Engage Employees to Deliver Your Marketing Strategy

A recent article in Ad Age tells how several companies are involving employees directly to deliver the company’s message to customers. Some, like Pizza Hut and Southwest Airlines are involving their employees in the advertising to deliver the message from their point of view. Not exactly cutting edge, but these campaigns are working well.

The most interesting initiatives, though, are how some are involving their employees as focus groups, idea generators and more. Southwest regularly queries employees to tell about their experiences on the frontline.

Kraft has an app called “Foodii,” which is an online community of 2,000 employees where it gathers information on everything from what to name a new product to ideas on preparation methods.

Fidelity launched its latest campaign to employees first via an internal website that detailed the positioning, included FAQs, and explained the employees’ roles in the message and its success.

Successful hospitals are doing the same. A common complaint we hear from hospital employees is how they hate seeing a TV spot for the first time on TV – often after their friends have.

The most successful campaigns draw employees into the effort. Let them know what you’re doing before it appears in the media. Explain the reasoning behind the message and show them how important they are to convincing the public of the message by living the brand. Involving employees humanizes the brand and energizes the work force. As Ad Age points out, if you sell the message to employees, they’ll deliver it for you.

To see how the Mayo Clinic is engaging its employees, you may also want to check out this earlier post by Liz Nettles.

Tags: employee engagement, healthcare marketing, hospital advertising, hospital marketing, internal marketing