This story is about the broader importance of Internal-External Brand Alignment. Alignment is the state of agreement or cooperation among persons and groups, with a common cause or viewpoint.

To say it in another way, Internal-External Brand Alignment is the capability to align the culture of a commercial organization behind the promise made to customers. If your culture does not speak, walk, talk, act, engage, plan, and function in alignment with the ultimate purpose and commitment of the business, your reason for existence and your promise to your customers, then leadership needs to step up and improve alignment dramatically. They are the people who can and should initiate this necessary state of alignment.

I think this goes for the leadership of Fortune 500 companies as well as for leading politicians who are the democratically chosen CEO’s of their countries. They make choices now that will influence the future of tens of millions of their people for decades.

In January 2010, an EU report condemns “severe irregularities” in Greek accounting procedures. Greece’s budget deficit in 2009 is revised upwards to 12.7%, from 3.7%, and more than four times the maximum allowed by EU rules. The European Central Bank dismisses speculation that Greece will have to leave the EU.

Since then the global financial markets are following Europe and its main currency the euro with a hawk eye since it became clear that Greece was facing bankruptcy. Stocks went down dramatically in the next 20 months and several countries faced a debt rating cut by Standard & Poor’s and had to pay much higher interest on their bonds and other loans.

On 9 December 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announces, also on behalf of Angela Merkel,  that Eurozone countries and others will press ahead with an inter-governmental treaty enshrining new budgetary rules to tackle the crisis.

The problems in Greece and other southern European countries are not resolved, and they have even become a bit worse since January 2010. But the financial markets did indeed stabilize by this moment, just on the knowledge that there was alignment among the European leaders on how to approach the crisis and a defined road for moving forward.  

Big multinational corporations are like global stock markets. If the average employee doesn’t see, feel and understand the road the company is taking, or if leadership has no vision or is unable to explain it in an understandable way, people will quickly develop that uneasy feeling a stock trader has in a bear market. Purpose and goal orientation will disappear, leading to a situation where employee engagement will dramatically drop, which in the long run will certainly hurt the ROI of the company.

Dear CEO’s of this world, be like Angela and Nicolas. It is your task to create company-wide alignment with the corporate mission, vision, core values and strategy. We call it Internal–External Brand Alignment. Take the time and make a real effort to clearly state and explain where your company is going and why.  Keep confirming this in many ways on a daily basis. This is how you earn trust and give your people the map to confidently get on a well paved, or even a bumpy road.

The bad news is you have to do this quicker than your political counterparts. The good news is that you can hire world class internal external alignment consultants to support you and your leadership team in this communications challenge. Give us a call, we know a few of them…  

An 85-year-old restaurant critic became an unlikely viral sensation recently when she wrote a glowing review of a newly opened Olive Garden in her small North Dakota town.  Foodies, celebrity chefs, and social media gurus jumped all over Marilyn Hagerty’s review, some of them even assuming or suggesting her column was intended for the Onion or other satirical site.

Within a few days of her review being published, it received more than 300,000 page views, which is huge for a news site that considers 5,000 page views to be a “big story.” 

Nobody would expect an 85-year old who didn’t even know the definition of viral (beyond that it might give her the sniffles in the winter) to make such a big splash on the internet.  Hagerty’s review proves that even a good customer experience can go viral, catapulting a brand into the spotlight.  Every customer experience has the potential to generate a tsunami of a response – whether bad or good.

Why did her column go viral? The responses on Twitter and other social spaces generally fall into one of two categories:  1) foodophiles who are stunned that a national chain restaurant could garner such favorable comments; 2) supporters who admire her sincere comments and genuine appreciation of a good experience.

Hagerty’s review described her experience at Olive Garden as “impressive” and “warm and comforting” on a cold day.  These comments point to the successful fulfillment of Olive Garden’s brand promise, which is “When you’re here, you’re family.”  Further, a statement on Olive Garden’s website says “we’re proud to serve fresh, delicious Italian food served in a comfortable, home-like setting where everyone is welcomed…”  

No matter what you think of the brand, Hagerty’s favorable review demonstrates that Olive Garden (or at least this one location in Grand Forks, North Dakota) fulfilled its brand promise to one particular customer who had the unlikely power to share her experience with thousands.

When the final bill arrived following a recent family dinner at a national chain restaurant, our server “Bob” made the plea for us to go on-line and fill out a customer survey.  He had provided decent service although not extremely notable. In his plea regarding the survey, he told us he would soon be going on vacation for a couple of weeks to visit family across the country. If he doesn’t get good survey results, he said his boss may cut his shifts when he’s back from vacation.

The customer survey is becoming very common in the world of retail and service-oriented businesses.  I’m frequently asked when making a purchase to go on-line and rate my experience.  It’s also common for the associate to request the rating they think they should receive.  Sometimes it comes with a plea like Bob’s that the associate may face a cut in shifts or possibly won’t get a raise if they don’t get top-notch results.

