Make staff the heart of your brand— Lucy Quist

The Managing Director of Airtel Ghana, Mrs Lucy Quist has advised companies to make their staff the heart of their brands to ensure growth and sustainability.

“You need to recognise the potential in your staff and believe in them because your success depends on every single individual in the company succeeding,” she said.

“But in order for them to succeed, you have to believe that there is power in their potential and that should inform how you behave with them,” she added.

Mrs Lucy Quist said this when the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana (CIMG) hosted her for its “evening with CEO annual symposium”

The lecture which was dubbed “an evening with Lucy Quist” was held under the theme, “Brand and people: making people the focal point of a brand”.

She pointed out that, the way organisations and companies behave with their staff would reflect the way the staff also behave with its customers.

“Your staff are your ambassadors so if they cannot live and feel your brand, then there is no way they will extend the same feeling to the customer,” she mentioned

According to her, a brand only exists only when people represent that brand and the first group of people is the staff who work for the company.

The next in the chain she said is the customers who are also representatives of the brand.

She added that customers are at the centre of the business and once the staff of the business are happy with what they do, that feeling will be extended to the customer which would obviously affect the business in a positive way.

Branding, she added tends to be largely associated with imagery –“associated with what people visualize of your brand and that is why good marketing companies try to have something distinctive about their brand that makes people want to take a second look or remember what their brand looks like.”

She was however, quick to add that “great marketers go beyond that physical representation and ask how that brand makes people feel – the emotional connection – so a great brand combines both the physical attributes and the emotional attributes.”

Branding evolving

The Vice President of CIMG, Mr Kojo Mattah, in his welcome address, pointed out that branding was evolving, as standardized branding is being replaced by a more meaningful, socially minded, authentic, and experiential branding.

He said consumers are now downgrading brands to commodity status if the brand fails to connect emotionally.

“The fastest and most innovative companies must respond to this crowd expression with bespoke products,” he said.

According to him, in order to achieve this, companies must treat their staff as investments and not cost.

“In this era of knowledge workers, discerning consumers and stiff competition, companies who treat their workers and brand management as cost instead of investment do so at their own peril,” he stated.

He urged companies to continue investing in the training and development of their human capital even when the company is going through difficult times.