Bill Klaproth (Host): This is a special podcast produced on site at SHSMD Connections 2025 in Dallas, as we talk with speakers and session leaders direct from the show floor. I'm Bill Klaproth, and today we're exploring how engaging employees as brand ambassadors can strengthen culture, boost brand adoption, and create more authentic connections across an organization.

Joining me is Mike Chapman, President of Springboard Strategy Brand. Mike, welcome.

Mike Chapman: Bill, I'm glad to be here.

Host: Absolutely. And happy to talk with you. So Mike, branding from the bottom up is such a compelling concept. What does that mean though in practice? And why is this approach so effective for healthcare organizations?

Mike Chapman: Well, branding from the bottom up really means peer-to-peer communication. In this case, we rebranded an organization. And we needed to get employee buy-in. And you could either get employee buy-in or you could talk about a rebrand from the top down, where the executives tell people what to do, is how they'll view it. Or you can get their peers to come talk to them. People that they know, people that they're friends with, they've worked with for years, who are going to engage them around this new brand.

And guess who they're going to pay more attention to? Guess who they're going to engage with? It's going to be their peers.

Host: Their peers. So you're leveraging them to help sell that message across.

Mike Chapman: Exactly.

Host: I love it. So you were mentioning, and its Powers Health recently went through a major rebrand and, successfully enlisted more than 200 brand ambassadors. I love that, to help with the rollout. Can you tell us how you identified, educated and motivated those employees to take on that role?

Mike Chapman: It was a big task and it was a heavy lift. The first thing that they did is they decided we need someone who can just handle this initiative. So it can't be the director of marketing, the VP of marketing. You need to have someone else on the inside that can handle this entire initiative. So that was number one. Number two, they went to leadership. They went to management and said, we need these brand ambassadors. Leadership said, what's that? They explained the role. They explained the whole concept of branding from the bottom up. That gave them buy-in of leadership right from the beginning. So leadership was never like, wait a minute, I thought I was going to be the one who was going to tell everyone about the rebrand. So the recruitment went something like this. So they asked leadership, give us recommendations on the people under you who meet these criteria.

They sent out letters to each and asked them if they wanted to participate. They gave them the roles and responsibilities and some said no. Some said, you know what, I'm not an extrovert. This is not my thing. Thank you, but it's just not me. The ones who said yes were the ones that they knew were engaged around the brand, and there's always a core set of employees, no matter what the organization is that just ask them to do something, they'll do it.

 So recruiting really wasn't that big of a deal. Other than they needed to make sure they covered all of the shifts at the hospital. So you can't just have someone who's there from nine to five, you have to have someone there that's nine to nine the next morning. Right. As an ambassador.

Host: Yeah. So you actually went out and asked, do you want to be a brand ambassador for this project?

Mike Chapman: Yes.

Host: And then for the people that raise their hands, you're like, okay, here's what we'd like you to do.

Mike Chapman: Right. And there was no shortage of nominees for this.

Host: Which, which is great.

Mike Chapman: Yeah. We also looked at employees who won certain awards, employee of the month kind of thing. And looked at those. And then from a training standpoint or an onboarding standpoint, we as the marketing agency, created a number of brand tools for the internal brand launch, so the ambassador didn't have to do everything on their own. They had a brand book that they could show. They had a brand video, they had FAQs.

They had posters that supported the new brand. So we gave them a whole toolkit of things that they could use to help with the communication with the employees. So one, everything was standard. Two, it just kind of took the pressure off of them in that respect so that they could just have their personalities come through.

Host: So once you got the brand ambassadors set, did you ask them questions? I'm sure you got messaging for them, or they would help you with the hey, let me ask you about this. Let me ask you about that. And you learned from them and that helped you craft the message then?

Mike Chapman: Absolutely. When we got the brand ambassadors together, we did exactly what you said, Bill. We asked them questions. What do you think the people that you're going to communicate this message to are going to have in terms of questions for you.

Host: And what will they be receptive to?

Mike Chapman: Exactly. And we heard things that we didn't anticipate. I mean, SpringBoard's been through more than a dozen rebrands with health systems.

So we know the typical questions, but when it comes to an individual health system, there are things that the insiders know and that insider knowledge that was exceptionally helpful.

Host: Very valuable.

Mike Chapman: Yes.

