How SARS got it right with Brand Ambassadors

By Marc Kornberger Aug 2, 2011    0 

If you had to market your company as a brand of choice on campus, WITHOUT any marketing materials, like posters, flyers OR a recruitment faire how would you do it ?

Hopefully, if you dig deep enough within yourself the answer you’ll find is ‘word of mouth’. And the most powerful champions of word-of-mouth, in our world of work are brand ambassadors - students that especially chosen to represent your brand on campus – in fact they have to LIVE, eat and breath the brands they represent. For the last 10 years we have been running successful brand ambassador programmes for popular youth brands like Axe, BlackBerry and Smirnoff Spin to name a few. Our brand ambassadors have activated at the hottest parties. They had influence at all the popular areas of campus including the campus radio and DJ’s and societies. Wherever the action was at on campus, that’s where these brand ambassadors could be found activating for brands.

Another term for brand ambassadors programmes are PEER–TO-PEER programmes. And it’s no secret that the youth are far more impressionable to marketing messages when it comes from their peers than if they see it on any other marketing medium like billboards or online.

But NEVER had a brand ambassador campaign been run to promote an employer brand. That was until we began working with SARS in 2009.
SARS Objectives

SARS’s biggest challenge 2 years ago was simple – finding quality graduates and do it using a peer-to-peer network as their marketing force and one that could deliver their message throughout the university calendar year.

They also were fighting a perceptual battle , and wanted to change the way people thought about SARS. For many when they thought about SARS it was about “those people who just like to take our money”

In the end they wanted to do 2 things. Be able to present a unified message & educate young people around SARS’s contribution to South Africa, and in the process position SARS as an employer of choice

So how would SARS’s brand ambassador campaign be different to other sexy brands like Axe, and Spin ?
1. We had to take away the word sexy from the equation. SARS’s message was to convey their company in a professional light minus the glam. Plus, SARS HR also had to justify this programme to their business divisions – no easy task in itself.
2. The depth of knowledge of the brand ambassadors had to be much deeper. And they had to keep a tight control on the communications that were coming through. There had to be only 1 unified message.
3. They were punting the employer brand and not the consumer brand. To understand this, think about RED BULL. The consumer brand is that “Red bull gives you ….”. But the employer brand, in other words the type of person they are looking for to head up their accounts department is very likely something completely different.
4. The Brand Ambassadors had to be squeaky clean, not party animals with 20 girlfriends. These guys had to be responsible and live up to being a SARS brand champion.
And 5. These brand ambassadors would be activating on campus, primarily at final year classes, leadership societies and final year residences – not the beer halls, or parties.

The HUNT & Training
And so it began. We helped SARS hunt for the best brand ambassadors across campuses throughout the country. We helped them market this using student websites like www.StudentVillage.co.za and gradx.net & got thousands of entries. Who would have known that being a SARS ambassador would be so popular?

We were looking for GO Getters who were self starters and could get into any lecturers classroom, and society and any residence to talk about SARS.
Once the candidates had been chosen they needed to be trained on what it means to work at SARS. They needed to truly get what the brand stood for and how to convey this to their peers. Remember they had no marketing materials like posters or billboards – THEY WERE THE MARKETING MATERIALS, and their flesh and blood had to embody SARS.

Roles
It wasn’t enough that they knew about SARS – they now needed to ACTIVATE on campus. Each brand ambassador had to perform a number of interventions per month. They could target lectures, societies or even the residences as long as they were finding the right students that SARS were looking to recruit – 3rd year and honours students who were ideal for SARS’s graduate programmes.

With a national base of ambassadors doing at least a number of interventions a month , over a year period the BA’s had reached nearly all areas of their campus that SARS were trying to target.

SARS also used these brand ambassadors at their CAREER FAIRES which they held later in the year. Now they wouldn’t risk having a promoter team for the day who knew little to nothing about SARS. Now they would have their brand ambassadors with them at their stands who could talk directly to the brand and answer most questions related to SARS as an employer of choice.

Results
So, the big question is ‘ How did this work out for SARS’ ? It worked incredibly with SARS not only more applications, but also the right kind of students applying. In Addition to this, according to the MAGNET survey, SARS moved from its previous years 9th place position as the ideal place for students to work in the commerce category to 4th place at the end of 2009. This was further backed up by SAGRA’s annual candidate survey which showed SARS’s move from number 5 as the most desirable place to work in the government sector in the previous year to number 3 after the brand ambassador programme and eventually to number 1 in the public sector. In the end it was clear why SARS had moved in popularity as an employer of choice, and it was all due to the brand ambassador programme.