The OTTO company is currently attracting a lot of attention with its "Corporate Influencer" program, which is actually about so-called "job ambassadors". My colleague Klaus Eck conducted an interview with Nick Marten, one of those responsible . In fact, this approach has been around in the company for some time, as shown by a posting in a XING group for OTTO interns that appeared more than a year ago .
This year, Daimler has brought on board a corporate influencer, the well-known tech blogger Sascha Pallenberg, who steadfastly evades classification and is very critical of the influencer topic; here is a recent interview with Sascha .
who I also interviewed for my book “Pilots in the Information Flood”, now gives linkedin data lectures on the topic of employee brand ambassadors, such as in this video.
Owned, Earned, Paid: Everything as usual?
This is probably also why it is often difficult to assign a precise role description of brand ambassadors, because in these digital times the various areas of corporate communications are increasingly intertwined - or at least should be intertwined in order to remain successful. If you strictly separate content marketing from PR and PR from social media activities, content silos remain which are, in total, far too cumbersome to reach the desired stakeholders and, above all, to enter into discussions with them.
Nevertheless, the areas of owned, earned and paid media can be clearly separated in the respective end product. Therefore, a brand ambassador from the company, i.e. a visible employee, can be clearly distinguished from a paid advertising face, who otherwise usually has little to do with the company in terms of content and therefore cannot act as a contact person within the company.
It is precisely the type of brand ambassador in the form of visible company employees that I am particularly interested in when consulting, and I published a book on this topic at the beginning of the year: Pilots in the flood of information. Successful communication strategies with strong brand ambassadors from the company .