For many employees, it seems to be all about the survey results.  Associates probably get frequent reminders from managers that good survey results are imperative.  If that’s the case, then the focus for employees becomes the survey results themselves while the experience they’re creating for customers that supports the company’s brand promise becomes secondary or even forgotten. Are these employees being truly trained on how to deliver excellent service or a good customer experience…or are they simply being trained to ask for a specific rating from a customer?  Isn’t this the wrong message to send employees? 

If employees know how to deliver an excellent customer experience, the rest should take care of itself.  Sure, you can use surveys or mystery shops to confirm and validate. But the rubber truly meets the road if employees understand the experience your brand is aiming to create and how their role in your organization contributes to your customer promise. 

If they’re only being trained to ask for survey results, that may be the last memorable impression made on the customer.  The emotion you create for your customer might be one of pity, sympathy (“I sure hope Bob doesn’t get his shifts cut when he returns from vacation”), irritation (“Why should I give Bob 5 stars when his service only ranked 2 or 3?!”) rather than excitement over a delightful experience.

Do you want your brand to be known as the one that badgers customers to give good survey results or the one that delivers an outstanding experience every time?

What happens when you change your perspective by 180 degrees? 

Have you walked in the shoes of your workforce recently?  You might learn some interesting things about your organization by taking a trip to the front lines.

Most leaders in an organization look at their companies from the top down.  They collaborate with fellow leaders and come up with great ideas and strategies to drive the success of their brand and to fulfill their promise to customers. 

What happens to those great ideas when they’re passed down the ladder? Are they working? Are the expectations realistic? Do your teams understand why they’re being asked to do things a certain way?  Is the mission and vision clear?  Do they know how to successfully & consistently deliver your promise to customers?

When leaders take the time and exercise the patience to put themselves in their associate’s shoes, they can have an eye-opening experience. Put yourself on the front lines and take a look back up the ladder.  What do you see?  How are messages delivered?  Talk to your front-line associates.  Find out what really happens in their day as they interact with customers.  Dig in to see if they’re clear on their role and truly understand their accountabilities.

Armed with this valuable information, you can regroup with your fellow leaders and start to identify all the places in your organization where you might be misaligned.  Then you can re-shape existing programs, fine tune messages, streamline and prioritize communication, and make any other needed shifts so that you’re on the road to aligning your workforce with the promise you’re making to your customers.  

In more than 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s leading brands, our experience has shown that when leaders make that trip to the front line, they always find opportunity to increase alignment throughout their organization.  When they take an authentic look at the world through the eyes of their associates, they discover ways to simplify processes, amplify messages, reduce clutter, and improve results.  It’s all about leveraging energy.  When you’re able to increase the effectiveness of several thousand people (or more), think about the exponential results that are now possible!

What’s going on at your organization’s front lines?

What is company culture?  Is it a page on your website where you boast about your company’s outstanding work place?  Do you mention things like what great benefits your company has and how you celebrate diversity, work/life balance, and continuing education?   Maybe company culture is what happens in the lunchroom where employees dish about topics ranging from what their boss did this morning to the latest drama on reality TV last night.  Or is company culture what’s written on your CEO’s vision/mission statement that’s buried in a file somewhere?  It might get trotted around for viewing once or twice a year at company meetings, but nobody really knows what it is or what it means to them.

Company culture is all of those things and more.  And whether you like it or not, your company culture shapes your brand.  And of course you know that the value of your brand has a huge impact on how successful you are.

Let’s start with truly defining culture. Any time a group of people comes together and shares a space, a culture develops. This could include the culture within a family, a community, a club, a country, or your company.  A culture within any of these groups includes a set of values or beliefs that guides how the group behaves, performs, and communicates.  It’s a set of unwritten rules or a code of conduct that develops as the group works together toward a common goal.

Leaders within the group can shape the culture by expressing a strong mission and vision for the group to align behind.  But this shouldn’t be confused for the culture itself.  The culture is how the group works toward fulfilling the mission and vision – including their actions and the way they communicate with each other and with people outside of the culture.

Company culture may seem like one of those low priority things.  It probably feels like company culture happens organically.  A culture develops over time.  Your company largely ignores it except when the occasional personnel issues arise.  Or maybe morale seems especially low and someone in your HR department throws a potluck to “boost company culture.”

Most companies are more interested in bigger things – like brand value, profit, and sales.  Lots of money, time, and energy are directed at defining and building your brand through marketing, advertising, product development, partnerships, etc. while the HR people are left to deal with company culture.

Culture isn’t just an HR issue.  Your culture is the foundation for bringing your brand to life.  It’s the way you express your brand to the world through your most valuable brand ambassadors  – your employees.  The culture that your employees work in shapes how they deliver your brand to the world.  And with so many channels for employees to communicate amongst themselves and with the general public, it’s important they have a strong culture to shape those interactions.

