LSEG: Employee brand advocacy
Scaling brand across the enterprise: a year-long, train-the-trainer programme to build internal brand-strategy literacy and brand advocacy.
Client:
LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group)
Category:
In-house, Transformation, Culture
My Role:
Programme Lead
During the multi-year, multi-million pound LSEG rebrand, the Brand Strategy & Management Team recognised that building a culture of brand value and understanding internally was a necessary foundation for both the success of the transformation and enduring brand alignment across such a large, complex organisation.
In response, I spearheaded, designed, and led a structured, year-long programme built explicitly to expand the brand function's practical reach, building brand literacy and advocacy, and nurture brand-lead culture.
The Story
Employees are the frontline of brand experience delivery, yet the vast majority are far removed from its strategic intent. Empowering them with education and insight is the fastest way to get their collective buy-in and activate them as potential advocates.
I deliberately designed the programme to ensure cross-functional participation and used a 'train-the-trainer' model that encouraged each Ambassador to become a de facto 'Brand Lead' for their team. Three sequential cohorts ran across the year, drawing participation from compliance officers, software developers, sales directors and procurement buyers sat alongside marketers.
The programme consisted of seven modules, plus live "Insider View" access to real rebrand launches as they happened, gave a wider group of colleagues the same grounding the core team worked from:
What is Brand
Brand Architecture
Visual Identity
Verbal Identity
Environmental Branding
Experience
Measurement & Tracking
I tracked performance and engagement rigorously, including attendance by module, assignment completion, and community interaction, all culminating in a formal graduation that recognised the most engaged members.
156 recruited. 137 graduated. 88% retention over 12 months.
After graduation, cohorts merged into a single ongoing community that was kept active up until I left the organisation 6 months later. Ambassadors went on to apply the training unprompted; correcting brand misuse in company-wide communications, building their own training materials to share with their teams, and in one case using the programme's thinking to help secure local press coverage and open a new business relationship abroad. The clearest proof the model worked was that people kept teaching each other after the formal curriculum ended.
