How to harness employment advocacy in today's digital world

As I walked into the foyer of the agency I saw a host of young professionals, looking super confident and telling the receptionist they were just popping out to see a client, grabbing coffee or heading out for a through-the-line brainstorm. Little did I know at that time many of those I saw that first day would go on to be the future leaders of comms for well known brands such as Tesco and the like – bringing subjects like sustainability of products and services to the forefront of consumers’ minds, highlighting the impact and social value people need to have in their communities and their world and how we need to be more diverse and inclusive in our workplaces. All key themes that we now take as read and that are high on our comms agendas whether high street retailers, investment banks or construction companies.

I wanted in. I wanted to be part of this glamorous and professional clique. I wanted to be in their gang. It wasn’t called it then but what I experienced that day in my interview was Employee Advocacy. The team I met at that interview – from the receptionist who welcomed me to the company, to the Director who asked me my hopes and fears for a life in PR and comms, to the team members chatting around the foyer - were advocating the agency to me, influencing my opinion of it and making me want to be part of it.

Employee advocacy has come a long way since then. In marketing terms, it is recognised as one of the strongest vehicles for communication, that can work towards attracting and retaining talent as well as supporting work winning and new business development. Yet is still an area that is often uninvested in, not talked about, and left out as a core strand of corporate communication strategies.

So, what is the What, How and Why of employee advocacy?

Employee Advocacy is what it says on the tin – it is your teams advocating on behalf of a company. However, it is so much more than that too. True employee advocacy is a way of bringing out the voices you have in your organisation, their individual strengths, passions, and expertise and giving them a platform.

In the old days, companies paid for delegates to attend events (some still do and we have all breathed a sigh of relief to be back in real life), some individuals who went to those events sat on a panel, and others spoke at the event. This was a way of promoting themselves, their role within an organisation and their organisation.

With many events now hybrid and many organisations introducing agile and flexible working patterns, the opportunity to meet and chat face-to-face has dwindled. Your employees have less time to advocate for you in the real world and less opportunity to meet those you want to influence – be it clients, stakeholders, industry bodies or members of your own team.

This is where social selling, or social socialising, has become the norm, and more important than ever before. Having a say about the issues that you feel passionate about, commenting on other peoples’ posts and being part of the conversations that are happening around you are the way you show people who you are, what sort of company you work for, and what your personal and professional values are.

And this is where the new world of social advocacy kicks in. It allows key stakeholders in your company to share their views, their thoughts, their expertise in their own voice.

Let’s go back to the event scenario. Here’s how one of my colleagues describes the new world. For some, who might have gone to an event as a delegate and chatted to those they knew, got some new information and headed home, they might be the ones who check in on social media and comment occasionally on a colleague’s post but don’t engage any further. For those who might have sat in a keynote speaker session and then put their hand up to ask a question, they might be offering their opinions on others’ thought leadership pieces regularly, engaging in conversations daily, joining forums and other social groups. And then there might be those who are drafting and posting their own thoughts – the thought leaders – they might have been the ones sitting on a panel or undertaking the keynote themselves but instead are doing just this on a virtual platform.

That’s why we are on a mission to spread the word about employee advocacy. To support companies who know they have those thought leaders but needs some help in getting their voices out to their audiences. To help draft their thoughts and craft their opinions and advocate for your organisations.

If you are interested in finding out more about how we can help, get in touch – hayley.lee@antelopecomms.co.uk – as we are always happy to advocate about what we do here at Antelope.

What's New Pussycat?

Not the give up eating anything beginning with the word C and get up and run marathons before breakfast type of resolutions, although if that is your thing, go for it. But the resolutions that equal commitment to something and that involve real investment.