Take a look at a leader in the area of company culture:  Zappos.  In his blog, CEO Tony Hsieh wrote: “Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers — will happen naturally on its own.”

He supported that statement with another very simple one:  “Your culture is your brand.”

So how do you build your company culture?  We’ll take a look at this in future entries, and we invite you to share your thoughts on culture within your company by leaving us a comment.

Step 1: Build a Network

You’re a new manager of a specialty retail store, and one of your top performers quits unexpectedly.  Suddenly you have an opening to fill or you’ll be short-staffed for the upcoming big sales weekend.   Now what? Better find the first warm body who can operate the register and hope for the best.

Many retail managers are faced with this challenge on a regular basis.  Turnover can be high in retail, and you are often at the effect of your employees who suddenly decide they’d rather go work for a different store down the mall or go back to school full time.

When inexperienced managers have to make knee-jerk hiring decisions, chances are they’ll hire the wrong person who can damage your brand in the long run.  Plus, by the time you factor in all of the administrative tasks of hiring and training, you’ve invested a lot of time and money.  If they’ve hired the wrong person, they likely won’t be able to deliver the results you need either.

Depending on how many stores you have, think of the domino effect if each store hires one wrong person during a 6 month period.

The ideal solution is to create a recruiting, interviewing, and hiring program in your company that aligns with your external brand and customer promise. Such a program will help inexperienced managers become hiring experts by giving them tools and guidelines for finding and selecting the ideal people to represent your brand.

If your company doesn’t have such a program, you can help your retail managers be prepared for hiring by building a network of possible candidates before they have an opening. When they’re ready to hire, they will have a ready-made pool of prospects they can tap into.  Here’s a few tips to get them started.

1. Evaluate your existing network. Your managers may believe they have only a small network of contacts, but it’s probably bigger than they think. Their network could include employees of other stores in their mall who they’ve become acquainted with. It could include former coworkers from previous positions. If they’re students, their network could include classmates. A solid network should include not just potential candidates, but other contacts who can make referrals. Assign your managers the task of recording everyone who’s already in their networks. They’ll probably be surprised at how many people they have on their lists.
2. Schedule opportunities for networking. Whether it’s attending a community meeting, social function, or simply finding time to walk through the mall and meet fellow retailers, your managers should have time set aside on a regular basis to actively build their network.
3. Turn on the networking radar. Your managers are also customers. They shop at other retail stores, eat at restaurants and coffee shops. Have them develop their networking radar so they’re always on the lookout for a person who could be a good fit for their store. Arm them with business cards they can pass out and encourage them to capture contact information when the meet a potential prospect.

If your managers have a solid network at their fingertips, they’ll be ahead of the game whenever they have an opening to fill. As they build their networks, they can also begin qualifying their top prospects.  In a future post, we will offer tips for effective qualifying that align with your brand and help identify the right people to deliver your customer promise.

When you’re ready to create a recruiting, interviewing, and hiring program that aligns your internal culture with your external marketing promise, Kennedy Communications can help you.

January is the time that many of us make resolutions to get healthier.  Have you made these same resolutions for your company?  Is your company healthy and aligned so that you can make 2011 your best year ever? 

Here are five key areas within your company that you can examine to see how healthy you are at the beginning of 2011.

1. Customer Promise.  What are you promising your customers, and are you sure you’re fulfilling that promise? Take a step back and see if your promise is really clear and that your employees understand the promise.  If your promise is muddled, fragmented, or confusing, now is the perfect time to clean it up.  If it’s clear already, great job!  Now you can figure out a way to see if you’re delivering on that promise. It doesn’t have to be a formal survey. Find a few key customers and get their anecdotal feedback. 

2. Business Results.  What are the key business results you’re committed to delivering that are tied to your customer promise?  Make sure your results are realistic while also providing a gap that will help you and your teams play a big game. Have you effectively communicated the results to your teams, and do they know what role they play in delivering those results? 

3. Cultural Pillars.  Your company culture is the foundation that supports everything you do.  A strong company culture can empower your teams to deliver on a common mission. A weak company culture can derail your results before you’re even out of the starting blocks. Does your company have a powerful culture that everyone is aligned behind?  The New Year is an excellent time to shape up your culture if it’s not as strong as it could be.

4. Business Functions.  If your culture is strong within your organization, each separate business function should have a clear vision for how they contribute to and support the culture and your customer promise.   January is a great time for each department to review how well they’re doing.  For example, are you hiring the right people (human resources), and are you training them (learning & development)  in how to support your brand? Are you making it as easy as possible for your customers to do business with you (operations or customer service) or have unnecessary policies and procedures gotten in the way? Sometimes the departments that don’t directly interact with customers can let themselves off the hook too easily, but they’re as accountable for delivering the customer promise as anyone else.

