It’s 2022, all your staff is vaccinated for, immunized against or apathetic about COVID and it’s many many variants. Do you know what that means? It means it time to round up all those work from home slackers and herd them back to the office. Unfortunately because it is no longer legal to round up employees by physically herding them like cattle (at least not in the United States, Canada, Europe, most of South America, Asia, parts of Africa, or in any country that has agreed to the Geneva Conventions) we must mentally round them up. If you’re thinking we need to win over their hearts and minds by making them WANT to return to the office, then you ma’am, sir, or other you have earned a gold star. What is the easiest way to win over hearts and minds? Marketing. And what lies at the heart of every good marketing campaign? Branding!
Branding and it’s nearly-identical twin Re-branding are here to help.
Did you know that Viagra was originally developed as a drug to prevent hair loss? Uncomfortable and potentially dangerously long lasting erections were simply a bothersome side effect, albeit a humorous one. That is until the Branding and Re-branding geniuses entered the building, took one look at the data and said Huzzah!
Just as Pfizer uses fear of missing out on an eight hour stiffy, you can leverage FOMO to fill the halls of your office till they are throbbing with activity and ready to burst. Let these Branding and Re-branding techniques be the siren song that leads your flock gone astray back home.
First, remind everyone that work is a safe space. Safe from barking dogs interrupting conference calls. Safe from manic toddlers running naked through zoom calls. Safe from a cat that has figured out control-alt-delete. Safe from a spouse’s honey-do list. The kind of warm comforting safety that can’t be found at home. The office is a safe space and the only cost of entry is pants. Home=scary, office=comfort. That’s branding!
Once everyone realizes the office is like a warm embrace from a dear old aunt it’s time to work some rebranding magic. Let’s walk through the horror of a pre-COVID week at work versus the fulfilling excitement of a rebranded post-lockdown office.
It’s Monday and are people just coming back to the office? No. They’re doing something far more current and trendy: they’re co-working! You get to see all your work friends again, play dress up, sit at a real chair and act like a grown up. Best of all, you’re getting payed for it.
It’s Tuesday, the seventh best day of the week and everyone is dreading the drudgery of another status report. Rebranding to the rescue. Listen up everybody, has your personal development stalled? Stop cutting and pasting yesterday into tomorrow. GlobalTechComCo is here to help, it’s Tuesday and time for self-development journaling. Be sure to have it turned in by 5.
Wednesday’s staff meeting is here, time to sit down and zone out for an hour or more. Or is it? Do you like campfire sing-a-longs and fresh hot s’mores? Well, great. Many of us in the Wednesday staff meeting do to so you’ll fit right in. Alas our sync’up meetings won’t have either of those, but it will build an organic visceral appreciation for those times when a marshmallowed-chin wagging kum-bah-yah can be heard round the campfire.
Thursday. The week is dragging and it’s time for some more caffeine. Ugh, we’re out of coffee. Do I have time to go to the store and get more? Nope. Ugh. Does Amazon sell coffee? $14 dollars a pound? Ugh. If only there was a simple cost effective solution. There is. At the office we have regularly scheduled coffee deliveries so there’s always plenty of everyone’s favorite mind altering stimulant on hand. And best of all it’s free!
Friday. Pre-COVID, Friday was the best day of the week. It was the last day of the work week and got everyone pumped for the weekend. Then COVID hit and you worked from home. Sure it was fun for a little while, editing spreadsheets while between the sheets, attending Zoom calls in Tweetybird pajama bottoms, holding sales calls from the couch. But where was that end of weekend excitement? Nowhere! It’s time to return Friday to it’s rightful place as King of the Week.
What about Saturday and Sunday? If you’ve been paying attention to the lessons the International College of Businesseriey and Managering has been trying so hard to teach then you already know what to do. If not, may we be so bold to suggest you go back and review Valuing Employees, The Death of the 80/20 Rule (part 1), and Meeting-nomics 101.
There you have it; with a little marketing savvy you can make employees rush back to the office like lemmings to a cliff.