So our resolutions are often the same each year, but maybe slightly updated or progressed. So on a personal level, I know I need to continue my drive to stop sweating the small stuff, although detail has always and will always be important to me on a professional level. I am also going to continue to balance my work with my well-being – yep still taking those walks in the woods at lunchtime. And being open to learning wherever the source of knowledge comes from – my kids, my colleagues, the New Yorker…

But I firmly believe that these resolutions are aligned to who I am and 1 January 2022 didn’t make me shed my skin and change into something or someone new. In fact it added to the resolve I had to continue down the pathways I have committed – balancing life with work, looking after myself and learning from others.

And we believe that this should be the case when it comes to brands. Be resolute in your intentions, be firm in your commitments. Bring the New Year in remembering and even communicating this to your audiences – be it internal or external. The new shiny things often burn out fast and those with depth and substance are the ones that last a lifetime.

So as the New Year has started here in the Western world and the New Year is due to start on 1 Feb in the Eastern one, here’s to resolve in its broadest and strategic sense.

Is LinkedIn becoming the new Insta?

When LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder, Reid Hoffman in 2003, its aim was to link and network professionals on a digital platform. Fast forward nearly 20 years and it states its vision is to “create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce” and its mission to “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”

With almost 740 million members, over 55 million registered companies in 200 countries and regions globally of which 40% clock in daily, there is no doubt it has met, if not over exceeded these expectations.

So why the worry? The devil is in the detail of course with the pertinent phase being “making them more productive and successful.” How many posts have you read recently that far from talking about what a person or company is doing in the workplace, or even what they want to achieve or have achieved are bordering on the world of personal, rather than professional? “I don’t normally post personal stuff…”, “I’m not one to boast about my daughter/uncle/sister, but needed to share…”, “As I sit at my desk homeworking, thought I’d share my view…”

Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for bringing your whole self to work. If lockdown has taught us anything it is how multi-faceted we all are, with pets sleeping under our desks, babies bouncing on our knees and workmen outside our windows as we slave to the work rhythm. Yet, how many of these ‘person-fessional’ posts really help oil the wheels of industry? And how many of them should really be saved for friends on family on Instagram and Facebook? So, why are the boundaries of personal social media reaching out to our professional social platforms?

As I write this, the beauty brand, Lush has just announced it is going to close down its Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok until “platforms take action to provide a safer environment.” We know that the likes of social media play a massive part in the lives of most of us today. We also know it can have some negative effects on some users as well as a positive impact on others. But this is in the personal sphere not the professional social media sphere.

Or is it? Isn’t some of the personal sharing of environment – look at my great view, how great is my network? Check out what my daughter has done – the same fuel that feeds our personal social networks? And what are those who are sharing these posts trying to achieve? Familiarity, credibility, a profile of a shiny version of themselves? Is LinkedIn becoming the new Insta?

Looking at trends and analysis around content as we do every day here at Antelope, it is interesting to see those companies who do it well and finding their common thread. It is of course authenticity. They might share their homes, parts of their founders’ lives or even less company focused activity such as other brands/projects they like. However, it is part of their brand story, about what they are doing, why they feel you should be engaging with their brand, their brand values and their ethos.

And this is where I think we have become confused and those using professional networks are struggling. With many working for companies that have a brand, yet operating in a network like LinkedIn that is about their own brand, they are trying to create sub brands for themselves with their own ethos, personalities and values. However, this is of course what they are doing on personal social platforms. And hence the confusion and cross over in posts.

So, what should professionals be posting and how can they build their credibility when it comes to their own personal brand? To me it is about showing what they are passionate about and what they believe good looks like – in their work environment. So, for example, if they are passionate about the planet, what initiatives are they supporting to help the net zero agenda? Or if you really want to support the next gen talk about your thoughts on how companies in your sector can do this (or yes maybe it is relevant here to share a talk you did at your son’s Uni/school).

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with sharing personal accolades and accomplishments in a professional environment – but surely it should be with people that you know rather than thousands of contacts that have connected to “create an economic opportunity”?

