How SMEs can create holistic brand experience

Employees can be an important source of new ideas for initiatives that can strengthen the overall brand experience.

The importance of building brands and conducting qualitative research with the right consumer segments need not be stressed for any business, let alone SMEs. This is needed for getting insights on current brand associations, potential differentiators and the state of current brand resonance with them. One thing missing from all these details is the value of gaining the same insights and perspectives from internal stakeholders like employees, suppliers and so on. In fact, they are integral to delivering a holistic brand experience.

Harnessing qualitative data from internal stakeholders can be critical to the reinvention or repositioning of the brand, irrespective of the methodology deployed - personal interview, focus group or whatever else. This would help gain a 360-degree view of the brand.  Essentially, the different dimensions of the brand as it exists today will be clearer in terms of both positive and negative perceptions.

Take the case of a top private business school that is keen to differentiate itself from the numerous others mushrooming across the country. It wanted to improve its ranking recently and took steps to reposition itself. The process adopted by them included conducting focus groups and one-on-one interviews with five essential groups of internal and external stakeholders. One critical reason why they chose to include internal audience in the qualitative research was to have an inclusive holistic viewpoint and also to allow for completeness. They needed to have a full opinion and hear the good with the bad, as per the chairman of the B-school.

A brand's heritage – those attributes associated with its history, values, philosophy and purpose (the reason for it to exist) – is one key dimension, most likely instilled by the founders. Internal stakeholders may have invaluable insight into the brand's history, and probably a better understanding of that history's importance than outsiders. If they can share their understanding of the brand's heritage, it may help re-establish brand continuity, connecting its future positioning to its roots and the facets that made it successful in the first place. Balancing that heritage against the new positioning opportunities gleaned from external stakeholders is tricky, yet essential.

Doing research among internal audiences also helps in identifying where similar patterns and divergent opinions exist between internal and external audiences, which can help the brand team formulate the brand hypothesis and determine subsequent areas for further research. When individuals from a variety of functions or product lines that have brand connect are included in the qualitative research, the employee audience's diversity helps in ensuring a greater number of brand perspectives.

For the earlier example of the B-school, the most enlightening areas from the research were the differences between the opinions of the staff and what the students expressed. There was a clear difference in what an MBA means to these two audiences. Clearly, different truths about the brand can exist even within internal audiences.

Understanding the current brand perceptions and how they got formed can help marketing team change future brand perceptions by ensuring that a more cohesive view of the brand emerges. In instances in which marketers are developing a completely new brand, internal audiences can provide valuable input to the corporate vision, brand vision, and the values with which the new brand should be aligned. Further more, if the brand has to remain true to its values and become a meaningful experience for the customer, it should be aligned with the company's culture.

If the employees are going to be able to act as brand ambassadors, that is, if they are to believe in what the brand stands for in order to deliver the brand experience and help create the culture, then it makes sense to get input from these folks. In fact, employees can be an important source of new ideas for initiatives that can strengthen the overall brand experience, especially if the effort to tap those ideas involves all areas of the company, whether organised by function, product line or whatever. Therefore SMEs can use the same groups of internal stakeholders who can provide input to help drive the brand positioning to help identify key initiatives geared toward strengthening the experiences.

Another important reason for interacting for internal opinion is perhaps more political, but still psychologically important: Doing so allows internal audiences to have a say in brand development and feel a sense of ownership in the resulting positioning. Not only does getting input from managers and other employees make brand buy-in easier, but also marketers can more quickly identify internal brand champions who can help gain consensus on the brand position. With input from internal audiences, marketers can be confident that the brand's attributes better resonate with its target market and deliver holistic experiences.