[MUSIC] So, let me walk through them, step by step. Let's start with attention in terms of the first of the six A's. Attention is very much about the problem and the opportunity. So, it's less about the brand, per say, the brand is more about the solution. It's more about the problem and the opportunity the brand represents. And very often we talk about creating the moment of crisis in organizations and it's very driven top down. Now there's a problem with this top down approach, it's necessary and I'll come back to that but if you think about it, we use internal communications, often push email, big announcements and there's lots of barriers our people have. One, they're known to basically push aside about 80% of information we throw at them. And they are right to do so. Most of the information they get is personally irrelevant for their jobs. There's often a lack of trust of top management. They usually ask, what's in it for me? I know they're going to get a big bonus. The fat cats they're getting paid, what's in it for me? So there's that personal resistance to it. So attention takes a little bit more. In this case, it took the CEO to address the entire company at once at Siminn with personal passion.and really demonstrating that this wasn't about him, this was about the customer. It often really helps to bring the customer in to face to face describe the problem. I've done this successfully in many situations. We can maybe use video to do so. But it is one thing us talking about it, it's quite another having the customer talk about this issue in terms of the problem and the opportunity that really brings it to life. Now moving on to awareness, this is really about what we're trying to achieve. One of my favorite quotes is from a book called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. And it's when Alice, the small girl, is talking to the Cheshire-puss, the one who's in the tree and sort of disappears. And you just see the smile. If you've read the book or seen the movie. And she asks the cats. Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here? And the cat says, that depends a great deal on where you want to get to. Now, Alice says, I don't much care where. At which point, the cat says, well then it doesn't matter which way you go. And it's, this idea about the brand that it's really an articulation of your business strategy, gives you direction and tells you where to go. People aren't trying to bring down the organization, they all, or many of them are, trying to do the best they can. But the more I can align them in their behaviors, send them in the same direction, the better. And this is where the brand really is the solution and it's got to be super, super simple. You might remember in the first module I gave you, that bar stool test. Can you ask people what your brand is about? Is it simple, clear, consistent? Do people know which direction they're going? But it's about that clarity of understanding where the brand is going. And at Siminn they engaged their people through numerous workshops where they brought in the customers. They had a brand day before launch. And they did all of that work inside, before they communicated the message outside. Because if they didn't get awareness inside, how could the employees possibly deliver on the brand externally. Now moving on to acceptance, the third of the three A's. There was another set of workshops. They call them the Rising Star Workshops. And this is an interesting example, because if we think about acceptance, if you bring in a third party, somebody from the outside there's often, leaning back, there's resistance, some consultant giving me a message. But it's really about these, what we call brand ambassadors inside the organization. Not only are they believers of the message and they're personally motivated by it, and I'll come to advocacy in a moment, but they are leaders within their sort of circle of influence. Maybe within the technical team, the service team, the sales team, where ever that might be. And naturally people will listen to them. They orient themselves based on these people and they're very useful communicating the message. This is very different than getting sort of a push down message from internal communications. And they were really there to answer the questions, get early buy in. And as a matter of fact, they started this process before they decided on what the brand should be about, because if you were heard before, first of all you designed the better strategy, and you immediately get buy in into the message. Now, across the organization you can almost think of a traffic light system. There will be pockets of resistance. There will be pockets of support. And you can think about a challenge in terms of Implementing a strategy. Having different starting points. Not just in different pockets of the organization, but with different individuals. And moving on to this concept of advocacy, you can think about engagement in general, maybe in the organization in your job. And traditionally you might think of something like Gallup's Q12 survey. They asked a bunch of questions, 12 to be exact, that's why they called it Q12. And they are trying to kind of gauge your engagement with the organization. And they are very generic type of questions. Why are they generic? Because they're measuring them across dozens or hundreds of organizations. So they never apply to a company strategy. They are just engagement, in general. Now what's interesting is, if you have advocacy, but it's not on brand. Those who are the brand advocates or ambassadors are actually very similar often on this Q12 engagement measure to the antagonist, those who are actively opposed to your brand message. Why? Well, they're, both groups are highly engaged. They both care. Except one is convinced it's the right path, and the other is convinced is not the right path. So they can be quite useful they can use the antagonist, to bring out the critical issues and those in the middle, the agnostics, who typically have a bit of a lower engagement, rIght? They are not sure which way to lean. Now they have to make a choice. So the antagonist really helps those people decide which way to go, and they might actually bring out some useful barriers in the process. But ultimately you have to decide what do we need to do with these antagonists? If they don't buy in, exiting might be the only solution for them. But if you do turn them, they often go straight from being antagonists to becoming ambassadors, because for them it was the acceptance that was missing. Now in one of the other videos in this module I'm talking to Richard Heppner and they talk about building love marks, and he talks about this axis of respect and love. And he talks about, you first have to gain the respect. Now, Richard's talking about the customers. If you don't have respect, if you don't have the right quality of product, it's very hard to love your products at the end of the day. Now, for most companies, they forget that they have to buy that respect internally as well. There are a lot of your employees that are quite cynical about what you do. I've worked with banks where the employees are cynical about the bank overdraft charges where customers being hit by these exorbitant fees, which, when it comes to analyzed interests, are just off the scale. Or when companies in the telecommunications sector; they full well know that many of their customers are on the wrong calling plan. Now I personally believe these are bad profits, that this is not profitable in the long term for the organization. That's probably another book all by itself. But more importantly, the people inside the organization, when they know you're not trying to do the best for your customers, if you think about the purpose, it's very hard and difficult to get their advocacy for your brand. So that's another barrier to gaining advocacy for the brand. And the final one, this reminds of a song by the Beatles, which is Can't Buy Me Love. That's all about how money can't buy you love, it can buy you lots of things, but not love. And in organizations in lots of research shows that money does not actually motivate. To a certain degree, if it's too little, it demotivates. But it doesn't actually buy advocacy. Engaging in a brand strategy, top management often builds a business case. When the marketing director talks to the finance director, it's all about the business case, the numbers. And we'll come back to those in Module 5. But that actually can demotivate your employees, because they think that money goes to the shareholders, it goes to the senior management, but not to the people at the front line. So it has to be something else. The purpose that motivates people. [MUSIC]
