By Joe Bogardus, Director of Client Service

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
                                                                  – Mark Twain

Like Mark Twain, I am a former resident of Elmira, NY. That is where I received much of my “schooling” and for 22 years the bulk of the “education” referenced by Twain. It was a great place to grow up. Safe. Secure. Friendly. A quality environment that shaped my value set and where I learned about life.

Community environments have a large impact on the perceived quality of life. This is a perception of many Blount County residents as well.

Last year, working with Bryant Research, we completed a research study for the Blount Education Initiative.  In the study, residents were queried on the importance of living in a community where you can keep on learning to ensure your quality of life was achieved. More than 80 percent of Blount Countians thought it was very important to live in such a community.

This allegiance to learning is being engrained in Blount County’s younger generations. In corresponding surveys completed with the graduating classes at the area’s four local high schools in 2009 and 2010, the vast majority of seniors – more than 95 percent – reported that they planned on continuing their learning experience in college, the military or vocational training. Many of them plan on returning to the county after completing their “schooling.”

If this generation does return to Blount County and they perpetuate this commitment to lifelong learning, it bodes well for the long term quality of life we all enjoy here in our section of East Tennessee.

By Joe Bogardus

Last week my colleague Amy Schwinge had a great blog post titled “Don’t Forget the Employees.” It was a piece on how employee communications impacts a company’s bottom line.

Humbly, I will try to build on Amy’s excellent ideas using a real-world, real-time experience in which MBWC is currently engaged.

The agency has a client that is considering re-launching its brand. They are insisting their company employees be involved in this process. This involvement is something we would normally recommend, but the insistence the client has exhibited on this matter is laudable.

The company is in the service industry. They believe, and rightfully so, their people are their brand. We are in the process of developing a battery of qualitative and quantitative research studies relative to brand messaging and other insights that need to factor into the process. Our first studies will involve individual and group interviews with key personnel in the company to grasp their understanding of the brand. This exercise will not only be informative to us but also will act as an ownership-building activity for the company’s employees. They are going to be involved in the process right from the start and will be informed as the process continues.

In her piece, Amy stressed keeping employees informed about critical company matters. We are presently fortunate enough to be working with a company whose management believes in this principle and is taking the concept an important step further by involving them in the development of the company’s brand re-launch at its inception.

The company believes if its employees feel fully vested in the process, it will positively impact their performance. With the company view that their people are the brand – and we know that brands are assets – this approach should support long-term revenue growth and corporate valuation.

It’s a great example of the two-way communications Amy references, and it’s gratifying to see this process happening first-hand, starting right at the beginning of a major company initiative.

As always, consistency works best when managing your brand, especially with regard to new social media tools.

These new channels of communications do present some interesting challenges to brand stewards, because more departments are in the business of touching a company’s clients ranging from sales, marketing, communications, R&D, customer-care and more.

It is essential for the long-term well-being of the brand that people connecting with a company’s clients have an understanding and appreciation for the brand’s essence, its key messaging and the tone and manner in which these messages are to be consistently delivered.

More and more brands are looking to establish a set of social media policies that are readily available to all employees who come in contact with a company’s customers.

A popular management model being instituted is the formation of a social media stakeholder committee that consists of representatives from the various departments that use social media to manage various aspects of customer relationships. They are charged with working out how to position the brand effectively with their constituencies and making sure the brand voice is consistent across all platforms of communication.

Other brands are looking to a more centralized model with either a single person responsible or a decentralized approach making all employees responsible for communicating the brand message.

Whichever model your company chooses, it is critical that it be consistently employed and all the team members are fully aware of the roles they are expected to play.

Selectivity works.

In this time of instant communication across a myriad of channels, selecting when and how to respond to a brand criticism presents an added challenge to the art of brand management.

There is a growing apprehension among senior managers that one tweet, one blog posting or an unkind brand comment will devastate the brand forever. Helping managers deal with their cyberspace concerns requires thoughtful and selective counsel.

Here are a few quick considerations that should be deliberated or offered to managers when confronted with an uncomplimentary remark:

1. Consider the source – is a long-time user of the brand complaining?
2. Seriousness – is what is being reported a really grave matter?
3. Totality – will this situation make a difference to all of the brand users?
4. Repetition – has this circumstance been previously reported?
5. Restoration or Aggravation – will a response be a solution or feed the complaint?
6. Environment – where was the comment posted? The larger the audience, the greater the potential fallout.

Using these criteria should help the evaluation process and eliminate the majority of the cranks, quacks and minimalists when it comes to unpopular brand comments.

Still, the biggest challenge of all remains selecting when and when not to respond to a brand criticism. It’s a judgment call, but a call that needs to be made nonetheless in order to be true to your brand.

We are all familiar with the phrase: “The only sure things are death and taxes.”  This old saying obviously was stated before the advent of brand management.

In this age of new media, experiential marketing and social networking – like death and taxes – it still is all about selling the brand. Communicators continue to be charged with creating awareness, fostering understanding, convincing customers about the benefits of a brand and driving people to buy the branded product or specifying the service over and over again.

This continuum has not changed, but the tools and channels for clients to achieve this success by telling audiences about their brand have expanded dramatically in recent years. And, this expansion is for the better, because it offers clients many more opportunities to establish a brand relationship with their current or prospective customers.

The challenge for communicators, as client counselors, is to offer thoughtful advice on which of these new non-traditional vehicles might be appropriate to meet their clients’ business objectives and help create long-standing brand relationships.

Traditional modes of communication still have immense value, especially in driving awareness and brand comprehension. The newer elements of the communications mix – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs, etc. – offer speedier avenues to nurture brand relationships with interested groups of customers. The ideal situation is implementing a program of these old and new media forms to move customers through the brand consideration and selection process as quickly as possible.

But, in the end, it still is about selling the brand.