How I accidentally became a brand ambassador and what it taught me about PR
Following on from a piece I wrote recently about how football fans are probably the ultimate brand acolytes, I got to wondering about the whole concept of the ‘brand ambassador’ and how they come into being, outside of hereditary sporting allegiance.
For a few years now, much has been written about how ambassadors are the holy grail of PR campaigns, as they basically continue doing your work for you, long after your activity has finished.
But I have always wondered how truly quantifiable the generation of these brand foot soldiers could ever be, at what point a regular customer becomes something more and whether it is ever a conscious decision to join their ranks.
So I sat down and thought: “How many brands are there that I would really take time out of my day (outside my work in PR, obviously) to extoll the virtues of?”
Using my own Twitter, Facebook and Instagram profiles as a case study, I totted-up each positive, unsolicited mention of an independent business or establishment who a) I have never worked for or with and b) Isn’t run by a friend.
Even within the surprisingly short list I cobbled-together, it turned out that there were two clear winners: Middlesbrough Football Club and Max’s Sandwich Shop.
Before I lose most of you, be reassured that this isn’t yet another post about football, the second brand was the one I was really interested in.
Just to give a really quick overview, Max’s is, as you may have guessed, a small independent sandwich shop and restaurant near my flat in North London, which I frequent pretty-much every weekend. The menu combinations are creative, the beers are local, the furnishings are simple and the atmosphere is incredible.
But the real feather in its cap is Max himself. As personable and entertaining a host as you could ever ask for, he knows my order off by heart and, without prompt, will happily pop a couple of extra sides into the takeaway bag if I look as though I’m coming off a particularly rough night.
I would change absolutely nothing about the place (something that can’t be said for Middlesbrough Football Club), if I were to design somewhere of my own, I could never top it.
As a result, I tell people about it.
Something good happens to Max’s (like their recent Observer Food Monthly ‘Cheap Eats’ award); I retweet it. Max shares a halfway amusing Instagram photo of the kitchen that produces my favourite hangover treat, I heart it. It’s as automatic and natural as liking a friend’s new profile picture or retweeting a Bob Mortimer joke.
But here’s the thing; however wonderful it may be, Max’s is still a business. It requires customers to return and spend money in order to survive and progress. Indeed, Max had to put his prices up by £1.50 earlier this year otherwise, as he puts it: “HMRC would have sent me to prison”.
I make, on average, one purchase from him a week (“ham, egg and chips, side of deep fried mac ‘n’ cheese balls”). Compare this with the five, six or seven I make from the supermarket across the road from the 4mediarelations office, or the countless ad-hoc purchases I make from the shop on the corner and we’re into a whole new line of questioning.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the purchases from the corner shop or the supermarket, they fulfil literally everything I would ever ask of them. No more, no less.
However, I’m not particularly likely to favourite a photo of Sainsbury’s seasonal sandwich range or retweet the corner shop’s latest delivery of obscure Polish lager.
So why aren’t these the brands that capture the imagination and have us all banging our social media drums? They always deliver on promises, are a staple of our daily lives and have gotten us all out of a pickle at some point or another.
Well, I think, in its most basic form, it boils down to three factors:
Fallibility
Community
Humanity
Max would, I’m sure, be the first to admit that his establishment doesn’t run with Tesco-like precision. Case in point: a friend of mine once popped in for a late night stomach-lining to find that they had run out of bread.
Sometimes the food is exactly as you remember, sometimes it’s a bit different. Sometimes it takes five minutes, sometimes ten. What you never question is that there is an actual real-life person on the other side of the kitchen door rustling up every single ham, egg and chips and another bringing it to you, wrapped-up in grease-proof paper and a plastic band.
We invest ourselves emotionally in human beings, rather than organisations: the sandwich guy who remembers your order and occasionally runs out of focaccia, the mercurial midfielder who looks half cut one minute and wins the game the next. It’s more difficult for the unconscious brand ambassador to find the magic in a well-oiled machine that has honed its offering down to a lean, supremely efficient service over a period of decades.
Now, I am not for a second suggesting that organic brand ambassador generation is the sole property of small brands. Far from it, as McDonald’s recent brand turnaround illustrates, a move away from uniform efficiency towards humanisation can pay dividends for some the world’s biggest companies, both in news feeds and profit margins.
What I am really getting at is that brands need to recognise that the only way to breed truly committed brand ambassadors is to foster a culture and an environment, both physically and digitally, that feels like a conversation with someone who works for the business, not the business itself.
We like brands who remember us, we like brands who welcome our company and, above all, we like brands who are capable of getting things wrong.
Because people make mistakes.