’s to find peo­ple to play the role. It’s a dif­fer­ent mind­set. It’s a dif­fer­ent way of approach­ing peo­ple than the way we’ve done it before. Now, any­one who comes in con­tact with our cus­tomer is on stage, and there­fore, the role becomes very impor­tant. So, entry level takes on a new mean­ing this way.

John: So, the mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive sud­denly is plac­ing them­selves in the role of being the direc­tor, where they’re tak­ing the time to really do this exer­cise well. I love your thought of the audi­tion. Our society’s much more social­ized and aware of audi­tions, because of all the real­ity shows that are on tele­vi­sion that revolve around enter­tain­ment. But, the real­ity, what you’re point­ing out, is, this is an expec­ta­tion of how I want you to per­form when you don the shirt of, when you become the cast mem­ber of our brand. I love that.

And what I sense there as the wrong way is just to throw them the shirt and say to put on this shirt, and your job is to hand out water, and only one water bot­tle per per­son, and if you leave before seven you don’t get paid. That seems so mechan­i­cal to me, that seems so over­bear­ing to me.

Whereas, the brand ambas­sador approach, the direc­tor approach of switch­ing from busi­ness to the­ater says, “Hey, look. We’re try­ing to make X, Y, and Z hap­pen. And when some­one comes to you, they’ll be feel­ing this. We need you to get them on track. What you do is crit­i­cal, because it sets up for A, B, and C. Your job is not hand­ing out water. Your job is to make them fall in love with us by the way in which you sat­isfy their need of the moment. I think, that’s really important.”

I’m reminded, Todd, of an exam­ple, one of those rare occa­sions, because of a spe­cial deal, we got to stay at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. I’m too cheap to stay there as a rule of thumb although I would love to be able to afford their lav­ish level of ser­vice on a con­tin­ual basis.

But, we were there in Las Vegas, and being such a pro­lific event city, no cab dri­vers were avail­able. They were all tak­ing peo­ple leav­ing their hotels at the same time. There was a long line. It was hot, in the mid­dle of the sum­mer in Las Vegas. We were get­ting frus­trated because obvi­ously, we had flights to catch and there was quite a lengthy line of guests who had checked out of the Four Seasons Hotel but had not made it from their doorstep into the cab.

And so, I was so impressed that their employ­ees not only came out and apol­o­gized and clearly said, “We’ve made calls. All of the cabs all over the city are out. We’ve even called limos. We’ll get peo­ple here as quickly as we can.” And then, all of a sud­den, they dis­ap­peared. The next sight we saw was peo­ple from all across the orga­ni­za­tion, from the office, from the cater­ing depart­ment, all across the orga­ni­za­tion, hold­ing sil­ver plat­ters that had ice-cold bot­tles of water on them.

Todd: Wow.

John: That wasn’t some­body who had been tagged with, “Your job is to hand out water.” That was some­body who said, “Your job is the hos­pi­tal­ity and the com­fort of these guests, and that they leave the Four Seasons with a level of delight in their mind that they’d been hosted like they never have before. They’re stand­ing out in the heat. They’re uncom­fort­able. It’s not our prob­lem that the cabs are late, but it is our desire to set a stan­dard of com­fort and hos­pi­tal­ity on behalf of the Four Seasons brand.” It blew me away.

Todd: Yeah. That’s awe­some. That’s not some­thing that I’ve seen in other hotels that I’ve stayed in.

John: That’s right. And sadly, because I’m too cheap, I might not ever expe­ri­ence it again. But for that moment… We talk about effec­tive expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing, Todd, being mem­o­rable. I will never for­get the image of those team mem­bers, some of whom I had related to already at the front desk, hold­ing a sil­ver tray with ice water on it. They weren’t a server. They weren’t a waiter. They were team mem­bers hold­ing a sil­ver tray, pitch­ing in for what needed to be done right at that moment.

So, I may never stay there again, because I’m too cheap to be able to afford that level of ser­vice, but I’ll always remem­ber that staff, that team with those sil­ver trays and that ice-cold water there. My ques­tion for you is, how do we get peo­ple to be our brand ambas­sadors and to act this way?

Todd: Well, I think, we con­tinue the theme that we started with. If you are redefin­ing what’s impor­tant based on who comes in con­tact with your cus­tomer and say­ing, “Hey, they’re on stage,” well, the next step is “Anyone it’s on stage, let’s treat like a star.” It’s hard to get a men­tal image of treat­ing the bag­ging per­son, the per­son who bags my gro­ceries, as a star, but that’s really what we need to do here. So, that car­ries with it a cer­tain level of respect and this expec­ta­tion of “Hey, we’re going to work hard, but we’re going to play hard together too.”

The con­cept of a lot of rehearsals, which is a new way of think­ing about train­ing. If that gro­cery store had done a much bet­ter job of train­ing those peo­ple, like Publix does, my expe­ri­ence would have been a much bet­ter expe­ri­ence. It brings to mind other con­cepts related to the­ater, like stag­ing and cos­tume, and then also plan­ning and bud­get­ing. But I think, a big part of it is treat­ing them with respect, and then find­ing a way to make them fans of the brand themselves.

John: So, let’s sum­ma­rize. These are not just organic fans or groupies of the brand. These are peo­ple that we’ve appointed, and we’ve appointed them with a very pres­ti­gious respon­si­bil­ity of being a per­son­al­ized touch­point for our brand with our audi­ence. We’ve asked them to ani­mate our brand. And we’ve not left what that expe­ri­ence is going to be to chance. We’ve scripted them. We’ve talked about expec­ta­tions, as it relates not so much to behav­ior, but more as it relates to outcomes.

Todd: Yes.

John: How we want that audi­ence to feel. How we want the per­son who’s com­ing in con­tact with our brand to feel. In doing so, we rehearse, we prac­tice, but we show that brand ambas­sador that we really value them. And we expose them to our prod­uct and ser­vice such that they become a fan on their own within the process. And that leads to a very pos­i­tive encounter with the audi­ence and the brand.

Todd: And the one thing that we left out was, if you treat peo­ple on stage as if they’re stars, then you also have to be firm about get­ting them off the stage if the out­come is not what you want.

John: A big, giant hook.

Todd: Right. [laughs]

John: Hook and remove them. I’m think­ing about the old Gong Show. Let’s get them off the stage if they’re bomb­ing, right?

Todd: Right.

John: But, the point is, act swiftly, because we have a stan­dard for our brand. We would pull a mar­ket­ing piece, in print or in video, if it didn’t match the brand stan­dard. What you’re sug­gest­ing is sim­i­larly, we make adjust­ments if our peo­ple don’t match the brand standard.

Todd: That’s exactly right.

John: I like that.

[musi­cal interlude]

Linda: That con­cludes this episode. We hope you pulled a nugget or two from today’s dis­cus­sion that you can use in your own expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing pro­gram. You can find links to any of the resources men­tioned in this episode in the show notes on our web­sites. You’ll also find a link to the full tran­script of this pro­gram. These can be found at our web­site: www.experientialmarketingtoday.com.

If you have ques­tions or com­ments regard­ing some­thing we’ve dis­cussed, you can send those to us using the email address feedback@experientialmarketingtoday.com, or you can post com­ments on the web­site. We hope you’ll join us for the next episode.

Announcer: Thanks for lis­ten­ing to Experiential Marketing Today.

[musi­cal interlude]