Brand Ambassadors: What They Are and Why They’re Important

Businesses need to gain exposure in order to become successful. Many businesses, small and large, have recently adopted the idea of brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors can be internal or external. Each company’s internal employees are technically brand ambassadors, as they represent the brand they work for.  External brand ambassadors are people who are hired by the company (sometimes unpaid) as influencers to promote the brand via various marketing outlets.

Brand ambassadors can promote a company in numerous ways. One of the most popular tools brand ambassadors use to get the word out about a company is social media. They post images on Instagram, tweet about how much they enjoy using the company’s product or service on Twitter, or even write a Facebook post about the brand. The idea behind this form of marketing is that the ambassador will get his or her friends and family to learn about the brand and try it.  Through a domino-like effect, their friends and family will share to more friends and family, and so on.

With the ocreations office settling into the new office location in Bedford Square, we hired a street team of students from the Pittsburgh Art Institute’s Inspire PGH group to introduce our brand to many of our South Side neighbors. We loaded them up with ocreations swag (shirts, bags, and marketing tools) and sent them out into the streets of South Side to meet and greet our new neighbors. The students handed out our Proud New Neighbor brochures along with the “Historic Southside – Rebuild. Reclaim.” stickers we recently produced. This marketing tool was a success – the students got funding for their trip to Falling Water, and we at ocreations got the help we needed from creative brand ambassadors to spread the word about our brand and its new location.

Brand ambassadors can be an extremely effective form of marketing, as they take on a more personable approach and do not come across as an aggressive form of advertising. Brand ambassadors are real people who are passionate about the brand they support. In turn, this creates a sense of trustworthiness for the brand.

A brand can only be as good as its supporters make it to be. This is why a company must make sure its employees, internal and external, believe in the brand and share their beliefs with the world.