Picture courtesy of Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Riding the Zeitgeist

This nostalgia trip took us down another road – of thinking about all the things that seemed so important to us aged 6, at 16, at 21. In my case it was shopping in Chelsea Girl that then became River Island, my husband buying his first Nike trainers. As well as bringing back some sweet memories, and realising there were quite a few gaps in that memory, it made me think – ‘What makes a brand survive a decade, two decades and beyond?’

Brand management is having an interesting time at the moment. For years we managed brands through advertising – on TV & radio, print and outdoor, – direct marketing and of course PR and comms. It was a push rather than a pull hoping that the push would convert awareness, trial, purchase and advocacy.

Then the internet came into our lives. And with it not just the pull of a brand but the pivoting of it out of control. With every social media post that you create, someone in the cyber sphere can post one that contradicts or complements that post. Which raised another question – ‘How much are we really in control of our brands?’

The average UK spend on brands 9.3% of their overall company budget according to YouGov . So, for a company like Unilever that could equate to £ 11.385bn and even for a company with a turnover of £ 100,000 that is nearly £ 10,000. So how do we ensure that we spend that money wisely and how do we manage brands in 2021?

Like organisational culture, marketing culture has become, rightly so, collaborative. It is like any relationship – it is around talking to your audiences to tell your story, to show them your values and ethos, to hopefully show them what you stand for and then hopefully some of them will like you and want you to be part of their lives.

It is accepting that you will not be to everyone’s tastes. That some people will naturally, and unfairly, give you a bad rep and that you can only be part of the conversation rather than all of it.

Communication today is about listening as well as talking. Unlike 20-30 years ago when it was about who had the biggest budget and shouted the loudest, it is about who engages with their audiences, and it is about evolving that communication with them. And dare we say it again, it is about tailoring that communication to different audiences so that you talk in their language, about things that resonate with them.

The push of the comms mix is more of a gentle nudge to say ‘Can I introduce myself.’ And then to enter a two, three, sometimes 1000-way conversation with your customers. Surely this collaborative promotion is the way we can really build authentic brands and ones that last past the zeitgeist.

Drawing the line between professional and personal

And of course there is also the admin of a new client – setting up contracts, NDAs, payment terms and nowadays a communication channel – whether that be Teams, Google Chat, Slack, Zoom or trad email.

Which got us thinking about ways we communicate B2B and how technology and new platforms are changing our tone of voice and language. With an estimated 78% of the population now using social media of some kind, dropping an opinion or a comment in no more than 280 characters is now as au fait as signing your name on a leaving card. Emojis are now part of not only the English language, but the global one, being able to express everything from extreme joy 😊 to dreaming about a holiday 🌴 and that’s before we go anywhere near aubergine and peach emojis. As our personal communication has surpassed the formal, how has this influenced our professional tete-a-tetes? And where do we draw the line between personal and professional when it comes to B2B comms?

It’s here we need to stop and think about who we are talking to. We know when we talk to friends, associates and people we know fairly well (whether that be in a work environment or not) there is a level of understanding about who we are. It is likely the person we are speaking to has known us for a while, might even have met us irl (in real life) and the tone we take in our written comms is on the back of this history.

Let’s take it a step further. What about those communications between an organisation and a consumer? This relationship often is between two people who might not have communicated before, or the conversation has been one way rather than equal sided. Would we expect someone to greet us familiarly and with a comms littered with emojis? In other parts of the world we know their language speaks their boundaries with “tu/vous”, the T-V distinction, that brings with it respect and an acknowledgement of the formality of a relationship.

So we need to take it back to our brand voice. How does the brand want to be positioned with its audience? And will its audience care about formalities of language? Challenger and disruption brands are obvious choices for those that might opt for a more casual approach – using direct to direct language and call to actions. But what about those more established traditional brands who need credibility and weight in their brand? Such as financial institutions? Does their tone need to differ and should their voice hold more metaphorical weight?