5. Tactics and Tools. Are the tactics and tools within your organization contributing to your customer promise and the delivery of your business results? This could include your hiring process, employment brand, product training, sales and service models, coaching and mentorship programs, and more. Everything needs to be aligned up through your organization so that messages are consistent and the customer promise is being fulfilled.

How is your company shaping up in 2011? Are you on track to make 2011 your best year ever?  Share your ideas and thoughts.

Do you love your own brand?  Are you your brand’s own biggest fan?  If not, then you should be. And your teams should be too!  How can you expect customers to love your brand if you don’t love it first?

A little brand narcissism is a good thing, and it starts at the top. When the leadership team actively loves the brand and freely expresses that love, it’s infectious to teams below. It’s not about indoctrination or mind-control.  You can’t tell your teams how and what they should feel, but when your employees hear the leaders actively and enthusiastically loving the brand, they’re more likely to jump on the bandwagon and love your brand too.

A little brand self-love can go a long way toward internal-external marketing alignment. Building a culture within your organization that expresses that self-love can be an excellent first step toward aligning your internal messages with your external ones.

While it may feel like you’re asking your teams to drink the Kool-Aid, the other valuable point about brand self-love is that it can quickly weed out the people who aren’t on board with you.  Employees who are skeptical, cynical, or resistant are not the people you want on your team who might leak their feelings onto a customer. Figure out who your biggest cheerleaders are and then let them express their passion to their colleagues and to your customers.

Who are your brand’s biggest internal cheerleaders? How do they express their love of your brand?  Leave us your comments and share your story.

Effective onboarding goes beyond tactical training and integrates new employees in a brand-right, comprehensive, and strategic program.

Every new employee reflects time and money – not only in the recruiting and interviewing process but in the time it takes to bring them up to speed and make them productive.  Creating an engaging and comprehensive onboarding program will maximize your investment, reduce your overall training time, and generate motivated and enthusiastic new employees who are ready to help your company thrive.

How can Onboarding align your brand and marketing messages?

Many companies view onboarding as simply “orientation” – those first few days on the job where new hires learn how to use the phones, find the bathrooms, and fill out paperwork.  This completely misses the bigger picture.

Onboarding is an opportunity to immerse your new team member in every element of your company – from the basic and tactical to the strategic and cultural.  An effective program will help new employees become ambassadors of your brand and company, which is especially crucial if they have contact with customers, vendors, partners, or anyone outside the company. They will reflect and deliver your brand to the outside world so it’s imperative they do so in a brand-right way.

By integrating brand, culture, and marketing messages into your onboarding program, you will generate alignment and consistency throughout your organization and support the delivery of your brand.

Ten On-boarding Best Practices

1. Reflect the brand. The strength of your brand plays a huge role in recruiting and retaining top talent. The on-boarding process should reflect your brand seamlessly and consistently.
2. Reduce time to productivity. How fast can your new hire be up-to-speed? The sooner they’re productive, the sooner the company will benefit from their contributions.
3. Unify all on-boarding efforts.  There are multiple components and agendas that make up on-boarding – everything from payroll and benefits to security, IT, branding, customer service, and more. A unified and integrated program that covers all on-boarding elements will ensure each topic is trained consistently and according to company standards.
4. Introduce company culture. New employees can impact an organization’s culture. Now’s the time to introduce the company culture, and help new hires understand how they will be expected to meld into it.
5. Roll-out for maximum retention. Don’t overwhelm new hires by cramming all on-boarding into the first few days or weeks on the job. Spread it out to improve retention and provide on-the-job experience that can build better context.
6. Provide coaching & mentorship. It’s easy for new-hires to get frustrated, overwhelmed, and simply throw in the towel. If you lose them, you’ve also lost time and money. Give new employees an appropriate and safe outlet to vent, ask questions, and get coached.
7. Include evaluation and go/no-go checkpoints. Sometimes that person who shined in the hiring process turns out to be not the best fit after all. Build in checkpoints and measures for evaluation to help identify and de-select a poor fit early in the process, before you’ve invested a lot of time and money.
8. Involve managers. Don’t pass off on-boarding to the training or HR departments. Involve managers to establish rapport quicker and help them identify strengths and weaknesses, communication styles, motivation factors, growth opportunities, and more.
9. Keep employees in the work environment. It’s tempting to ship your new employees off to a classroom for onboarding, but they’ll learn faster and retain more if you provide as much training as possible in the actual work environment.
10. Map to a larger plan. Onboarding should connect to and reflect your overall business objectives to support long-term company success. Also, development plans for each employee that are initiated in the onboarding process will improve motivation while building upon larger business goals.

Business Week recently released its annual list of the top 100 global brands. The accompanying article called “The Great Trust Offensive” focuses on how the brands that have survived our tough economic times, and even found a way to excel, are those that have built trust with their customers.

Consumers are more cautious about spending and want a larger return for their hard-earned dollars.  They’re more skeptical about what’s going on behind the curtain at large companies.  They want reasons to believe in brands before they offer over their loyalty. 

