STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS

Tell me what you feel

For businesses that have the size and the client base, conducting stakeholder interviews is another powerful form of gathering perceptions, which helps develop the brand values later on. All forms of interviews are good because they embrace the employees and make them feel a part of any branding or re-branding process.

How much do your staff connect with your brand?

With the stakeholder interviews, we aim to uncover not necessarily opinions or improvements for the business but the keyword associations they make about the business. We try to understand to what extent money is a motivator, whether the company is just a vehicle for a pay cheque, or if it means something more. We look at what emotional attachment the employees have, and what level that functions at. Great companies connect with employees at a deep emotional level and spend part of their marketing budget to market internally to their staff, to make them understand and embrace the ethos of their company.

Another thing we look for in stakeholder interviews is the habits and the actions that staff or clients have towards the business. Opinions and what we think often makes our real intentions. For example, some of us might think that we care about the environment and are troubled by greenhouse gases when asked about climate change, but if we asked, what car you drive, and how many miles you drive, that would give a better indication of your actual worldview. A great book on this subject is Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore.