The Conversation Manager

Turning your employees into your most important brand ambassadors should be the goal of any company. So many brands are currently looking for brand fans, but forget to look within their own company. Recently I wrote a blog post about my belief in Superstar companies. Well, Belgian's leading brand in terms of helping patients in their private homes, ‘Het Wit-Gele Kruis’, understood this quite well.

In East Flanders alone, they have more than 1500 employees helping patients in their own private homes. These days, it has become pretty difficult to find new nurses. Looking at the growth ambitions of this company, it will be quite challenging to find enough nurses. What is the best way to convince young nurses to join? Of course, the best way is through your existing nurses, especially if you have 1500 of them.

So, they started an online and offline campaign: ‘I have the best colleagues in the world’. Central point in this campaign is their website. The URL of the website (in Dutch) is printed on their 1200 company cars, the best billboards you can imagine.

Next step is placing their nurses in the spotlight on the website. Linking great on-the-job stories to the private social network of their employees gets the message in the open. It goes further than offline. The whole story is about being positive about your co-workers. One of the great things they do, is give ‘you are great’ - post cards to all employees. If you feel that one of your colleagues, a supplier, a patient, a student, an intern … has done a remarkable job, just show your appreciation through this post card.

Goal of the story is creating a positive working environment that (in my feeling) could change the companies’ culture in a very positive way. Companies like ‘Wit-Gele Kruis’ are making the lives of their patients more positive, they are doing an amazing job. The moment you can show to the world how proud you are about your job, culture will become more positive. It is actually facilitating your employees to show how proud they are.

I guess this is the best advertising a company could have. Turn those employees in superstars and make them show how proud they are to belong to their company.

One of the differences between a conversation manager & a traditional advertiser is the reframing of advertising towards activation. Advertising is no longer the endpoint, it's the beginning of a conversation.

This week we came across 2 inspiring activation campaigns via mobile apps.

1. The first one is the 'Baby campaign' by Durex, a mobile application for iPhone via which you can experience what it's like to have a real baby :)
   




2. The second one is made for Axa, a Belgian insurance company, experimenting with the possibilities of i-Ads. Have a look:
   



Both campaigns show the possibilities of consumer activation, going beyond traditional advertising in a very creative way.

What is your opinion? Do you have other good examples?

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One of the big Telco players in Belgium, Belgacom, has scored a new advertising hit! The previous one was the ‘Who took my badjas’ campaign. 180 000 views on youtube.com, 150 000 fans on Facebook and a lot of attention in the press and in the streets. Everyone used the famous quotes from the ad.

And they did it again … the new TV ad with the two children educating their parents is a big hit again. Now already 63 000 fans on Facebook 60 000 views (over different videos) on youtube.com.

Very nice, but what about it … Well in the first campaign everyone knewabout the ad and talked about it with friends. Most of us used the ‘Who took my badjas’ sentence regularly at that time. But no one was talking about the brand Belgacom. I even think the fanpage on Facebook was not initiated by them. Now Belgacom has evolved and has worked on the activation part. Due to the success of the new movie they got a lot of requests of parents who would like to have their children in the next Belgacom ad. They immediately acted upon this and started a new campaign triggering the activation. Parents can go to www.belgacomcasting.be and send in their children’s’ version of the quotes in the ad. Of course parents can post the movie on social media to spread the word.

I’m sure in this case, more people will know that Belgacom is behind the TV ad. By owning the Facebook page they can interact more with their fans, which they do, but they can go further in my opinion. They facilitate the conversation but do not join it actively. (Except for the postings of bloopers or pictures.) Some of the reactions can lead to interesting ideas, conversations and I’m sure sales. Some examples (in Dutch):

And due to the this hit, I’m sure more people will remember that the previous one … was also Belgacom!