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When launching a new brand position, focus first on equipping and inspiring your customer-facing teams. They are the primary channel for delivering the message authentically. A previous launch was less successful because it missed this internal-first approach.
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Marketers over-index on crafting the perfect positioning framework. The real work is in collaborating with sales and demand gen to ensure the messaging is understood, tested, and consistently used across the company.
Establishing a strong brand involves more than customer research. It's critical that the internal team and key partners are aligned on the brand's vision and messaging. This internal clarity serves as the stable foundation for all external marketing efforts.
To maximize impact, every employee—from CEO to janitor—must be able to articulate the company's core message using the same, memorized soundbites. This internal alignment turns the entire organization into a unified sales force and amplifies the message externally through consistency.
To ensure authenticity in its brand repositioning, AT&T focused on employee buy-in first. The new purpose was launched internally, allowing the team to live the values before they were communicated externally. This "live it before you launch it" approach prevented the new positioning from feeling disconnected.
Instead of waiting for top-down alignment, salespeople should take the initiative to bridge the gap with marketing. The most effective way to do this is by bringing marketing team members onto actual sales calls. This direct exposure to customer interactions is the fastest way to ensure marketing creates relevant and effective support materials.
New businesses, especially in service industries, often focus so much on clients that they neglect their own brand. The key is to treat your own company as your first client, sweating the details of your strategy, positioning, and story before anything else.
To launch a transformative product within an established company, you must act as an internal salesperson. Understand other leaders' incentives, make your initiative a win for them, and get in the trenches to build trust and drive change management.
Don't dictate messaging from an ivory tower. As a leader, provide the core framework and examples (the first 80%). Then, empower reps to tweak and refine that last 20% based on real-time feedback from the market. This creates ownership and better results.
Don't dictate messaging from an ivory tower or leave reps to figure it out from scratch. Leaders should provide the core framework and initial examples (the first 80%). Reps, who get real-time market feedback, should then be responsible for the final 20% of tweaking.
Before launching its "Own the Dream" campaign, Rocket tested the tagline internally. The overwhelmingly positive employee response—feeling it perfectly articulated their daily work—was the ultimate validation. A brand's external message must align with its internal culture and purpose to be authentic and effective.
