Brand Champion Rewards and Recognition

One of the areas in the brand development process that I think needs more attention is employee rewards and recognition programs. As more and more organizations are embracing brand development, it is critical that a rewards and recognition program be included in your plan. Unfortunately, I do not see these types of programs included in the brand development process or the brand implementation and execution phases as much as I would like.

Rewards and recognition programs can include changing the name of existing awards programs or the name of some existing awards titles to reflect your brand strategy. The awards can be given to employees who demonstrate on-brand behavior. This recognition is valuable to not only reward those brand champions who live your brand, but help others understand what you expect and will embrace your brand strategy. Other ways of recognizing employee brand champions can include highlighting employees on your websites, in your newsletters, annual reports and other communications tools. Of course the obvious, is rewarding on-brand behavior at annual performance evaluation and salary increase time. Have you considered changing some of your employee titles, especially those in communications and marketing to reflect your brand strategy?

Most of us have rewards programs for our external customers, why don't we do the same for our internal customers?

Comments

[BIG Kahuna]

Gosh, amen. What a great article. I'm constantly preaching this to my clients. It AMAZES me how many companies do nothing for internal branding.