Sonia Andresson-Nolasco

Brand Ambassadors 2.0

New Balance raises the bar on its event staff’s role at retail events

Sonia Andresson-Nolasco | From the March 2010 Issue

+ Featured in Consumer Events

Leaders of the Pack

Eight ways to transform event staffers into next-gen brand ambassadors

Provide Backup.
Despite heavy training, sometimes even the most sophisticated brand ambassadors still need support. For the New Balance program, GMR created an 800-number hotline that served as a command center in case a consumer posed a question the staff couldn’t answer.

Pick a Leader.
Appoint one lead brand ambassador to gather all the collected data and send it to headquarters. “Captured data gets sent to our headquarters twice a day,” says Keith Puckett, senior partner at Method Models. “We then prepare it in a way that’s presentable to the client.”

Record the Details.
Because there’s very little room for interpretation in this ROI-driven industry, Method not only has its staffers provide qualitative data, like “the consumer said with a smile,” it requires that they record their actual quotes, too.

Pay Them Well.
If you want a professional to do the job, be prepared to pay a professional wage. “Pay brand ambassadors enough that the job is worth their time,” says Shelly Justice, ceo at Convention Models & Talent. “Give incentives like a completion bonus if the goals are met.”

Invest in Training.
“There is literally nothing more important than proper, strategic training for your brand ambassadors—they’re the first and the final word for you out in the field,” says Attack! managing director Christian Jurinka. “If they understand the goals of the program and what you’re trying to do, you significantly up your chances for success.”

Go High-tech.
If you want to adjust your events on the fly, outfit your ambassadors with the right tools for the job. “Arming talent with Blackberries, Netbooks and other data access devices allows them to provide feedback and photos in real time,” says Jessica Browder-Stackpoole, ceo at EventPro Strategies.

Plan for Bandwidth.
“While most data-collecting devices can now transmit right on the spot in real time, the upload can take forever and staff may have to take it home to finish the process,” says Larry Hess, ceo at Encore Nationwide. “So make sure they have enough bandwidth at home to upload the data.”

Tell Them What You Want.
Use different types of media to show trainees exactly what you’re looking for. “In addition to in-person training, create comprehensive training videos for brand ambassadors to review,” suggests Steve Weiner, director-business development at Ascent Talent, Model, Promotion.

The digital age has helped transform the typical event staff from warm bodies to tech-savvy, data-collecting machines. More and more, brand ambassadors are being asked to collect consumer information with a handheld device or to report back via web-based software. They’re also being trained to add subjective feedback to objective data captured, oftentimes reporting it back to the brand immediately so that it can tweak the program before the next day’s event. The bar has definitely been raised.

So, the question is, are these sophisticated brand ambassadors delivering the goods? New Balance says, yes. It learned a lot about its consumers last spring when it dispatched 275 of these qualitative and quantitative data-collecting machines (a.k.a. “Fit Specialists”) to 435 retailers across the country to educate consumers about its product and to drive sales.

“Within seconds after disengaging from the consumer the Fit Specialist reported that person’s level of engagement,” says Kevin Tripp, senior manager-channel marketing at New Balance. “We received a ton of metrics about how many engagements we had all the way through purchase.”

The brand ambassadors were picked from 2,200 applicants screened by an in-depth online questionnaire that weeded out folks that didn’t meet the brand’s criteria. Then, select applicants were screened by the New Berlin, WI-based handling agency GMR Marketing and then by the account team that works directly with New Balance, which was looking for representatives that lead a healthy lifestyle, owned a pair of its sneakers and had some sort of sales experience since they would have to intercept consumers as they entered the stores. “You need someone who is not a wall flower but at the same time doesn’t come across too strong and intimidates the consumers,” says Tripp.

Because of the cost of equipping a large staff with handheld computers, the brand ambassadors were provided with scorecards that helped measure the interaction with each consumer. At the end of each day, the fit specialists uploaded their figures onto a microsite to share with the New Balance team.

Tripp says the only regret he has with the program is how short it was. “It looks like it costs a lot of money to hire brand ambassadors, but you end up having greater efficiencies if you run the program longer than just a quick in and out the way we did it,” he says. “In retrospect, we spent a lot of time and money to find these fit specialists and train them, so we probably should have run the program longer.”

On the bright side, when New Balance is ready for another run, so are its brand ambassadors. EM