Top Three Tips for Internal Branding
One of the keys to building a successful brand externally is to build your brand internally. Not only do your employees live and breathe the brand each day, but they are the ones communicating it to your current and future customers. So how do you develop a successful internal branding campaign? Here are a few tips.
- Provide easy to understand and easy to access tools. These tools could be as simple as a rack card at each employee’s desk or educational pages on your company’s intranet.
- Engage team members from multiple departments. Ask department leaders to highlight employees who are enthusiastic and willing to carry the brand flag within the team. Then educate these brand ambassadors on the brand and how to talk to their coworkers about the value of the organization’s brand.
- Do it once, twice, three times and don’t stop. Internal branding is not something that can be done once and be considered successful. If it is just done once, employees may just see it as a campaign. Regularly communicating about the brand will help engrain it in your organization’s culture. Consider highlighting a different organization benefit or value each month, explaining its value and showing examples of how the brand is lived each day by employees.
When your employees believe it, your customers and future customers will notice. By tapping into your greatest brand implementation tool – your workforce – your organization will not only be singing from the same hymn book (pardon my Southern phrasing), but so will your customers.
AW Helping Hands: Reedy Creek Park
On July 23, 2011, Addison Whitney participated in another successful Helping Hands volunteer event for Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation at Reedy Creek Park. Reedy Creek Nature Preserve protects 737 acres of natural, forested habitat within Reedy Creek Park. There are over ten miles of hiking trails in the nature preserve for the outdoor enthusiast, giving visitors the opportunity to explore a variety of terrains, while enjoying scenic views of small lakes, forests, fields, streams, and wild life.
Addison Whitney helped to resurface the Nature Center's garden area. Volunteers also installed several hummingbird feeders around the Nature Preserve. Reedy Creek volunteer coordinator, Pepe Chavez commented, "Our garden was in desperate need of some love so we started right away weeding the walk ways resurfacing them with a fresh layer of screening in preparation for Hummingbird Festival; a special event on August 27 that attracts over 2,500 visitors to the nature center making this our biggest special event at Reedy Creek." Additionally, donations provided will cover the cost of slide mats for a nearby playground area.
Despite the rising temperatures in Charlotte on that Saturday morning, all participants left the event with more knowledge of our county's parks and eager to continue giving back to help beautify our parks!
Find Reedy Creek Nature Center on Facebook to find out about other upcoming events!
Contributed by: Cathleen Foley
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Welcome Garrett Lee Jobes
We are so excited to welcome Garrett Lee Jobes into the world, and congratulate Allison and Andy with their new blessing. Garrett was born at 8:15pm on Wednesday, May 11, weighing 7lbs, 10oz and 20.5 inches long.
Allison is a member of Addison Whitney's Verbal Branding Department, and our entire team has been speculating on what this creative gal would name her son. Garrett is the fourth generation of Lee in their family.
Congratulations Allison and Andy. We can't wait to meet the new addition!!
AW Helping Hands: Birthday Blessing
Through AW Helping Hands, a company-wide volunteer initiative, Addison Whitney employees jump started the month of May by throwing a birthday party at the Salvation Army Center of Hope in uptown Charlotte . Bright Blessings is a non-profit that operates projects for thousands of homeless children across the Charlotte region. Its core program “Bless-A-Birthday,” is a monthly birthday party given at a homeless shelter to enliven the spirits, and celebrate the birthdays of the shelter's children.
Many Addison Whitney employees volunteered to attend the party at the Center of Hope, home for women and children. The team assembled goody bags and transformed the home into an energetic party scene. The party included tables for crafts & coloring, game spots, and of course, cupcakes! Volunteers and kids alike spent the evening enjoying their time together playing games, mini-bowling, competing for prizes, and to see who could walk away the most candy.
As the 50 children sang a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" to this month's guests of honor it was especially touching to see the grateful and happy smiles projected from every mother's face. Judging by the happy parents and chocolate covered faces of the children the party was a huge success! We at Addison Whitney are so glad we got to celebrate the May birthdays with the children, and look forward to the next opportunity to lend a helping hand to our community.
Contributed by: Emily Hassell
Addison Whitney On the Go
Addison Whitney team members are often on the road, visiting clients, attending conferences and meeting with partners, so we've asked our frequent flyers to send us photos from the road. Every Friday we'll post a new picture, and it will be up to our readers to guess where they were!
Can you guess where we were this week?
Submitted by Beth Anne McPheeters, Manager, Brand Strategy
Submit your guess by posting to comments, and we'll reveal the answer the following Friday. Now get guessing!
Insperity | What it Means to Their CEO
You may recall the posts in March about the Insperity launch. We did our best to sum up our engagement with the Administaff/ Insperity team, but it is a lot more exciting to hear about the transition directly from Insperity Chairman of the Board and CEO Paul Sarvadi. (He also happens to be one of the founders.) Take a look at the video below.
Welcome Emmerson Rose Everidge
The entire Addison Whitney team would like to welcome Emmerson Rose Everidge to our family. As our newest "designer-in-training", Emmerson will learn from the best, our very own Kristin Everidge, Manager of Visual Branding.
Baby E was born April 28th at 7:53am, weighing 8lbs, 10oz and 20 1/4" long. Congratulations Kristin and Brannon. We are so happy for you!!
Carnival’s Magic has set sail on its Inaugural Voyage!!
From creating names to designing logos a number of Addison Whitney brands can be seen onboard the new ship. We had so much fun working with the Carnival team, and we want to continue that fun with a little interoffice competition.
To help us decide which Addison Whitney team member can claim bragging rights around the office check out the AW brands below and “Like” your favorite! And if you want to read more about our work with Carnival click on the logos below.
Naming PRECISE
Whether a result of intense physical activity or a rough night of sleep, any sort of joint stiffness or muscle pain is uncomfortable and inconvenient. My pain happens at the worst times: When I need the endurance to stand at a concert for several hours or when an afternoon of shoe shopping requires heavy lifting (Like I said, intense physical activity). When you suffer from muscle pain, joint aches, tension or stiffness, it's not uncommon to take TYLENOL® for relief. For more targeted pain relief, the Makers of TYLENOL have introduced PRECISE™, a new line of products that deliver relief exactly where it hurts, activating sensory receptors that help block pain signals.
Nerve fibers that react to pain are small and nerve fibers that react to touch are much larger. Applying the topical creams and patches to the skin stimulates these large nerve fibers and sends signals racing to your brain that block the sensation of pain.
Addison Whitney health assisted McNeil in the creation the name PRECISE to best reflect how accurately the topical creams and patches target pain. We also did additional linguistics assessments in a variety of languages to ensure the PRECISE brand was internationally understood and effective.
Read the full case study for PRECISE here.
Giving Back
Each year Addison Whitney participates in GRACE (Giving Relief and Care to our Elderly), a charitable initiative funded entirely by donations from employees. Donations help support senior citizens in our local community.
We recently visited Sardis Oaks Nursing Home to see the newly updated beauty salon our donation helped fund. The salon was given a fresh coat of paint and new cabinets and mirrors were put in.
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