With the emergence of brand ambassadors’ concept, many corporates have been using celebrities to market their brands. Celebrities are usually popular and followed by many fans, so it makes sense that corporations benefit from using them in order to get their message across. A celebrity can capture consumers’ attention, link the brand with a personal image and associate personal positive attributes with those of the product concerned.
The key element of brand ambassadors is their ability to use promotional ways to influence people to buy and consume more products of that particular brand. By doing so, s/he serves to increase brand awareness and eventually sales. Brand ambassadors are usually meant to exemplify the corporate identity in appearance, behaviour and values. Sometimes, those brand ambassadors play a significant role to increase or decline sales of products.
By saying brand ambassadors, it shouldn’t necessarily be thinking of the big names of football celebrities or Oscar-winning actors. They could also be individuals who can still have a significant impact on a brand’s image. Sometimes, people trust brand ambassadors for their characters, morals or attitude regardless of what s/he is a celebrity for! However, in some cases celebrity branding could go wrong and affect product revenue.
Accordingly, what some corporates have done is hiring their own brand ambassador who is assigned to represent a brand in a positive image. This ensures the loyalty of the employee to always strive promoting his employer’s brand. Other corporates use their customers to be their brand ambassador whom could be the most trusted ambassadors of a brand. It’s all a reflection of the excellent customer satisfaction they have experienced from that brand!
On the contrary, nowadays, many organisations unfortunately do not recognise the importance of sustaining customer satisfaction! Today, ensuring customer’s satisfaction is what really matters more than just providing a service or a product to a customer. The same product or service could be provided by another supplier, but the satisfaction and good impression could not be received by a competitor. Hence, a focus on customer satisfaction is of high priority than customer service. As Bill Gates advised, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
It was a real truth what has been said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Such statement needs to be taught to employees, so they would recognise the importance behind doing a good customer service and what impacts it has on people’s impressions. Sometimes, it’s because of employers are not highly concerned about loyally when serving their customers or clients so do their employees.
Mahatma Gandhi was absolutely right when he said, “The customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work, but he is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
The organisation shall have dedicated department concerned about monitoring customer satisfaction. Receiving a distinguished experience is what makes customers satisfied and afterward get attached to the brand. Just imagine that one day you are about to purchase a product, but because of an unpleasant customer experience or attitude of a promoter or salesperson you change your mind. Possibly, you might even hate that particular shop or brand for that displeasing experience you had.
Such incidents happen sometimes when sales executives or service providers do not really care much about what kind of experience or impression s/he gives a customer. Here where customers serve as brand ambassadors and they could share their experiences with colleagues, friends or family. For that reason, this reflects the influence of the word of mouth in marketing as it can be the absolute best advantage or the worst downside for a brand.
Customers are your trusted brand ambassadors!
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