With trust on the line, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your brand is aligned and that you’re walking the walk of your marketing messages and brand promises. Stray too far, and you may go down in flames.

In any business, there will be problems.  A deadline will be missed, a product won’t function to the glory of its glossy advertising promise, a customer will have to wait in line longer than they should.  Problems will happen – they’re inevitable.  By training your employees how to react and respond when there’s a problem, you can minimize the damage ahead of time and help your brand be prepared to weather any storm.

Recently, my husband & I experienced a problem when we took a roadtrip to our old college town to attend a football game. After a hot day of traipsing around to visit our youthful haunts, we arrived at our hotel, ready to check in and freshen up before the big game.  It was nearly 90 minutes after check-in, and our room wasn’t ready.

While the desk staff fumbled around trying to find a room that we could check into, several employees stood in front of us and had a conversation amongst themselves about why housekeeping was being so slow and that rooms were not being turned fast enough.

A problem was occurring for this hotel, which was threatening its brand – and the employees were making it even worse by engaging in idle banter and gossip about housekeeping in front of customers.

When there are problems, your employees can be your best and your worst asset.  They’re the front-line to your customers and how they handle and manage problems can make or break your brand.

By empowering your employees with three simple steps, they can manage problems in the moment, helping to minimize any long term damage to your brand.

1. Acknowledge your customer’s concern. When a customer is upset, it can really take the charge off of a situation when you “get” them – you let them know you understand why they’re upset. In my situation at the hotel, the manager could have said something like “I understand you must be tired and ready to check into your room, and that you were supposed to be able to check into your room over an hour ago.”
2. Communicate your commitment to your customer, and let them know what you’re doing to fix the problem. At the hotel, the manager could have said “We are committed to getting you checked into a clean and comfortable room as quickly as possible so that you can make it to the game on time.”
3. Compensate by finding some way to make it up to your customer, no matter how small it may seem. Standing at the hotel desk while they tried to find us a room, it must have been pretty obvious that we were hot and tired. The manager could have found us a couple of cold bottles of water to drink while they found us a room. It would have been a small gesture, but one that would have gone a long way toward making me believe in their commitment to me – the customer.

Most importantly, when you’re having a problem, employees should know it’s not okay to engage in idle gossip in front of customers or complain about the problem to the customer or anyone else.  Your message to your customers should be one of accountability and confidence.  You’re taking accountability for the issue, and you’re displaying confidence in how you are responding to and correcting the issue.

How do you handle problems for your customers?  What problems have you run into as a customer yourself?  And how have they been handled?  Leave us your comments, and tell us about your experiences.

This was a big week for RadioShack as the 88-year old company announced that it’s reintroducing itself as simply “The Shack.”  According to an article in USA Today, the company is making the change in an effort to maintain its brand heritage while also attracting more tech-savvy shoppers. The article goes on to say that a new ad campaign will focus on the company’s knowledgeable sales staff and the idea that their small stores are easier to navigate than big-box competitors.

Bloggers and Twitterers buzzed about the change all week long – many were quite critical saying the name change doesn’t pull the company out of relative obscurity compared to sleeker rivals like Best Buy.  One blogger wrote that his impression of RadioShack is that it’s a brand that “never made the jump to the 21st Century” and that this re-name doesn’t do enough to give the brand a larger overhaul to make it relevant.

Any time you make a change to your brand, it’s perfectly natural to experience resistance, both from your customers and your employees. What will make this a win for RadioShack will be well-trained, engaged employees who are truly enrolled in and representing the fundamentals of the brand to customers.  This is the foundation of internal-external marketing alignment, and it can make or break a shift in your brand.

This is is critical in the face of competitor Best Buy who recently launched a new program on Twitter called Twelpforce: “A collective force of Best Buy technology pros offering tech advice in Tweet form.”

What do you think of RadioShack’s name change?  Does it impact whether or not you will shop at the store?  Leave us your comments and tell us what’s on your mind.

Taking on the world of social media can feel an awful lot like going to the gym when you’re really out of shape. You groan and moan, and it’s rather painful for the first few weeks.  Even the simplest tasks (like writing a single blog post) feel like they take forever, and you’re just not seeing the results you want. But – if you stick with it, it becomes easier, your muscles get toned, you feel better, and it becomes part of your routine.

Here’s a few ideas and resources to help you hit the social media gym, and start building your muscle today:

Want to know how social media guru Chris Brogan starts his day?  Here’s his five daily social media tasks.

If your company is starting a blog, and you’re wondering how to find a hook that will keep readers coming back, here’s some corporate blogs that are succeeding.

Need copywriting tips and ideas? Copyblogger is a favorite blog I follow for practical writing tips, tricks, and inspiration. A recent post called “how to kick ass as a freelance writer” has lots of great ideas on how to keep your readers coming back. Even though it’s written as tips for a freelance writer, there’s lots you can apply to writing your blog.

