I admire organisations that give their people the opportunity to experience the products they produce for their customers.
Taste it. Think about it. Share it.
Of course this isn’t anything new.
My wife once told me a story about a job she had as a student peeling potatoes in a chip factory. At lunchtime the canteen would serve free chips to all employees but she simply couldn’t bring herself to eat them. After peeling potatoes for hours on end, the last thing she wanted to see was another potato. Needless to say, she left the factory after her twelve hour shift never to return and to this day she still can’t understand how the ‘old timers’ were able to sit down and merrily eat their plate of chips?
Did they become immune to the smell of potatoes and chip oil or had they genuinely fallen in love with the product and would tell the world about it given half a chance?
Imagine if they did get the chance?
But really, would I want to hear about my chip from an employee while they were peeling the potatoes or eating them in the canteen? Things like; how they choose the best quality potatoes and their opinion on how potatoes should be grown to produce a more rounded shape that would be easier and faster to peel.
On first thought I think I’d prefer my relationship with the chip to be formed by an inspiring brand promise on TV and fresh looking packaging in a fresh feeling store.
Oh no, it looks like I’m a product of true ‘consumerism’!
I wonder if there’s a new ‘…ism’ on the horizon, something like, ‘transparencism?’
Take the employee advocacy programme from General Motors called The Company Vehicle Ambassador Program which lets employees take a loan car home – a great idea.
I’m sure the initiative has a robust feedback process in place to direct employee observations and ideas to the relevant team(s) within the organisation driving continuous improvement. But that would still keep the employee experience inside the walls of the organisation and it would only be friends and family of the employee that would get the benefit of his truthful opinion.
Imagine if…
The employee was able to share his experience online while driving the car home (safely of course) and give his genuine opinion of the vehicle – imagine the larger audience that could be reached!
It’s not sales. It’s not marketing. It’s just the opinion from a guy who helped make it.
He’ll talk from his gut and we’d believe him (this is when you’re really glad you made the investment to create a branded employee experience!)
I wonder if this human and authentic, real life insight into the vehicle’s performance would shatter the image in my mind formed through millions of dollars of marketing budget.
Would I still want to buy the vehicle if the real employee didn’t fit the well researched segmentation customer image I’d come to expect?
Have I fallen in love with a promise that‘s fake but one that I’ve come to like?
Does that mean I’m fake?
In theory the true experience should be in harmony with the brand promise and I think brands might be willing to become more transparent, but I’m not sure if I could handle the transition to truth?
Maybe I’ve become so accustomed to believing in an unattainable brand promise and satisfied it it’s only partly met?
Maybe the truth of the real brand ‘inside’ will be too much for me to take – so should be hidden?
Maybe not.
As we search for more authenticity in everything we do and in everything we are, it won’t be long when the truth from ‘inside’ is what we’ll expect from the brands we love.
Only the brands that do as they say will do, will succeed when the veil final falls away.
Filed under: Employee Experience, Brand advocacy, brand transparency, Employee advocacy, Employee Experience, General Motors
