This is part three of an ongoing series.
Employees say: involve me more, train me less

What we’re hearing: Involving employees, through online communities, in the process of creating, managing and building brands is becoming standard practice among leading-edge marketers (and their compatriots in the human resources function).

Where are the leading-edge ideas in marketing?

Over the last 12 months, we’ve gone on the road to find out. In addition to learning from our clients, we’ve been spending time with visionary marketers at leadership forums in places like London, Las Vegas, Moscow, Mumbai, Miami, and even midtown Manhattan.

This is part one of an ongoing series.
Social media: going mainstream in a hurry

What we’re hearing: Experimentation with social media is so 2009. Visionary marketers are investing heavily in social media and are realizing short- and long-term benefits, both in terms of reputation building and revenue generation.

Federal policy makers are talking once again about reforming the healthcare system in the U.S. – and this time, it looks like they mean business. This wave of change will force healthcare marketers – in big pharma, in HMOs and other provider organizations, and in medical device manufacturers of all kinds – to rethink their brands, their customer relationships and their media choices in fundamental ways.

Branding experts agree that your employees rank at the top of your most valuable brand assets. Where opinions may vary is how to communicate to them in order to foster brand understanding and compliance.

I have spent the past 10 years helping many corporations, both large and small, with brand asset management. During this time, overwhelmingly, the question I most often receive is “Can’t we just deliver PDFs of our guidelines instead of creating a whole Web site?”

There are three primary reasons behind this question: