Q. How do you communicate the changes to employees?
It’s important for something as important as a rebranding effort to get your associates outside of the office. We opted for a nice hotel, the Marriott. We had cocktail hour and hors d’oeuvres, and then they spent about two hours with the presentation I put together.
We did this really cool and everyone got our new brand standards. They got copies of all our literature. I went through the whole process of why we did the branding, what our new pillars were, what’s the essence of who we are, what’s our brand personality.
Then I started showing them some of the graphic elements of the brand and what they could expect to see. We handed out some really nice Under Armour sportswear with the new logo. You might not think that that’s important, but we want to be associated with quality so our sportswear company that we
picked is Under Armour … as opposed to having an off-brand.
Q. How do you continue to drive the brand internally?
We’re adding to the brand. We’re not staying, and I think that’s important. Even though it’s only been a few months, I’m being asked a lot of questions like: ‘Jeff, can we do this, or can we do that?’ I’ve
assigned someone the main responsibility for brand continuity. She’s coming to me with questions on new ideas. Because when you develop it, you can’t think of everything upfront. You’re going to miss
some things.
Inevitably, associates are going to come up with ideas on how to present the company, which is the brand. I’m saying, ‘Wow, I didn’t think about it that way.’ So try and remain flexible.
If you think about brand, the brand is impacted by customer service, so as we add more and more associates in the account management area. There’s certain ways that we handle conflict management because that has an impact on the brand. When I originally started the rebrand, you don’t think of conflict management as a part of the brand, but it certainly is. The image of the company is impacted by the way your associates treat [customers], right down to Jane who answers the phone.
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