You might have noticed a trend in more and more marketing, where large brands are featuring real people and actual employees in their ads. The end of the new Intel ads feature employees singing the well known "Intel bong" - the four note chime at the end of their ads. Best Buy uses their employees in their ads wearing their trademark blue polo shirts. The entire Domino's pizza new campaign about their revamped pizza is using real employees.

IBM and GE also feature employees prominently in their advertising, with IBM's Smarter Planet campaign using the tagline "I'm an IBM'er."* If you combine this trend with the use of consumer generated advertising that we have seen in recent Super Bowls and even reality television, it's clear something is happening to the world of advertising.

Why all this sudden fascination with real people, and employees in particular? It turns out that companies are finally starting to realize the truth about their employees... that they are not just workers hired to diligently perform a task. In the best cases, those employees can be the best spokespeople for your brand. I have frequently called them "accidental spokespeople" and finding ways to engage them more in your marketing can help you build credibility for your business, increase your employee loyalty and even generate more sales. Here are five ways that you could consider for finding and using your employee spokespeople:

#  Find the vocal enthusiasts. Many times you can find the most vocal of your employees already online talking about what they do and what your company does. This could be on an online review site, or as part of an online community. Apart from looking online, you can also find them through more traditional means. Their names may show up over and over on customer surveys or close more business than other employees. Often your most vocal enthusiasts will also be your best employees.

#  Bring their voices together online. In order to generate the maximum effect for your business online, you need to find a good way to aggregate these voices together. If some of your employees are on Twitter, consider asking them to use the same naming convention for their accounts (such as @bobatyourcompany). Then you can create a list of all of them together. If they aren't actively online, you might consider creating a video series of interviews with them or just filming what they do and bringing it together into a YouTube channel. However you do it, creating a hub for these voices is important.

read more @ Rohit Bhargava