Host: And then those people in turn can carry that messaging over to the other people to get the buy-in from them. I love that you collected feedback, from the ambassadors to refine the messaging. I'm just kinda curious what kind of insights did they share and, how did their feedback help you strengthen the message?

Mike Chapman: So the feedback was honestly a difficult task. The brand ambassadors they didn't run straight into this person's office and say, this is what I heard. It took some probing. It took some prodding, but when we got the information out of them, we knew what resonated and what messages we put out to the employees that they're like, yep, got that. Love that. And we got some others that were like, I don't understand this, like I don't see how we're this or that.

I would say the one that kind of rose to the top and it's something that was difficult for the organization is people that moved from one part of their service area to another who thought they didn't really have a choice but to quit their job and get a job with somebody else nearer to where they were moving.

 One of the things that didn't really come across was you have a job at Powers Health, and whether your job is in this town, this town, or this town, we want to employ you. So the first person who's going to be in line for a position at another of our locations is one of our existing employees. So there were lots of roads to better jobs, different locations that were available because it now was a system, not just a hospital brand, and that didn't really come through.

Host: So let me ask you this then. Having those brand ambassadors, I'm sure all those people had questions like you said, what's happening with this? And then having the brand ambassador to say, listen, you have a job at Powers Health.

This isn't going to take away your job. So, having them on the front lines and saying, it's going to be okay, here's what's happening. Because you couldn't do it. Leadership couldn't be down there amongst everyone. So having the brand ambassador sell that message through is really valuable.

Mike Chapman: It was incredibly valuable. They were there, they were with the people and they could answer right on the spot and that made a huge difference.

Host: So Mike, what advice do you have then for healthcare marketers looking to start small but still make an impact with this kind of bottom up branding strategy? How do they do this?

Mike Chapman: Well, I think the most important part is that you cover all of your employees. So whether you have 200 employees, 2000 or 20,000, you just need enough brand ambassadors so they can reach their peers. So you wouldn't take an organization with 20,000 employees and say, okay, we're going to have 20 brand ambassadors.

It's a lot per. So I think the one thing is just simply make sure that you can cover all the employees and covering it all the shifts is a big deal. All the locations is a big deal. But these ambassadors were exceptionally enthusiastic about helping the organization. So asking them to do more.

I don't see as a problem.

Host: Yeah. Is there a number that you, like a per number, like one ambassador per hundred, or is there a number? It's probably very objective, but it's,

Mike Chapman: Yeah, it's hard to say. I would say it's going to be closer to one per hundred.

Host: Yeah, I bet you know, you're saying one per a thousand is not going to work.

Mike Chapman: No.

Host: But I could see one per a hundred would be something that's viable. As soon, that can be one per 10. So, you'd have too many brand ambassadors and so I was just kind of curious your thoughts on that. So looking back at this Powers Health, Rebrand. What do you think is the biggest outcome of empowering the employees in that way, both from the culture aspect and the external reputation as well?

Mike Chapman: So I think this really gets at the whole reason you do bottom up branding. It's the employees and then it starts with the brand ambassadors fully embrace the new brand. They understand it. They know why. They know how. They know what it means to them down the road.

And then they pass that on to their peers, and it's like everybody now owns the brand. It's not, again, an executive, a CEO pointing down at people saying, this is what I proclaim. It's your buddy, it's your coworker coming to you and saying, Hey, here's what's going on, and I think you're going to like it.

Host: Yep. That's a much better way to approach it. Mike, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time today. Any final thoughts? Anything else you want to add?

Mike Chapman: I would say that top down or bottom up messaging to employees, you just have to kind of choose which one is right for the situation. In this case, one of the reasons that the bottom up branding helped is that the employees were very siloed, and to get them to come in line with a new system structure, it really took that face-to-face, peer to peer communication to get the word across. Otherwise, I think people just wouldn't have gotten it.

Host: Yeah. Excellent stuff. Mike, thank you so much for stopping by today. We appreciate it.

Mike Chapman: Thank you, Bill.

Bill Klaproth (Host): You bet. Once again, that is Mike Chapman and a recording of Mike's presentation will be available to members during SHSMD Connections virtual conference. So if you want to hear more from Mike and the rebrand, at Powers, certainly you'll get a lot more detail than on the podcast here. Make sure you check that out. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels, and please subscribe so you get every episode, chockfull of great healthcare strategists, marketers, topics and solutions. And to access our full podcast library, visit shsmd.org/podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Bill Klaproth. See ya.