The human experience – why brand ambassadors count

brand ambassadors

Experiential marketing is becoming increasingly innovative and sophisticated, embracing social media and new technologies. However, the importance of real people in experiential should never be under-estimated. In a world where 92% of consumers believe there’s a disconnect between what brands say and what they do, according to the Generous Brands report*, well trained brand ambassadors use their personal and marketing skills to deliver that key element of authenticity, building trust.

Today, many of the best experiential campaigns are run by true brand ambassadors, who are hand-picked not just for their promotional marketing experience, but also because they embody the brand in terms of how they behave and what they say. Take our EDFE Pretty Curious campaign in which we’ve recruited Tissue (STEM CELL) engineers and MSc Physics graduates – who better to inspire teenage girls to pursue a career in STEM than women who are already making waves in the industry? Being truly passionate about the subject matter means that the team can truly represent the brand.

Building the team

As this example shows, the recruitment process is a vital part of every experiential campaign. It’s crucial to meet every brand ambassador candidate face to face and be creative about the interview process. Interactive group sessions can work really well as they help to highlight an individual’s personality and skills, and can tell you more about who they really are than a one-to-one interview. It’s also important to ensure that brand ambassadors are suited to each campaign in terms of their likes, dislikes and interests.

Our award-winning work on The Economist Discomfort Food campaign has demonstrated the importance of having a real value match between staff and the brand – people who are passionate about the arts, current affairs and sustainabilityl; people who are ready to engage with the public on these topics on more than just a surface level and who evoke curiosity in their conversations with others.

Training and support

Having recruited the right team, thorough training is critical, and the more immersive the sessions are, the better. Take our Brompton Bikes activation which saw the team spend the day with engineers at the brand’s factory. Seeing for themselves that the bikes are truly bespoke and handmade in London meant they could talk to consumers with honesty and authenticity. Immersing brand ambassadors in this way gets them excited, inspired and invested in the brand so they perform better.

During campaigns it’s important to give the brand ambassador team as much support as possible to get to know their wants and needs and address any problems that arise. Continuous monitoring and feedback is particularly important for longer-running campaigns, as this allows any issues to be identified and dealt with as quickly as possible.

Encouraging feedback

Post campaign it’s good to get everyone together to discuss what went well and pull out key learnings for next time. Listening to brand ambassador feedback in this way lets the team know how much you value their opinions, building loyalty, while also collecting important insight that can be fed back to improve the performance of future campaigns.

Recognising those team members who have gone above and beyond, and organising regular social events also help to develop a strong team spirit, which can also be developed by having a core team work on repeat activations – Event Manager, Andrew Donald has managed the Coors Light Ice Cave team for the past three years and is a valued member of the core team. He was also recently nominated for Brand Ambassador of the year at the Field Marketing and Brand Experience Awards 2017.

Ultimately, brand ambassadors are real people who are tasked with engaging with ordinary people in the real world. The often complex and detailed nature of experiential campaigns means it’s vital to build strong and genuine relationships with them, so they can do the same with consumers on behalf of the brands they are representing.

Yasmin Bartlett is Senior Staffing Executive at real world marketing agency Sense

 

*Source: Generous Brands 2016, Sense Marketing Services LTD.

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy or amplify your retail marketing moves. Get them here at The Futures Lab.

London

5th Floor Century House
100 Oxford Street
London
W1D 1LN

New York

243 E 14th
#2 C/O SQ
New York
NY 10003

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy here at The Future Lab

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Experiential

Whether it be Festivals, Trade Shows, PR Stunts, Installations or Pop Ups to name a few, we believe brand experiences are one of the most powerful forms of marketing to impact consumer perception and attitude towards a brand. They can create real behaviour change when born out of a deep consumer insight allied to a compelling idea. And it’s these fundamentals we look to get right whatever the live, virtual or hybrid task in hand.

Sampling.

Sampling is all too often perceived as an unsophisticated, somewhat ‘blunt’ marketing tool. Over the last 16 years Sense has pioneered a set of strategic principles which underpin our unique approach to sampling and which are highly measurable from both an ROI and consumer behaviour change perspective. We will happily guide brands through the myriad of sampling channels and products available so whether it’s mass face to face sampling, in offices, digitally, at home or just a strategic framework that you are after, we can provide a blend of tactics to fulfil both brand and sales objectives.

Retail.

With many clients now focused on activating in channels more closely associated with a sale, our heavyweight retail experience closes the loop on a typical shopper journey by encompassing the moment of truth in store. Be it prize promotions, shopper toolkits, key visual creation, path-to-purchase communications, category strategy, B2B campaigns or Amazon optimisation, our goal is to create forward-thinking retail experiences that deliver demonstrable brand value. We aim to make ‘retail fail’ a thing of the past for ambitious brands looking to thrive is an ever-competitive landscape and believe our streamlined team is perfectly placed to do this.

Foresight.

Knowing what will keep a brand bright, exciting, and vital means we need to keep one step ahead of the curve. Our thought leadership hub, The Futures Lab, helps us to understand the marketing trends of tomorrow. It’s also the origin of strategies and methodologies which have created over 65 award-winning campaigns. 

Rigour.

Creativity is nothing without results. And we know that commissioning bold concepts, capable of changing minds, requires reassurance that it’s the right thing to do. 

Data, insights, and research precedes every campaign we do, and our proprietary measurement tool, EMR, gives us a decade of campaign performance metrics. Which is why we’re proud to have been recognised as industry-leading by brands like The Economist, Coca-Cola, and Molson Coors. 

Trust.

We believe brand experience is inherently more varied than other forms of marketing. No formula, no template, no cookie-cutter approach – and often no precedent. 

That’s why, Sense places trust at the heart of its business – grounded in teamwork between our people and yours. Our processes are efficient, our senior team stay involved and our partnership mentality had helped us sustain powerful client relationships, some lasting over 10 years.