This insights post is a summary of the blog post published by Airfoil Group. View the full insight at: How to Turn Internal Experts into Your Best PR Asset.
With the shifting landscape of media, journalists and their audiences are more skeptical than ever. They are turning away from AI Slop and craving human voices that share unique points of view over cut-and-paste corporate content.
In short, they want authenticity.
Finding Brand Ambassadors from Internal Experts
Marketing and communications leaders can create more credible, authentic ways to share their brand’s story with internal experts. Theyare often your best storytellers. With embedded experience in your brand, your mission, they can be the people who most authentically portray your values and products. In essence, their experience can transform marketing messaging into credible insights. It is those human insights that can build trust over time.
People – not products, services or goods – are often the greatest differentiator between one brand and its competitors. No one has better insights, deeper knowledge or a stronger passion for your company than the people who create and maintain it.
Why Leaders Shy Away from Internal Voices
Many marketing and communications leaders shy away from putting their best people front and center instead of creating a spotlight for them. Sometimes, there is a fear that internal experts will veer away from approved messaging, or having too many “voices” will create brand inconsistency. Those concerns are coupled with making their best people visible might mean they get recruited by a competitor.
Ironically, many of the reasons marketing and communications leaders have for keeping internal experts out of the public eye is exactly why they should have a platform. Audiences are eager to hear the unique stories happening within workplaces. They will often latch onto feel-good, human-interest angles that they themselves can relate to.
Human-Led Storylines
This human-led approach is what turns storylines from PR tactics to business assets. It elevates the internal voices who have the expertise, personality and passion to be the bridge between corporate storylines and the real world.
Consider this recent story about a Costco cashier in The Wall Street Journal. The story “He Earns $33 an Hour as a Costco Cashier. Now He’s a Millionaire,” is fundamentally about one employee’s personal finance journey. Through his experience, the story reinforces several of Costco’s brand messages: the value of its employee benefits, the potential for long-term careers within the company and the loyalty that comes from treating employees well.
The power of an employee-led story is that readers connect with the relatable experience. It also serves the purpose to demonstrate the company’s values in the background.
Finding the Right Voice and Building Your Spokesperson Bench
The C-suite continues to play an important role in communications strategies, but can create unnecessary limitations for messaging. A CEO may be the right person for a major national interview or high-profile business story. However, they are unlikely to be the right fit, or have the availability, for every media opportunity.
This is why it’s important for marketing and communications leaders to look beyond titles and build strong benches of spokespeople who know the work firsthand, can spot industry trends before others, and have a genuine point of view on the topics they know best.
To find these people, look for employees who:
- Know the work: they have firsthand experience with the product, customer or problem.
- See what’s next: they notice trends and changes before they become obvious.
- Make it relatable: they can explain complex ideas in simple, accessible terms.
- Want to share: they have enthusiasm for what they do.
- Have a point of view: they offer perspectives, not just company messaging.
Experts with technical knowledge may be better suited for trade media opportunities, while employees who work closely with customers may be a better fit for human-interest stories. By carefully developing your bench, you’re building momentum around key storylines over time, reaching broad audiences while reinforcing the same messaging pillars.
To get more details about finding internal spokepeople, the way to use them in ongoing media and planning and long-term benefits, view the full post at: How to Turn Internal Experts into Your Best PR Asset.