In our minds it goes back to the customer (it always starts and ends with the customer). And about segmenting your communications, your language and your tone of voice. Stick to your brand ethos and culture, be who you are, but as you would if you were talking to your customer face-to-face, take a relevant approach. That means tailoring your communications to that audience. That means socially listening to the way they speak to each other and instead of imposing your voice into the chatter, join their conversation. It means realising that we are all different, that diversity exists and that inclusion is the key to all comms.

New platforms of communication are a welcome break from threads of email, cc-ed in messages and spam that you don’t even have time to delete, let alone read. Yet these platforms need to be seen as channels rather than quicksteps to shortcut your comms. Remembering behind the aviator is a real person that you are either looking to or have a professional relationship with and your feed needs to reflect this dynamic.

Want to communicate with us? We are always open for an informal chat about how we can help you and your brand communicate with your audiences.

Image by: https://pixabay.com/ Miguel Á. Padriñán with thanks

Has the customer journey changed direction?

It got me thinking about people and how we interact and what taking out the irl (in real life) element of the customer journey might mean for those of us in marcoms. If we wind back to 50 years ago, we know much of the customer sales journey was around personal relationships. The corner shopkeeper would know their customers by name, know their favourite cut of meat and ask after their husbands (as normally it would be the woman of the house who would be shopping) and the kids. The corner shop as the destination for groceries died a death with the onslaught of the high street that was disseminated by the large grocers. And we all know that online retail was winning the battle of market share way before the pandemic hit.

So, the ability to shop from your kitchen table, your sofa, your sun lounger or wherever at whatever time suits you has turned many of our transactions into faceless purchases. But has it? Let’s take a look at how we purchase online. For groceries and other day essentials we often buy from a pre-ordered list, possibly clicking on recommendations or trying something new but often it is getting the task done in the quickest, easier way possible. We like to call this the ‘needs’ shop.

However, when it comes to other purchases – like fashion, home décor and other desirable consumables or the ‘desires’ shop – how often are we being influenced by people? Look at the websites of those fashion houses or home stores – styled to the max to sell the dream. It is still using the pull of the personal – allowing you to imagine you or your home could look like this. And like the grocer of the old days, those friendly cookies are memorising those things you have brought before, clicked on and saved in your basket but perhaps put back. Personalising your journey.

Now we have gone one step further. As well as buying the dream retailers have brought sponsored posts with influencers to show real homes and real people wearing and living in their goods. Personalising the dream even more. So far from taking the human out of the customer journey we have replaced it with a more real environment - someone’s real home or a real person wearing the clothes in their day-to-day life. And this customer journey is getting shorter and shorter. From seeing a product on Instagram, you no longer need to swipe up and click a link to a website to buy but can buy direct from your favourite blogger.

What does this mean for those of us working in marcoms? Does it mean the influencer remains king or queen? It certainly means we need to understand who our audience are watching and listening to. It also means we need to have conversations with those who influence about our products and services. But it also means we need to think about our own brand ambassadors. As real people become the go to for customer inspiration, or at least their social media personas, then how do we create this for our brands?

Way back Dove started their campaign for Real Women using models that represented a variety of different body shapes, ages and colours. This diversity across our marketing is now nothing new; nor is using real people in campaigns. Some tried the character route with Aleksandr Orlov the Compare the Market merkcat and remember the Churchill dog? Yet these characters although highly successful from an awareness point of view, don’t influence the way that social media stars do. And other brands used the employee advocate card – think Howard in the Halifax adverts.

Where we move to next is up for grabs. Yet we believe having lived virtually in each other’s homes for the last 18 months the move will continue with real people sharing their likes, dislikes, purchases and style. However, with consumers becoming more and more savvy and desperate for new content, paid for and sponsored posts will feel too much of a hard sell. So rather than influencers who are paid to post sponsored posts and make their living from promoting press shows, we think it will be Joe Average that will make the largest impact. That means marcoms departments will become the observer of their campaigns rather than the instigator. And their role instead of creating a campaign will be to catch it and maximise it. So, sourcing those posts that tag your product and optimising its reach. That way it will remain authentic, credible and real.

