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How Yum! Brands enticed its staff with an internal marketing campaignYour company is launching an internal social networking platform, and you’re hoping it will catch on. So you set a six-month target for participation; 40 percent sounds respectable, maybe even a little ambitious.
Want to know which company hit 70 percent in six months? Want to know how it did it? Read on.
Yum! Brands, parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and other major chains, built a Facebook-like internal social network called iCHING to connect its global staff.
Because Yum’s employees would have to change the way they accessed information once the network caught on, it was essential to pique their curiosity. So, the comprehensive promotional campaign included: a mysterious, 5-foot-tall letter “H” placed at key locations; videos showing the same letter “H” interacting with employees; buzz from a test group; and various other visual media.
Now that most employees have signed up, the new challenge is in getting employees to log onto iCHING rather than sending e-mails and scheduling meetings, says Toni Ewton, tech manager.
“Associates are used to having information sent to them,” Ewton says. “Now we’re asking them to change a little the way they do business and the way they talk to one another. We’re asking them to go out on iCHING, search for something, use it as a resource for spreading and gaining know-how.”
A conspicuous presence
Communicators and IT workers began work on iCHING in January 2009, releasing it to a small pilot group last March and to the rest of the company in June. The buzz about the network began with the test group—which rapidly grew from 200 to 500—and continued with a teaser campaign that began a few weeks before the full site launch. The goal was to introduce the name and logo and incite curiosity without revealing details.
iCHING has changed the way employees communicate at Yum! Brands. View larger. Communicators placed a half-dozen 5-foot-tall renderings of the “H” in the iCHING logo at all the major company branches. The “H” is a visual representation of connection, with two people facing each other and holding hands. “Ching” is a part of the Yum corporate culture, and it means making connections and building relationships.
Who wouldn’t be curious about a giant “H” showing up in the hallway? So employees started asking questions. They also started to see stickers, flyers and even signs on restroom mirrors with sayings such as, “iCHING, do you?”
“We took a whimsical look at it to engage folks so they’d be excited about the network,” Ewton says. Pilot participants wore themed T-shirts, and Yum’s global workforce wondered what the fuss was all about.
Virtual visuals
The “H” was also featured in a kick-off video. With the song “Happy Together” ... Lire la suite de l'article