Still trying to get comfortable with Twitter?  Here’s some tips for new Twitter users from Mashable, and don’t miss the Mashable guide to Twitter.

No matter what you do — stick with it. Success in social media will happen as you build your muscle, make new connections, explore and experiment, and increase your confidence. Most of all – have fun with it!

“They’re throwing guitars out there!” exclaimed the astonished airline passenger as she watched United Airlines baggage handlers on the tarmac clumsily hucking guitar cases off the plane and onto the carts.

Musician Dave Carroll heard these words from his seatmate and braced himself for the worst.  While on tour with his band last year, Dave’s $3500 guitar was severely damaged by United Airlines baggage handlers in a story that makes the perfect case for the importance of internal-external brand alignment. Dave went through an arduous process of trying to be compensated for the damage. He talked to person after person at United – finally to be told they would offer nothing more than some travel vouchers for his loss. You can read the complete customer service saga on Dave’s blog.

To make a point and tell the world that he was wronged by United, Dave proclaimed that he would write and produce three music videos illustrating his misadventures and post them on YouTube for voting by the general public.  The first video (see below) has recently been published and has become an overnight sensation on YouTube. It’s also being actively discussed in the blogosphere, on Twitter, and Dave’s story has been told through multiple media channels including the CBS Early Show, Rolling Stone, and more. His song is now available for download on iTunes.

Dave’s experience is a classic demonstration of how a company like United has a lot to lose by disregarding the importance of internal-external brand alignment.  There are several issues at play that add up to Dave’s misaligned experience, which is ultimately doing damage to United’s brand:

Failure to live up to service promise.
A basic principle of internal-external marketing alignment is the expectation that you will deliver a service experience that aligns with your brand promise. United’s website offers a very detailed statement of the company’s customer commitment. Among other things, it asserts that United’s customers “have the right to expect – to demand – respect, courtesy, fairness and honesty from the airline they have selected for travel.” According to Dave’s story, he was continually given the runaround by multiple United personnel in several cities as he tried to receive compensation for his demolished $3500 guitar. It sounds like this was not just one poorly trained or disgruntled employee, but a general failure by multiple United personnel to take accountability for a mistake and try to live up to the customer service commitment by handling the issue with “courtesy, fairness, and honesty.” In an aligned company, employees would be given the tools, resources, and training they need to handle customer complaints in a way that lives up to the brand promise.

Cultural issues – “it’s not my problem.”
Dave claims he was repeatedly told by multiple United personnel that the issue “is not my problem” or that the paperwork he submitted was not received. This general lack of accountability can perpetuate an internal culture where employees feel powerless or unmotivated to handle customer concerns. Every time a customer encounters the fallout from this kind of culture, the brand will continue to erode.

The transparency of the social media world.
In the old days, it was easy for companies to sweep complaining customers under the rug. In today’s world of the social web, one irritated customer can quickly communicate to millions through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, the blogosphere and more. For this reason, companies need to not only be prepared to engage with their customers in the social space before there’s an issue, but they need to react quickly when trouble arises to avoid a wildfire.

A customer’s heart was broken.
If you believe that a brand is not what the execs in the marketing department say, but it’s an emotional connection that lives in the hearts and minds of customers – then you will understand the magnitude of Dave’s final verse in his song where he says United broke his heart. When he asks himself in the song if he’d ever fly United again, he said he might if saving the world were on the line, and then he goes on to say:

“…And if I did, I wouldn’t bring my luggage
‘Cause you’d just go and break it,
Into a thousand pieces,
Just like you broke my heart.”

When you break that emotional connection with your customer, you may never get them back again.

Dave’s story of the broken guitar ends on an upnote, although it certainly seems a bit too little too late. The damage has already been done – not just to Dave as a customer, but to the United Airlines brand.  Dave posted a subsequent response on YouTube where he says United is offering reimbursement for the guitar.  Although he says reimbursement is not the point anymore, and he’s encouraging United to donate the money to charity. He says “United has demonstrated they know how to keep their airline in the forefront of their customer’s minds, and I wanted this project to expand upon that satirically.”

In fairness, I also have to point out that Dave is building his own brand as a musician through this tale. We’ll see what happens to his personal brand and to United when the second and third videos come out in the future.

Has a brand ever broken your heart? What did you do about it?  Leave us a comment and tell us about your experiences.

Still trying to wrap your head around the world of social media and what it means to you and your brand?  Or are you trying to make the case with your company for diving into the social space?  Here’s three helpful items we’ve found in the past week that might offer you some additional food for thought.

Digital Buzz has compiled the top 10 social media presentations. You might find some interesting ideas that can apply to your own situation.

From Harvard Business Publishing, here’s an article on Debunking Social Media Myths.  The main point author David Armano underscores is that there’s a common misperception that social media is “free,” and that technology just makes it happen for you.  David points out three general areas of social media that require ongoing strategy and management in order to be successful: seeding, feeding, and weeding.

