I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that every employee, especially those young and fairly wired, sends somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 plus messages a day to consumers, prospects and business partners on behalf of the company or brand; a message being a communication from a land line phone (inbound or out), email, letter, instant message, text, blog post, tweet, or face-to-face conversation. Fair? Do you know who is managing those messages? No one.
The only place where a company’s messages to consumers, prospects and partners are managed effectively is the marketing and sales departments. And that’s a bit of a leap of faith, based on what I’m seeing. Good brand and sales managers, good public relations people and good executive management know the value of a powerful, prepared corporate or brand messaging. They understand a well conceived brand strategy, conveyed and carried out by an entire company, provides a power of which General Patton would be proud. The cacophony of employee messaging taking place today, thanks to the all the comms channels and lack of brand stewardship, is watering down the managed messages we send into the marketplace. Have you ever tried to talk in a normal voice while hundreds of hungry ducks are quacking around you?
And what’s even most concerning is that many of today’s brand champions, people at the helms of big marketing budgets, are out on the talk circuit spreading the word that brands are owned by the consumer – the conversation, they say, is in the hands of the consumer. OMFG. This is insanity. (This video of Best Buy CMO Barry Judge is one example.)
