Checkbox to catalyst—why smart brands unleash their employees

Brand activation is undergoing a quiet revolution within the day-to-day experience of employees.

As audience attention fragments and the line between internal and external brand touchpoints blurs, the smartest organisations are turning inward, empowering their employees not just as messengers, but as activation strategists who shape the brand’s public-facing presence.

Successful brand activation pulses through peer networks, team meetings, grassroots projects, and ultimately, the customer experience itself.

The rise of employee co-creation

Companies commonly think of internal brand activation as the process of bringing employees along for the ride.

The legacy playbook is familiar: a coordinated internal communication plan rolling out in concentric circles ahead of an external launch, a toolkit for frontline staff, perhaps an all-hands meeting with the C-suite.

But category leaders are rewriting this script, tapping into the power of employees as co-creators of culture, relevance, and reputation.
Delta Airlines, for example, has made co-creation a core part of its approach, inviting employees to shape activations like the Inspired Journeys digital art pop-up. At this event, employees and community members shared travel stories, which Delta employee-artists brought to life in real time as digital art, weaving employee creativity directly into brand experiences.

This model is about unlocking the full potential of the organisation’s most credible voices to shape authentic interactions online and offline, directly with customers and across their own communities.

Strategic co-creation is the differentiator

The evolution is driven by necessity: a sense of purpose leads to stronger retention, and involving employees as brand advocates is one way to give them a sense of purpose.

Salesforce built its brand advocacy program around the belief that all employees are industry experts with authentic stories to tell.

Rather than distributing canned messages, Salesforce encourages advocacy built on employees’ unique expertise, interests, and perspectives. Employees are provided with toolkits to help them, but success hinges on personalisation: ambassadors are encouraged to adapt content, add their own insights, and share stories meaningful to them and their networks.

For example, during the annual Salesforce Dreamforce event, employees have shared behind-the-scenes experiences, industry tips, and community impact stories, contributing far more reach and engagement than official brand channels alone.

The results: over 25,000 employees acted as authentic advocates, collectively generating 742,000+ social shares and amplifying Salesforce’s brand voice across industries and regions

Leading brands convene employee advisory groups, inviting diverse voices to shape everything from messaging to product launches. These forums are not about rubber-stamping leadership ideas – they elevate the nuances and creativity that make activations resonate.

Rituals, recognition, and real-time feedback loops

Brand activation is now a living system, not a point-in-time event.

Smart companies weave brand values into daily rituals, from recognition moments to collaborative innovation sprints.

Consider Adobe: its Inside Adobe platform is more than an intranet. It enables 20,000+ employees to create, personalise, and share content, while also integrating feedback and employee-generated initiatives.

Content is targeted by location or role and distributed across web, mobile, and in-office digital displays, with analytics driving ongoing improvements. This approach has achieved a 94% satisfaction rate among employees – clearly a valued approach to communication.

Authenticity over consistency

Perhaps the biggest shift is from consistency to authenticity.

Employees at companies like Macy’s, for example, participate in the Style Crew program, where employees create and post videos such as bartending tutorials or hiking adventures.

Each video features Macy’s products, chosen by employees themselves, and is shoppable. Viewers can click directly on what’s featured, blending employee passion with commerce in a way no scripted campaign could match.

Style Crew is so popular that it has expanded to include influencers outside Macy’s, making the effort an especially powerful example of achieving authenticity by branding from within.

Empowered and trusted, employees have amplified brand reach exponentially and created the model for a grassroots expansion.

Data-driven personalisation and continuous evolution

The best-in-class strategies are data-driven, and in this regard, businesses seeking to build brands from the inside out would do well to learn from employee advocacy programs.

Electronic Arts (EA) continuously improves its EA Insiders employee advocacy program by combining analytics with regular feedback loops. Participation metrics, such as programme sign-ups, content shares, and engagement rates, are tracked in real time, while pulse surveys and direct employee feedback identify what content and recognition incentives drive authentic advocacy.

This data-driven, feedback-informed approach ensures the program evolves to remain motivating and relevant, enabling EA to scale advocacy globally while keeping participation authentic and employee-powered.

Brand activation powered by employee ownership

This re-imagining moves internal brand activation from checkbox to catalyst.

When employees are given real agency, supported by data, feedback, and opportunities to co-create, the brand itself gains depth, agility, and cultural relevance it could never achieve through messaging alone.

The result isn’t simply better alignment, but a living system where the brand evolves with, and even because of, its people.

In this model, advocacy emerges not as a managed campaign, but as the natural outcome of genuine participation and shared ownership.

Originally featured in Design Week