Are you curious about how other companies allow their employees to Tweet and blog without letting things spin out of control?  Jeremiah Owyang has identified the five ways that companies are allowing employees to participate in the social web.

Any business leader accountable for management of their company’s employment brand, talent pipeline, or employee engagement should read a new article from Harvard Business Review (July-August 2009 issue) titled How Gen Y & Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda. The subhead states that your oldest and youngest talent cohorts demand many of the same things in a workplace – and have the numbers to get their way. This article offers an interesting perspective on an issue we hear frequently discussed by major HR organizations as they work to create a compelling work experience that allows them to attract and retain the best talent.

In addition to detailing a vision of what the workplace should include to effectively retain Gen Y and Boomer talent the article provides this interesting portrait of each generation.

Portrait of Gen Y

Ambition
84% profess to be very ambitious

Loyalty vs. Quest
45% expect to work for their current employer for their entire career

Multicultural Ease
78% are comfortable working with people from different ethnicities and cultures

Healing the Planet
86% say it’s important that their work make a positive impact on the world

Networking by Nature
48% say having a network of friends at work is very important

Portrait of Baby Boomers

Staying in Harness
42% project they will continue working after age 65

Long Runways
47% see themselves as being in the middle of their careers

From “Me” to “We”
55% are members of external volunteer networks

Yearning for Flexibility
87% say being able to work flexibly is important

Familial Obligations
71% report having elder care responsibilities

What I find so interesting is that I often hear disparaging comments targeted at members of the Gen Y generation that are often leveled by Boomers. Perhaps, with a closer look, the distance between these groups is not that great.

So what do you think? What has your experience been navigating the generational divide in the workplace. Join the discussion. We would love to hear from you.

Recently we published a blog post telling the story about how a relatively innocent Tweet from the floor of a major tradeshow turned into threatening phone calls from the company who was the target of this Tweet.  Had this company approached this situation differently, the brand could have taken ground in establishing a positive engagement with customers in the social media space. Here’s a post from Mashables with great tips for managing social media damage control. Bottom line is the more involved you can be in the world of social media, the quicker you can respond and the less likely you are to be constantly putting out fires.

When was the last time you experienced delight as a customer? I’m not just talking ho-hum customer satisfaction (like the guy at the deli didn’t completely screw up your sandwich, but he also didn’t offer you a pickle on the side either).  I’m talking honest-to-goodness delight! Joy! Extreme fulfillment!

Was it last week at the coffee shop when the barista remembered your name and your favorite beverage and started firing up the espresso machine as soon as she saw your face in the window? Or two months ago when you called your cable company for technical support and they handled your problem with professionalism and rapid response?

For me, it was a few weeks ago at the cosmetics counter of a major department store. The clerk was so efficient in uncovering my needs that I ended up buying several things that I hadn’t intended to, but the items were sold to me in such a way that I couldn’t pass them up. I walked away feeling very satisfied with my experience and the value of the products I had purchased. I ended up spending far more than I had intended, but I felt great about it! Next time I need makeup, I’m going back to that clerk for her efficient and friendly manner.

Out of curiosity, I visited the website for the cosmetics brand this clerk represented. I wanted to see what the brand says about the service experience they promise to customers.  The website talks about expert knowledge, friendly advice, and personalized service that’s defined as a “gold standard” in the industry.

This clerk truly delivered that description to me – she’s representing her brand appropriately and expertly. Her brand is exhibiting internal-external brand alignment by making sure the experience I have as a customer matches what the brand promises. The words on the brand’s website aren’t just lip service. The company is truly walking the walk and delivering upon their promise through helpful, well-trained employees who provide an expert and friendly experience.

Sure, we all expect to be delighted when we check into a Ritz Carlton or shop at a high end retailer like Saks, but delight doesn’t have to be limited to luxury brands. You can build delight into any brand and any customer experience. And when you delight your customers, you’re building excitement and passion for your brand. Your customers will probably buy more of your product or service and be willing to pay a higher price for it. They’ll probably think about your brand every time they use your product, and they may even tell their friends, family, colleagues, and the web about your brand.

Beyond the value you provide for your customers, you also have an opportunity to delight your employees. Setting a high bar for service is a rush for the right employee. It’s rewarding and energizing. Employees can feel excited about coming to work and delivering your brand, knowing they have an opportunity to make someone’s day. It starts with finding and hiring those brand-right people who can easily become natural advocates for your company. If you’re interviewing someone who doesn’t seem like they can truly deliver the promise of your brand – move on! You’ll be glad you did.

Delivering customer delight is a fun game to play.  It’s exciting to be the one delivering it – and it’s even more thrilling to be on the receiving end as a customer. What are some brands that represent true customer delight to you? In what ways do they deliver? Leave us a comment and tell us about your experiences.

