Whom to Nominate as Brand Champions

Brand champion teams are best composed of between two and twenty cross-functional and multilevel members. If your business is widely dispersed, you need at least two brand champions at each location. This way you will have a "spare" if one leaves. Brand championing can become a lonely affair at times, and the brand supporters need support themselves!

It is possible to nominate one brand champion for each department. However, we have not seen this work as effectively as identifying a cross-functional team. When brand champions are identified with a department, they begin to feel the burden of this responsibility as extra work. They also tend to remain more committed to their department than to the brand champion team. A group of brand champions working together and not representing departments, however, is extremely different.

Choosing the members of this team can be a sensitive issue because being nominated is generally considered desirable. Sometimes managers know which staff are natural leaders. In larger organizations, division managers may get so many volunteers that they will need to conduct interviews to make the right choice.

Choose your brand champions based on what is required of them. Behavioral requirements are a good standard for selection. Here is a possible beginning checklist of requirements:

• Being the driving force for the branded service promise by sharing energy, enthusiasm, and knowledge

• Living the vision—i.e., leading by example

• Getting things done

• Acting as networkers, catalysts, and peacemakers

• Becoming cheerleaders, inspiring and exciting people and what they do

• Being unofficial listening points for other staff

• Respecting people's confidences

• Creating internal public relations for who you are and what you do

We are frequently asked if high-level managers should serve on brand champion teams. In most cases, we do not recommend this. A manager who meets the same requirements as the brand champions (see the list above) can be an adviser or consultant to the group. Obviously, someone needs to take responsibility for the brand champions, and a well-positioned adviser can fulfill this function.

However, when strong-willed managers have been included on these teams, we have seen employees immediately defer to the manager, which stifles staff creativity. We know of a brand champion team led by a general manager. Not surprisingly, that group got a great deal done, but nothing was initiated by the team. A brand champion team needs to take responsibility for originating, organizing, and completing tasks, rather than merely fulfilling tasks assigned by management.

For this reason, we also recommend that the initial team building be facilitated by someone from outside the firm. If this is not done, the dynamics of the organization can be so strong that the brand champions will tend to fall in line with perceived management requirements. Any facilitator who is an employee of the organization will be seen as a mouthpiece for management imperatives. A facilitator from outside the organization will be better able to craft a dynamic whereby the team takes responsibility for itself and its carefully defined role.

Clients we have worked with have benefited from their brand champions in different ways. One, for example, assigned its brand champions the task of running brand induction programs. In that case, the champions had to be skilled facilitators, comfortable working with groups. In other instances, the brand champions became spokespeople for the organization in marketing efforts. In those cases, the champions had to be effective when in front of the media.

TMI has also worked with clients where TMI consultants delivered the brand induction messages. In these cases, the brand champions became the host team for those meetings. This is a great experience for them. They get to meet a large part of the organization, they effectively learn the messages of the branded customer service program, they develop meeting management skills, and they remove a significant burden from human resources staff to handle the details of program logistics.

Normally, brand champions continue their regular jobs. If the work of championing on-brand service is significant, and it can be, then brand champions need to have authority to devote a percentage of their time to this activity. Because of time demands, brand champions should rotate on and off the team. This not only gives fresh blood and ideas to the team, but it also creates a definitive time frame for service. Brand championing can take a substantial amount of time, depending upon the energy of the team, and members need to know they will not be obligated forever. A rotating membership is probably best with six-month-long rotations and with tenures no longer than one and a half to two years. To start a rotating membership, one-third of the group would serve just one six-month rotation, another third would serve two rotations, and the final third would serve the full one and a half years. Thereafter, every group would serve three six-month rotations, with one-third of the members being replaced every six months.