employee engagement

On Tuesday, I wrote about cult brands from the customer perspective. Today, my focus is on a view from the inside, from the employee perspective. What is the employee's contribution or impact on creating a cult brand? (Given my recent push for focusing on the employee first, this follow-up perspective should be no surprise!) Can employees become raving fans? A simple answer is this: Yes; employees are your "customers" (albeit internal), too!

The folks at Deloitte recently released, The Next Evolution: Store 3.0, a report on the readiness of retailers for the store of tomorrow. Although the report offers a somewhat limited and biased perspective since it is based on a survey of only 39 current retail executives, it raises some important questions about the requirements of the future store.

Ever more executives want to create marketing magic by turning their consumers into "brand promoters". But with all the customer advocacy programmes flying around, many of them seem to miss the elephant in the room: their own employees might not be "that" inclined to recommendation themselves.

January has seen a spate of people tweeting things they shouldn’t – from Diane Abbott to Ed Miliband in the UK to countless people working for brands across the world. We’ve also seen a renewed debate in the UK about how the professions should use social media – notably about teachers befriending their pupils on Facebook.