The ever-expanding presence of the social web is changing how we communication folks are thinking about engaging and enrolling audiences. No matter how much time, effort, and money we put into crafting our campaigns and refining our messages, our audiences are having a bigger say in what our messages really are – or what they should be.  For internal-external marketing alignment, this puts even more pressure on the service experience you’re delivering to your customers. You’d better deliver what you promise or the messages generated by your audiences about your brand could get really out of control.

Here’s a few things I’ve run across this week that expand upon this notion.

The New Social Value Scale
An emerging site called the GoodGuide is creating an online resource for consumers to find information related to the health, environmental, and social impact of popular products. This powerful information will allow consumers to make informed choices about the everyday products they use.  If this site gains enough momentum, marketers may need to refine messages or even alter products to get a better score on the social value scale.

Every Web Page Will Become a Social Experience
The buzz from social web experts continues to imply that eventually every web page could be a social experience – whether it’s intended to be or not.  Jeremiah Owyang recently compiled a list of developing technologies and trends that are shifting us toward this reality.  His conclusion is that this shift will give customers the power to rely on friends, colleagues, and trusted social networks to make countless buying and brand-preference decisions.  As we move closer to this reality, the work of communicators becomes one of engaging, enrolling, and conversing rather than forcing messages that will be ignored.

Leveraging Customer Passion to Maximize Your Message
Finally, from Harvard Business Publishing, an article on leveraging your best customers as natural (and cheap!) spokespeople. Your customers have numerous opportunities through popular sites like YouTube and Facebook to express their passions for products and services. Why not leverage this passion and use it to your best advantage? You could even hire some of these people to sell for you!

In what ways are you changing your message in response to what your audiences are saying about your brand?  Tell us some of the new and unique ways you’re communicating with your audiences – and how you’re supporting those messages with service.

We have all experienced it. A slick new marketing campaign peaks our interest in a product or service. It’s usually a bold promise about what we can expect if we purchase a product or sign up for service. We take the chance, engage with the business, and immediately start seeing gaps between what they promised and the actual experience. What happened? Where did the promise go?

Companies that don’t pay attention to the gap between the brand promise and the actual customer experience risk creating a situation where the customer senses a bait and switch. This can quickly erode the integrity of your brand and take years – and millions of dollars – to correct.

The practice of Internal-External Brand Alignment can help ensure that your customer experience reflects the promise of your brand by building a strong culture, providing effective and practical training, and communicating consistently and powerfully to your teams. To get started on the right path, you should first identify the various conditions in your business that have a cumulative impact on your service culture.  Here are a few we commonly see.

Are you clear about your service goal?
This seems like an obvious question, yet it’s surprising how often I ask this question in consulting sessions and get an uncomfortable silence. It’s also surprising how many businesses immediately say they provide outstanding service, but when I dig a little deeper, it’s clear they’re not delivering anything more than the most elementary and basic customer experience. There’s simply no “delight” to be found anywhere. But maybe “delight” isn’t part of the experience you’re committed to providing. If your goal is to provide a solid, basic experience, then call it that. If it’s true delight you’re after, then the elements that make a delightful experience must be clear and tangible to everyone – most importantly your customer.

Are you putting money, and time, where your mouth is?
Here’s a simple question: is your company spending more time or less time on associate training and communication now than you did five years ago? If your answer is “more,” then good for you. Building a strong culture of exceptional service requires time and commitment. If you’re spending less than before, this could be a reason for declining service standards. Over the past few years, many businesses have gradually starved their communication, training, and cultural alignment and are now seeing a widening gap between the brand promise and the service reality.

What does your employee attraction program look like?
Many service businesses have relatively high turnover. Logic would tell you that these businesses should be masters at attracting great workers due to the fact that they are always recruiting. Often the opposite is true. Many service businesses have extremely primitive programs for attracting a workforce that is right for their brand and gifted at providing a great experience for customers. They rely on the most basic elements of recruiting, like posting a help wanted sign in the window or posting an ad on craigslist.  Instead, they could be building a network of qualified candidates who they’ve already determined are brand-right. Leading companies are now focusing on building the employment brand of their organizations to support the larger brand. This employment brand is what will attract the brand-right people into your company and entice them to stay for the long haul and perform to their highest potential.

Does your entire organization know how cool they are?
When working with an organization for the first time, I’m often amazed at how they do what they do, the beauty of their product, the complexity of their execution, and the innovation they foster. Yet, when I point this out to my client they often roll their eyes and shrug off the compliment. What makes their company amazing has become mundane and common in their eyes. Providing excitement and engagement for your customer starts with you being excited and engaged first. Does your organization truly celebrate what you do, what you provide, or how you provide it? Take a fresh look at what you do, how you talk about it, how you celebrate it. You might find that the secret to delighting your customer is first of all re-connecting your organization with a true passion for what you do.

Asking yourself these four questions is a great place to start in identifying where your opportunities may lie. In the second part of this post we will explore the various components of the ecosystem that all contribute to Internal-External Marketing Alignment.