Case Study - Husqvarna

Over 50,000 sales personnel, including 15,000 Independent Dealers around the world speaking with one company voice seemed a massive undertaking until retail giant Husqvarna began using the OPC Process^® to promote their Brand Promise.

It didn't matter that there were 31 languages and cultures to cater for. Staff working for this leading global producer of outdoor products for parks, forests and gardens soon discovered that learning about the company, its products and philosophy could be fun, memorable and interesting.

There are communication barriers in even the simplest of companies, even those on one location, so when you add in the complications of a global firm, like Husqvarna, operating in 31 different languages and cultures it is easy to understand the challenge of getting everybody 100% on board with even a single message.

Husqvarna’s internal and external marketing is making their competitors look up and take notice. Consistent effort over the last five years has created such strength across sales, retail, distribution and support teams from as far apart as South Africa, Australia and Argentina. The pooling ideas and the constructive voicing of opinions now happens more easily because people are confident in the knowledge that however humble their job, they will be heard.

"Communicating the Brand Promise has totally transformed our level of communication. Over the last five years we have developed a much deeper level of mutual understanding. We are now speaking the same language and have much more fruitful discussions. Using the OPC Process^® to initially engage everyone with the Brand Promise was a very valuable exercise because it helped our whole organisation connect immediately with the Brand Promise and together work out what it really stands for," said Brand Manager, Mikael Zetterlund.

Looking at the prospect of launching the Brand Promise through traditional methods of communicating company messages, such as corporate slideshow presentations, key note speeches, videos and magazines gave Mikael some concern. Traditional large scale corporate communication methods can be a turn off, creating scepticism or negative reactions, or simply leave people feeling cold, unconnected or unmotivated such that there is no perceivable behaviour change at an operational level.

Even if reasonably well presented the local translation and individual interpretation of messages delivered with these traditional methods are notoriously difficult to monitor let alone control. He wanted to ensure that the local managers were interpreting and airing the full range of issues uniformly and fairly with all levels of staff or Dealers and not just management but, Mr Zetterlund feared there were too many variables in a traditional approach and any one of them could seriously undermine the integrity of the Brand Promise message.

He was impressed by the simple to run workshops that take hours rather than days and liked the bespoke blended solution package supplied by OPC, designed exclusively for Husqvarna and translated into every mother tongue within the Global firm. The fact that internal workshop leaders could learn and manage the entire process themselves was an added bonus. He said: "We chose the OPC Process^® to have a better chance of getting a real and uniform understanding about the brand theory and the Husqvarna Brand Promise in particular across to our people, wherever in the world they were, what ever job they performed."

He worked closely with the team at OPC producing the specially tailored Table Box, Storyboards, activities and exercises ensuring everything employed recognisable corporate images, artwork and most importantly reflected the Brand Promise in everyway. The first use of the OPC Process^® was in 1999 for 400 head office staff initially. The Brand Promise Workshop was then developed for 2000 employees in the sales teams globally. A larger third Brand Promise programme has been rolled out to 50,000 people in production facilities and Independent Dealers world-wide.

Special versions of the Brand Promise workshop were made for:

• Sales teams
• Dealerships
• Factory personnel
• New Employees

Soon employees who have already attended workshops will attend new workshops to gain deeper understanding and the latest information. This latest version is aimed at 10,000 people and will be produced in 14 languages to support both the sales trams and independent dealerships.

The OPC Process® contains a number or unique ingredients, such as ‘Table Box’ used by small groups to aid discussion and encourage debate with peer-to-peer communication instead of the top-down training or communication methods traditionally available. The OPC Process^® stimulates the total involvement of those taking part and creates a solid feedback loop, in Husqvarna’s case through specially designed “Have Your Say” forms and the use of their intranet.

"The key benefits with the OPC Process^® as I see it, is we have a higher chance of getting a real understanding of a subject, of stimulating involvement and encouraging those taking part to come up with ideas and solutions or fresh avenues of thinking long after the event.” Mikael Zetterlund concludes.

The Husqvarna´s Brand Promise programme, based on The OPC Concept^®, was recently rewarded with the Electrolux Brand Award, as recognition of the outstanding contribution Husqvarna has added through this initiative.