Inspiration Boulevard

The latest ROI numbers on traditional mass market media according to Keller-Fay Research is at an all time low of just 4% while ROI numbers for word-of-mouth continues to soar above 60% in many cases.  With such an impressive business case, the danger becomes that businesses see word-of-mouth as the latest new shiny marketing toy to be procured.

But, building sustainable word-of-mouth brand movements is no different than building an office building.  Without solid planning, a strong foundation, and paying tenants, you could go bankrupt.  The only difference is, the plans for successful word-of-mouth movements are created in collaboration with a wide range of employee and customer involvement.  So when the "doors are open," employees and customers have a vested interest in your success.

End to End Advocate Profit Chain Management.

Here's a promise. Build it yourself as a corporate leader without the involvement of employees and customers alike, and you will surely fail.  On the other hand, build it with them and not just for them, and their success becomes your success.

Our commitment at the Global Institute for Inspiration is to help you architect, build, leverage and manage your word-of-mouth efforts in a highly collaborative way.  Whether you’re organization is primarily B2B, B2C or NGO/nonprofit, we can help you inspire and ignite your next brand movement.

Every organization has both an inner core and an outer core and it's mission critical that the two be aligned. Here’s an overview of our approach:

Tapping Into Powerful Inner Core (employee/volunteers) Activities

Imagine igniting a group of passionate customers around a brand story.  The story is highly contagious.  Customers begin to engage others by the hundreds into your story. Oops…Now, your worst nightmare, a single customer finds one of the many touch-points to be disappointing.  Now as fast as word-of-mouth worked for you, it now works against you.  (Google Maytag Sux for a real life example)

To ensure that your newly energized customer is inspired at every touch-point, GII engages internal stakeholders on three levels:

1. Identify, via an online survey of employees, any inspiration-gaps that may exist between leadership culture and employee culture.
2. Facilitate and foster crystal clarity what you stand for as a brand to lay the foundation for developing your unique, inspiring brand-story that your evangelists will build and deliver on.
3. Develop a Social Media Playbook that clarifies policy, identifies most appropriate brand-relevant platforms, and specific success metrics.

Leveraging the Outer Core (your customers)

There is no greater role a customer could play on your behalf than to serve as enthusiastic evangelists, providing at least 5x the average LTV (life time value) of the typical customer.  To help your brand tap into these powerful advocates, GII will:

• Help identify your most passionate customers
• Facilitate an offline gathering and/or retreat for key employees and customers
• Develop in collaboration with employees and customers the brand-story that will help purpose your product and/or service
• Help you live your brand talk consistently and distinctively
• Equip your evangelists on the ethics and best practice of Social Media tools in engaging others into the brand-story
• Collaborate to create ongoing sustainable offline and online points of integration