Photo with thanks by unsplash.com/UX Indonesia

What do bunnies and eggs really have to do with Jesus?

As I hoard sugar like Griselda Blanco Restrepo hoarded drugs in Narcos I did stop in my tracks and wonder why I am looking eagerly to feeding my brood more sugar than their yearly intake and celebrating a bunny rabbit when I can’t even convince them to get a dog.

Holding onto traditions make us feel more grounded. Like brand loyalty if we feel we know what is going to happen and when, they make us feel in control. Knowing when we open that Heinz Baked Beans can we are going to get a certain flavour, that might not be replicated if we open another brand can makes us feel secure in our purchase.

Like most families we have created our own traditions – from cake in bed on birthdays (you can see a theme here can’t you?) to having Christmas Day at my sisters’ house, this is what our kids now expect on those special occasions. So what is it that has made these ‘traditions’ just that and how do we cement behaviour and drive customer loyality in our customers?

Repetition and consistency. If we had only had cake in bed for the first ever birthday of our first born 17 years ago, he wouldn’t have remembered and our kids that followed after him would never have known the pleasure of sticky caked fingers and breakfast in bed. The fact we have repeated this experience for the last 17 years means it is now their go-to on a birthday morning in our family.

Setting out your stall and sticking by it. We have established our stall for birthdays in the order we do things. The cake comes first, followed by presents with all of us clambered on the bed, regardless of age and body weight. Everyone knows this is how we do things. This is how we have always done it. If we tried to do it differently, some of the sparkle of birthdays would be rubbed off what we do. In brand terms, this is hard. If you have associated an event or an activity with your brand – whether that’s Wimbledon with Pimms or Robinson Barley Water (dependent on your tipple) or Barclays with the Premier League you need to add to your experience rather than diminish from it if you want your customers to remain engaged and not disappointed.

Living by your brand values. We have tried to instil in a sense of fun and special occasion on family birthdays. We like to think the cake in bed tradition is us living by these brand values. If we suddenly introduced no present opening and celebrations until post school, our kids would feel something was missing. Brand values build up over time can of course evolve but they changed overnight seem inauthentic. We are sure over time, when our youngest decides to start their birthday at midday rather than the crack of dawn, then our tradition might evolve, but this is the customer changing the goalposts, not us.

Brand loyalty is backed by brand advocacy. Finally you need advocates as part of your brand story. In our house, these are our children who of course advocate for us to continue to eat cake in bed as many mornings as possible. Not only do they feel this is their tradition but it is in their interest to continue this tradition. Back to Easter, the advocates of retaining the tradition of Easter Eggs comes from both the chocolate suppliers and the pester power of those children receiving them.

So back to my thoughts on Easter. It is interesting that over time bunny rabbits and chocolate eggs have become more associated with Easter than the story of Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead. Although originally only a symbol of Jesus’ rebirth and fertility, the Easter bunny and Easter eggs have now taken over the brand of Easter. The message has been consistent – how many supermarkets have you gone into recently where chocolate Easter eggs are not on the gondola ends? -, reinforcement of their brand values – Easter is fun and for the family – and advocacy – in the form of those children (and perhaps grown up children) with their expectations of what happens of Easter firmly cemented.

Image: Photo with thanks by @czapp_arpad at Unsplash

Personalisation in Content

The latest in our series of Content vlogs - where I talk about personalisation in corporate comms and bringing your whole self into your world of content.

Photo with thanks to www.unsplash.com/claybanks

The Long Tail

As the long tail of the pandemic and winter still remain with us so does sticking to the strategy to try and get us to our end goals – staying home, keeping your distance and washing your hands. However, awful the pandemic has been, and there is no doubt it has been devastating for many in terms of health and wealth, it has given us a real life lesson of having to stick to the long term plan to achieve the long term goal.

