Industry spokesman leadership is earned, not given

My last post was about Intel’s “Our Rock Stars Aren’t Like Your Rock Stars” advertisement where they feature an actor instead of the real inventor of the USB. My point being that I think it would have been just that much more cool if they’d used the actual guy.

Intel definitely understands branding campaigns and the importance of defining a personality for a company. In my opinion, however, it just works better if you use the real employees.

Tektronix is starting to understand the importance of branding spokespeople to help communicate the company’s personality and to enhance the company’s overall brand. Tektronix is known as the trusted leader of the Test and Measurement industry and the world standard for the best oscilloscopes. Tektronix invented the oscilloscope and they are truly the expert in this industry. Even with this long history, however, the role of industry leader or expert isn’t automatically given to a company. A company still needs to define and position spokespeople as industry experts and define their company’s personality. Our clients at Tektronix recently launched a campaign which I think is super smart. They are leveraging their industry leadership position to launch an expert for the industry and here’s the best part, they’re using one of their own employees. Why wouldn’t they? Some of the world’s most intelligent and visionary engineers work for Tektronix!

As part of this campaign they’ve also set-up a website called Scope Central which will act as a comprehensive resource for their customers and for the industry. I think this will prove to be an amazing resource for the industry and will allow people to have access to Tektronix in a way they’ve never been able to before. People can now chat live with technology experts and the scope gurus at Tektronix. It’s just a great example of how a company can leverage their internal resources and position themselves as an expert and valuable resource for their industry.

Megan McKenzie

Author: Megan McKenzie

Megan McKenzie provides strategic leadership to McKenzie Worldwide and the agency’s work with technology companies in enterprise, consumer, wireless, networking, & cybersecurity.