I was going to write about Brand Ambassadors in this blog, but my dear New York based Sonopia colleague Thomas Aabo beat me to it in his blog here. The meeting Thomas refers to was at Sonopia's Menlo Park, California offices.
The Brand Ambassador is an interesting concept. I can explain it like this: We all have three kind of friends:
1. Hubs: The kind who always arrange things (parties, gaterings, getting people together)
2. Trackers: People who track the Hubs and generally take their lead and track them with some level of enthusiasm.
3. Followers: The type who is somewhat independent from, and indifferent towards, the Hubs and the Trackers, they tend to plot their own course but don't have a need to follow the Hubs.
The first 2 comprise of the majority of the population. The Hubs are prime Brand Ambassador candidates and other Hubs as well as Trackers are their audience, who have a trust relationship with them. They have an easier time suspending disbelief than if the message came from the brand itself (e.g. "I saw this Broadway show, you MUST go see it" is a better endorsment than if you see a poster from the producers of the show).
The fashion and luxury industry has made very strong use of Brand Ambassadors, though focusing on a few emblemic celebrities rather than trying to democratize the concept. I belive the democratization of the Brand Ambassador, along with Micro Segmentation, is one of the largest economic opportunities for product and services companies over the next decade: It's the holy grail of marketing.
Creating Brand Ambassadors is complex, especially if you want to do it on a grander scale. This probably enters too much into proprietary Sonopia terriroty for me to get into more detail at this stage. I will cover this in a lot more depth during the next months.
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