Brand ambassadors: Getting universal buy-in across the

organisation

Vanessa Northam: Head of Operational Communications and Engagement at EON

How internal comms can achieve universal buy-in

• Internal Comms – what is the actual purpose?

• How can internal comms increase the success of marketing campaigns

• Case Study: E.ON’s Best Deal for You Campaign

So what is the overall purpose of Internal Communications?

Work with and support leaders to:

•Create understanding of strategy and direction

•Support organisational change

•Keep people informed of company news

•Build company pride

And ultimately drive up company performance through increased employee engagement.

There are several roles which Internal Communications can play

But the purpose of Internal Communications is evolving

As Organisational Connectors Internal Communications

can become a strong ally

• They understand the organisation and are often the only team with a platform to 'make sense' of the whole organisation

• Internal Comms can provide the vehicle engage the parts of the organisation which can have the most impact on your campaigns - front-line staff:• Because they interact with the people you want to retain, attract

and sell more to. These are your front-line marketers• The brand promise you strive to deliver lives or dies with the

people who interact with customers

• Internal Comms can support you by creating a campaign to engage the front-line, so they understand, are confident and can promote the products/campaign with passion: before you communicate with your customers

NatWest Customer Charter:

• A prominent marketer went into 3 separate NatWest branches in the first week of launch and asked staff about the Customer Charter. The responses of staff ranged from:

• “Yeah they told us about this last week, it’s how they will improve the service”• “It’s about serving people in 5

minutes”and• “Dunno about that”

Source: www.basini.com

So how did E.ON get universal buy-in for our Best Deal for

You campaign?

• Have a great product/campaign that staff can feel good about and can easily explain to customers

• Have a detailed and fully integrated plan which includes every level of stakeholder and audience

• Engage senior leaders and line managers upfront

• Launch internally first and allow plenty of time for the messages to cut-through and to enable staff to get up to speed with the changes

• Utilise and maximise your channels appropriately

• Provide an appropriate budget

• As a marketing function be visible and available for colleagues to be able to engage in two-way dialogue

The key steps to achieving high levels of engagement

And to re-cap…

Our Best Deal for You – in a nutshell

Over 3 months our internal campaign engaged

over 5000 front line colleagues

Poster Campaign

A dedicated space on the company intranet

Leadership blog and videos

Promoting the external campaign

Visible leadership from the Marketing and Operational teams

Our Front Line Managers got right behind the campaign

And then colleagues took to Twitter to shout about the campaign

And some colleagues even wrote poetry!

And most importantly what did our customers think?

• “This is amazing, I'm going to get my brother to call in later on!”

• "It's about time a company rewarded customers for loyalty, I'll definitely be staying with E.ON when I move“

 • "You’ve been really helpful, and thank you very much. This is

the first time I’ve said this about an energy company, but you were really good.”

And to re-cap…