At Antelope we believe in long term strategy. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t up for agile thinking and moving feasts but it means we believe we need a long term goal in sight. Spending time planning what you want your brand to be, what your positioning in your market is, what makes up your USP and who are your audiences are crucial things in a brand journey and to abandon them by the glimmer of hope elsewhere is like following the end of rainbow for the crock of gold.

Some parts of the process of getting to that end goal are boring and laborious – like building your audience base, creating and extending your distribution platforms or taking customers from trial to advocacy - yet are all part of the journey that if missed will leave your brand vulnerable later down the line.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be U turns on the way, or changes in direction and like any journey, traffic jams and diversions to other routes, but ultimately it is about reaching your end goal.

It amazes us how often brands lose their way. Their vision from day one somehow gets blindsided by the dead ends, or a short cut looks more promising. And occasionally this short cut is just that – a piece of innovation or a great idea that reduces time and money to help move your brand from x to y, but so many times it is more cutting corners.

PR and communications is often referred to as having a long tail for a reason. It isn’t as impactful as a great advertising campaign that can go viral, get everyone talking and change hearts and minds overnight. It isn’t as personalised as direct marketing tailored to an individual’s shopping habits and landing directly into their inbox. And it isn’t as interactive as socials where you can reach out for likes and shares. However, what great PR and communications can do is really embed the why of why a customer should choose your brand, the what of what it really stands for, its brand DNA and the how of how it is different from its competitors. However, to embed takes time and to have longevity means sticking to the long game.

Photo courtesy of unsplash.com/by David Bruyndonck

Lessons Learned

If there are three lessons we have taken from this year they are:

1. Planning is essential, but being agile is even more critical

If 2020 has shown us anything it is that agility is the elastic that allows our businesses to adapt to modern day life. Being able to either swap production from luxury goods to hand sanitisers (in the case of many of the beauty companies including Estee Lauder and L’Oreal), or use empty stadiums to help vaccinate people (as we are now seeing happen with The O2) is the way we remain relevant to our customers. It might mean we need to ditch the long term plan for a while, or maybe abandon it altogether for another pathway but it means survival. Companies understanding that their business strategies might not be linear are the ones that will, and have already, succeeded in the brave new world of 2021.

2. Being honest and transparent is the way to generate understanding

One of the biggest challenges that many businesses had to face last year was communicating to both their teams and their customers that things weren’t going well. Building a communication strategy based on good news, or positive benefits, is how we normally present our brands. Having to communicate bad news, that might mean job losses, changes in production, or even a sense of admitting failure is hard. However, the tides are turning with many now looking at failure as a way of learning about success – see Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail series of podcasts featuring some of the most successful people today. Brand communication is now not just about the end result, but about the journey of how you got there, warts and all. Explaining to your team and your customers the reasons for change, helps them be more empathic to your situation, and with empathy comes engagement and a sense of loyalty. Look at the rise in sales and goodwill towards small, independent shops that have had to close over and over again due to the pandemic tiers and lockdowns to show that customers are ready to help brands they like weather the storms.

3. Fast behaviour change is possible

Many of our communications programmes here at Antelope support organisational change and with organisational change comes the need for teams to alter their behaviour. Change management has always been seen as one of the hardest adoption policies, especially in larger organisations that have legacy processes and systems. If there is one thing the Covid pandemic has shown us it is how people can change their behaviour fast, when communication is clear and they understand the reasons, and engage with the rationale. This is the key to communications – to be heavily invested in it and to have clear, concise principles. Although much of the comms campaigns around Coronavirus have differed in the specifics, the messaging of Hands, Face, Space remains simple and clear alongside the two key actions of social distancing and washing your hands.

We hope 2021 is full of hope and brighter times ahead both personally and professionally. Whatever your plans are, and however off route you have to divert those plans, communicating with others – be it your team, clients or potential clients – will mean that you are not alone in your journey.

Photo by Nils Stahl on Unsplash with thanks.