Brand ambassadors make internal transitions positive and effective

When communicating a company change, internal leaders – brand ambassadors – can make internal communications effective and positive. Monica Silva, team lead of internal communications at Phillips 66, talks to Brandonomics about how their brand ambassadors led the charge in their successful spin-off from ConocoPhillips.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, Vice President of Strategy at Savage and my guest today is Monica Silva, Team Lead of Internal Communications at Phillips 66. So Monica, welcome to Brandonomics.

Monica: Thanks Robin. I’m glad to be here.

Robin: Well, I would love to talk to you today about internal communications. So specifically you are in charge of the communications of the spinoff of Phillips 66 from ConocoPhillips last year, and one of your key strategies was using brand ambassadors as part of internal communications. So I want to know, how did you use brand ambassadors and, more importantly, why did you use them?

Monica: So we had a really great opportunity with this spinoff because we had a group of very excited employees. They were really looking forward to the future and they were excited about what was to come with Phillips 66. So we knew we wanted to capitalize on that. So we chose a group of stakeholders who had the most sphere of influence with our employees. So for us that was the people who had a lot of interaction with employees, who were leaders of the company, who were thought-leaders in our environment. For Phillips 66, that was our HR community, our global communicators, and then the top 60 leaders of the company.

Robin: So you’ve identified them. So how did you arm them with tools that they needed to do this?

Monica: We gave them everything they could possibly need. We had a number of onboarding sessions ahead of the launch to give them the pre-inform of exactly what the vision and values of the company would be. And you know they felt like they got inside information ahead of time. So that was very important. They felt like they were involved in the program. And then we have a communications tool box where we just arm our leaders and all of these key ambassadors with any tool that they could need including talking points, frequently asked questions, conversation starters, PowerPoint templates so they can go take roadshows and town halls and just shout from the rooftops about our Phillips 66 vision and values.

Robin: Well great. I’m so glad you shared how to use these brand ambassadors and internal communications. Thank you very much.

Monica: Absolutely.

Robin: Well this has been another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. Stay tuned for another episode.

 

Phillips 66, created through the repositioning of ConocoPhillips, is one of the world’s largest independent downstream companies. The company operates three segment-leading businesses: refining & marketing, midstream and chemicals. The team of more than 13,500 employees are providing energy and improving lives daily. https://www.phillips66.com/