Brand Ambassadors

Had an interesting discussion on the creation of brand ambassadors and evangelists yesterday. In modern day society where communication thanks to blogs can becom incredibly viral incredibly fast.

If you have not read 'The Tipping Point' I suggest you browse through it this weekend. Cliff notes for Tipping Point: Keypoints involve how not just brand ambassadors make a brand - but are an integral part in a larger organism - the viral effect of an efficient network .. Part of which we can control - part of which we can only hope to guide.
I think it is important to understand that Brand Ambassadors are generally driven by a level of passion for and find a special usefulness in a product. This is often done through the paradigm changing (or at least suggested such)ability of the product. Skype gave you free voice.. eBay gave you n'th level more efficient trading... Starbucks gave you BETTER coffee .. JetBlue treated you better AND was cheaper.. The exercise should be to define how your company changes the world .. Makes it a better place - from two points of view;

1) your customer. Ok, so you help generate revenue .. or maybe your customer can communicate better with his end-user through your company .. But ... Is there 1 thing where your product stand out. Where you do things n times better, faster, more efficient?! If you can find that point you need to stress it.. I don't believe finances are a killing point for ambassadors .. But it might be good enough to land a deal - now you have to deliver.
2) the end-user. Why is your product(or the result of your product) so much better than the competition? There should be 1 single reason that any end-user can give to his peers as the; "you should switch because ...."
Without this one compelling reason you will have a hard time finding ambassadors.

Another way to assist the creation of Ambassadors is to make it easy to become one. This means 1) Give a good reason (as per above) and 2) ease of distribution (of the word). In simple terms - make it easy to share the experience with your peers. Skype - 'share with a friend' is on page 1. Again - simplicity and ease of use become integral to the spreading .. The 'most succesful' diseases are the ones that spread the easiest .. Not the ones that are the deadliest (the flu vs ebola: the flu kills millions of people each year - Ebola never get close)

One final aspect is your employees. Your employees are your first and last line of defense and must be enabled, empowered and evangelized to the extent that they can spread the gospel better than anyone else. I believe most succesful companies have a corp d'esprit that creates an almost cult-like following. I strongly recommend Jan Carlzons 'Moment of Truth' to learn more about what is required to attain employee empowerment to the level required for brand ambassador creation (ie; a customer has SUCH A GOOD EXPERIENCE that he simply must share with all his friends). Bottomline is - every time a customer comes in touch with your Company it is a Moment of Truth - a moment that will either have a positive or negative impact on the future relationship with your company. These moments of truth must be managed and optimized to ensure a positive experience at every juncture.