Speaker 1: Messaging is super important for any brand, internally and externally. As you're building your messaging, it needs to be clear, it needs to show the unique value that you bring to the marketplace, and it needs to be consistent, both internally and externally, so that it's trusted and safe and well-regarded in the marketplace. Without consistency in messaging, your brand loses its ability to gain trust. If people in the marketplace, your customers don't know what to expect when they interact with your brand, either purchasing a product, interacting with the people that are providing your service, whatever that may be. If it's not a consistent experience, then it doesn't feel safe and predictable. So you don't get the opportunity to build trust, to make people feel really comfortable with your brand so that they want to recommend it to others so that they know how to use it and leverage your product or service to the best of its capabilities, which can lead to them becoming great brand ambassadors for you. It's just a huge opportunity when you're consistent with your brand messaging. A lot of times, brands will assume that as long as they put out flashy marketing materials with that brand promise, that's enough. But if those customers are interacting either online or over the phone or in a store with your brand through your people, those people also need to embody that brand, whatever that brand messaging is. It really is where the internal core values of your company align with your external brand promise. And when those two things happen in a really authentic and organic way that's consistent across the board, both internally and externally, then your customers are guaranteed to have a really nice experience that lives up to your brand promise. So internally, the foundation for everything is your core values. They need to be authentic to who your company really is, not who you want to be, so they're not aspirational. They are reality of who your company is, and they are clearly defined. They are reiterated over and over again internally with your employees. They're brought to town halls. People get shout-outs for embodying those core values. There's all sorts of really great ways to engage employees with those, but it really does start with not a poster on the wall, but a lived experience of embodying the behaviors that represent your core values internally. Everyone in your company has a potential to be a brand ambassador for you, which is really exciting. Their experience with your brand needs to be consistent. So whatever you're saying internally needs to line up with what you're presenting externally. Like if you say, we care about the environment, and then don't recycle in your office, your employees are gonna feel that disconnect, right? But when they see the connection between what you're promising to deliver and then what you actually do deliver for your customers and your employees, they get really excited, they get bought in, and they will buy in at different levels. So some may find it's really exciting to reshare your social posts, right? They're just, hey, look at the great things my company's doing, and they're resharing them. Some will create their own organic social posts that they wanna share out, an experience they had in your company, or a behind-the-scenes look at what's going on in their office day-to-day, or a customer story. It happens at different levels, and wherever their comfort level is is perfect, because any conversation they're having about your company, as long as it's that positive interaction, is a great way for your brand to just organically gain its trust and value in the marketplace. I think internally you have to be talking about what's going on cross-departmentally. So what are all the different teams working on doing? What is HR? What are those initiatives that HR is taking on? What are sales initiatives that are happening right now? What is the marketing focus? What products are being launched? When everyone in the company is aware holistically of what your brand is doing in the marketplace and what those internal initiatives are vying for space for internally, that alignment can happen much more naturally. It's a missed opportunity with a lot of companies. There's siloed effects where HR is just operating over here, maybe a training and development over here. We've got sales, we've got marketing, we've got product operations, and they're all siloed. But if we bring those things together, then we have a better chance of really communicating the true value and getting really excited about all the things the company is doing. That requires intentionality. It requires setting up time to meet or share information. Maybe it's at your town halls, you're presenting to each other all the things that are going on in your different departments. Maybe it's show and tell externally where you're bragging openly about all the things the company's doing, but then making sure on a company intranet that that information is at least made available to the internal brand ambassadors that you have who may want to pick it up and shout it to the world how awesome your company is.