Tamara R. of Vancouver was craving a latte from the Blenz Coffee chain during a recent work break. The trouble was she works at a rival coffee company.
So Tamara, who declined to let her full name be published to avoid reprimand from her employer, sneaked out the door and walked two blocks down the street where she bought the competitor’s coffee, concealing the cup with napkins before returning with it to her own store.
It wasn’t a one-time occurrence. Tamara never drinks the coffee at her own shop, preferring the competitor’s product.
“The flavour of the espresso tastes better,” she says. “I just find that ours is too weak.”
Call it corporate cheating. The reality is such treachery occurs at companies of all types, at all levels. And whether its McDonald’s employees who prefer Wendy’s burgers or Ford workers who’d rather drive Hondas, business development experts say brand infidelity is a serious problem that employers need to nip in the bud.
Microsoft Corp. employees witnessed the repercussions of using rival Apple Inc.’s iPhones last fall when, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, chief executive officer Steve Ballmer snatched one of the devices from a worker’s hand and pretended to stomp on it in front of thousands at a company meeting.
Understandably, Mr. Ballmer prefers to use mobile phones that run on Microsoft software, the Journal said. But his employees don’t appear to have the same loyalty; close to 10,000 iPhone users were reportedly using Microsoft’s employee e-mail system last year.
In the product development world, the rule is to “eat your own dog food,” says Lorne Trudeau, a software designer from British Columbia who works in Santa Monica, Calif. “If you’re going to build something, you’d better be able to suck it up and use it.”
Still, Mr. Trudeau acknowledges he has fed on a competitor’s offerings in the past.
While applying for a previous job at Yahoo Inc., Mr. Trudeau swapped his Gmail account for a Yahoo e-mail address, specifically to communicate with his prospective employers. After he got the job, he remained an avid user of rival Google and continued using his Gmail account for personal correspondence.
“I definitely preferred the threading of e-mail conversation [in Gmail] and … I just found the Yahoo interface was kind of slow and busy,” he says, noting he wasn’t the only one at the company to use the competition’s services. “We all used Google.”
Dana Lengkeek, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, says there is no rule that employees must use only the company’s products.
“From a business perspective, employees should be familiar with competitive offerings,” she says.
But Ted Matthews, brand coach and founding partner of Toronto’s Instinct Brand Equity, says there is a clear distinction between being familiar with the competition and making a competitor’s brand a regular choice.
Making sure employees use their own company’s products is crucial in today’s marketplace, he says, since brands are now built by referrals rather than solely through advertising.
“There’s nothing more powerful than going into a store and having … the clerk say ‘Oh yeah, I have this pair of pants. They’re fantastic,’ or … ‘I have this at home.’ ”
Similarly, he says, employees who use rival products and services can cause serious damage to a company’s reputation.
“If you have somebody who’s working for a company and they’re not even using the product, then that is absolutely diametrically different from what we’re looking for in terms of a referral. … It’s [a] complete negative endorsement and no company can afford to have that in this day and age.”
Mr. Matthews says he coaches employers not to hire anyone who won’t be an advocate and ambassador of their brand. If a product is costly, he encourages companies to introduce discounts or other financial incentives to make it more attractive for employees.
If employees still aren’t willing to commit, the consequences should be severe, he says. “In my recommendation, I’d move them toward the door.”
Employee infidelity can signal deeper problems with a company itself, says Cheryl Stein of Montreal’s Stein Consulting and Coaching, which provides consulting services to family-owned businesses.
“It should be a wakeup call. If you have people whose paycheques are reliant on this company doing well and you can’t get them to use your product, you should be saying to yourself, ‘We’ve got to look into this.’ ”
Companies may find that their products need improvement to match their competition or that their employees don’t feel valued, she says.
To enforce company loyalty, she advises that employers set clear rules against using rival products when hiring, even writing those rules into the contract if necessary. If an employee is caught, a stern and immediate rebuke, such as “that’s not allowed in here,” is in order, she says.
Policing employees’ brand preferences outside the workplace is much more difficult, however, and Ms. Stein warns against a Big Brother approach. Instead, she says, employers should ensure that their employees feel proud to work for them.
“When people feel like they matter, they feel like they have a stake in the outcome and their contribution is valued, you’re not going to have to force them to use your products. They’re going to want to use your products.”
