Research Outline

Community Ambassador Programs

Goals

To find 4-6 brands that have the best community ambassador programs.

Early Findings

Some examples of brands that have developed community ambassador programs are given below.

Salesforce

  • Erica Kuhl, VP of Community at Salesforce, saw the value of ambassadors as opposed to hiring people.
  • Ambassadors are real people who may be working for the company or are just fans.
  • Members of the Salesforce MVP program were found to be generating 5-7% of the Twitter mentions and people who were active in the community spent twice as much time and had an adoption rate 33% higher than non-community members.

Adidas

  • Adidas developed "Tango Squads" to develop more authentic and long-term brand connections using micro-influencers.
  • The communities were made up of "hyper-connected" football fans aged 16-19 years old.

Adobe

  • One of Adobe's employees was found to be driving more revenue through his social channel than the company's Twitter itself. This discovery was made by the Head of Adobe’s Social Business Center of Excellence, Cory Edwards.
  • Consequently, the Adobe Social Shift Program was launched by Cory, which featured Adobe's own employees.
Other brands that have launched community ambassador programs include TheSkimm, Course Hero, Pearson Education, Serengetee, Lululemon, MongoDB, and Namely.