8:00 a.m.
Registration, Continental Breakfast & Networking

Kathryn Yates, Global Practice Director – Communication
WATSON WYATT WORLDWIDE

8:40 a.m.

Aligning Employees And Customers Around The Brand:
An Internal Branding Approach To Improving Attraction,
Retention And Engagement To Boost Performance

While almost all managers understand their business strategy only half of them can articulate their company brand and under half of their customer-facing employees say they aren't able to deliver on the brand promise for lack of training, tools or other support. New research by Watson Wyatt uncovers the gap between customer and employee experience as well as the performance power when the two are aligned. In this session, you will learn how this research can guide an analysis of your own organization's brand alignment.

In addition, you will take a simple brand alignment quiz to help diagnose opportunities for improvement. Based on years of experience and the latest research, this session will help you understand the distinct DNA of organizations and how you can successfully leverage brand attributes to attract, retain and engage employees.

Kathryn Yates, Global Practice Director – Communication
WATSON WYATT WORLDWIDE

9:40 a.m.

Speed Networking

Meet your colleagues in this fun and fast-paced forum! You'll have a chance to meet and greet your fellow attendees.

10:40 a.m.

What's Your Real Brand Story?: Using Culture Assessment And Story-Based Communications Tools To Engage Your Employees And Build Value For Your Organization

This innovative case study will show how a science-based government organization "found its voice," engaged its staff in a new way of talking about the organization, and learned how to tell its real story—all through a cohesive, culture-based process called "Storybranding."

Through Storybranding, the Langley Research Center's Science Directorate, an organization within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was able to define and tell its story, and learn how to engage others in the most meaningful and motivating aspects of its work. This in-depth session will share the process, which integrates internal quantitative and qualitative culture assessment to define an internal brand with the training, resources and materials employees needed to convey it. You will also learn about the Organizational & Team Culture Indicator, the foundational Storybranding assessment tool that "types" an organization based on the storylines that best define its values, strengths and operating style.

• Help any organization understand the storylines that shape its purpose, personality and behavior
• Involve an entire organization in the development of an authentic, inspiring and compelling brand
• Identify and leverage the cultural strengths most likely to create internal and external branding success
• Transform fact-based, attribute-oriented messages into more inspiring, more outcome-oriented communications
• Increase the resonance and effectiveness of all communications programs

Lelia Vann, Director, Langley Research Center's Science Directorate
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION,
LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER

Cindy Atlee, Partner
THE STORYBRANDING GROUP

11:35 a.m.

How To Engage And Motivate Employees When Faced With New Competition

Royal Mail (the British Postal Service) has over 360 years of corporate history. It is well respected globally, and is the United Kingdom’s most trusted brand. As a state-owned business, it employs over 180,000 people – delivering to EVERY home and business in the UK, every day.

In 2006, the UK postal market was open to competition for the first time ever. Competitors invested in delivery networks and started selling solutions at lower cost – cherry picking the lucrative clients.

In the face of this new competitive environment, Royal Mail needed a way to engage and motivate their workforce. Seeking to make their employees ambassadors for the business, they decided that a new sales lead referrals program was the way forward. The aim was to boost morale and identify possible leads to give Royal Mail the competitive advantage. They called it the "Watch and Win" program.

• The brand development and the launch processes
• How employees were energized and motivated
• How ordinary postal workers became brand ambassadors
• How success was measured and how employees were rewarded

Christian Petersen, Sales Referrals Manager
ROYAL MAIL

Carol Whitworth, Creative Director
HOME

Join a group of your communication and marketing colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated by one of our expert speakers. Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing internal branding concerns.

2:00 p.m.

How To Align And Brand The Culture Of A Non-Profit, Decentralized And Unionized Healthcare Company To Support Organizational Goals

Every company is unique, but some companies are more unique than others. Kaiser Permanente is one of those rare companies for which most text books don't have case studies. Founded in 1948, Kaiser Permanente was the country's first health management organization focusing on prepayment, prevention and an integrated approach to healthcare. Now, Kaiser Permanente is a $35 billion non-profit healthcare company that delivers healthcare to its 8 million members on a consensus basis with its 15,000 doctors that comprise The Permanente Medical Group and its 125,000 employees that belong to 32 various unions.

Trying to brand and align employee culture at Kaiser Permanente, or any company like it, requires a tailored, integrated and comprehensive, top-down/bottom-up decentralized strategy that is rooted in a brand positioning that customers and employees truly believe in and the company can actually deliver on. Given the operational size and complexity of Kaiser Permanente, a decentralized strategy was essential to align their culture. To that end, the company took a rather unconventional and risky approach by first launching their award winning "Thrive" advertising campaign in the marketplace as a way to galvanize and align the internal organization around the brand. As a result, policies, training, tools and incentives are now being deployed throughout the organization to empower employees to build the brand every day on the job. Furthermore, management's expectations of employees in terms of living the brand and delivering branded customer service are being specified in new union contracts and linking pay to performance.

• Identifying and overcoming the challenges of aligning a highly unionized, decentralized company
• Establishing traction with union employees through key strategies and tactics
• Creating a clearly defined, evidence-based brand position
• Leveraging the power of an ownable and relevant advertising message to align employees around the brand
• Using policies, tools, training and incentives to align employees with the brand
• Being prescriptive in terms of brand expectations

Scott Power, Brand Planner, Internal Brand Planning, Program Offices
KAISER PERMANENTE

3:10 p.m.

Using Effective Brand Storytelling: How To Turn Your Sales Force Into Brand Ambassadors And Get Management To Support The Initiatives

Where does a brand strategy run the biggest risk of NOT being fulfilled? At the point of sale. And it’s not because of inconsistent tools or touch points – those are primarily external and can be more easily controlled. Rather, it's more likely due to inconsistent behaviors – how the sales force does or does not deliver on your brand promise. While sales are typically a distributed function, they are highly dependent upon people who are taught to tailor their message to each individual customer. In retail, this can mean no two stores are ever alike and in business-to-business marketing it might result in hundreds of unique PowerPoint presentations, supposedly from the same firm.

• Translate an umbrella (and sometimes complex) brand strategy into a simple brand story
• Develop effective tools for brand storytelling
• Train sales people how to best tell the brand story through interactive workshops and role playing
• Measure qualitative and quantitative results
• Get everyone in the sales organization to live the brand and management to support the initiative

Benji A. Baer, Director, Brand Strategy and Communications
LEGG MASON

Karen Hough, CEO
IMPROVEDGE

4:05 p.m.

How Creating A New Brand Promise Can Help Employees And Customers Feel Like They're "Going Places:" Key Secrets For Better Employee Engagement And Customer Experiences

How is it that some companies can build tremendous employee engagement and deliver amazing customer experiences while other companies struggle to do it? Is there some magical spell, mysterious code or hidden formula? The answer is of course, no, but there are a few key secrets to employee engagement and customer experience.

• Understanding how the realities of emotions in human behavior will engage more associates in living the brand
• Realizing "The little things you do are more important than the big things you say"
• Creating candid ongoing communications between the brand and all of its stakeholders
• Recognizing employee engagement is sustained only when it is "caught not taught"

Alison Clark, AARP Marketing Strategy
THE HARTFORD FINANCIAL SERVICES GROUP, INC.

Daryl Travis, CEO & Founding Partner
BRANDTRUST

Let's meet and have a drink as you relax with your peers. ALL conference attendees and speakers are welcome to join us for this special opportunity to meet new colleagues. Don't miss this chance to benchmark ideas over complimentary drinks!

Sign up during the day for dinner with a group. Take advantage of Washington, DC's fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.