Over 40 years in Singapore, NCS has firmly established itself as a market leader in the Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) space.
In July 2021, NCS unveiled a new chapter in its history as part of its transformation plan — unveiling a new brand identity and a renewed purpose of advancing communities by partnering with governments and enterprises to harness technology and bringing people together to make extraordinary happen.
The transformation was intrinsically a strategic reset to grow its digital services, scale its government and telco business segments and capture new growth opportunities in the enterprise sector. To embark on its plan, NCS put together a plan to engage over 10,000 employees, across several markets, to promote this new chapter.
The brand committed a total budget of SGD 140,000 for the brand launch, with a quarter of this allocation for the sole purpose of engaging its employees to play an active role in the company’s transformation.
In our strategy, we focused on employees, the people who were in a prime position to advocate the brand.
We needed to empower their employees to first understand the rebrand so they could then live and breathe the new values and purpose of NCS.
We investigated existing employee engagement efforts and found that it was largely driven internally to foster team bonding and brand culture. Furthermore, there was an additional layer of siloed teams, with employees largely confined to their own departments. What was clear to us moving forward was that employee engagement had to pivot outwards, powered by meaningful connections beyond the physical space.
Therefore, our strategy aimed to move employees from social apathy to social mastery – educating and empowering them with the tools, skills, and know-hows on being socially engaged in their own ways, and providing them opportunities and platforms to engage with their colleagues to amplify the brand on social.
In the first phase – Rally – we rolled out internal EDMs ahead of the rebrand to invite employees to be part of the rebrand journey. We provided a sneak peek into the rebrand and kept employees informed of the progress of the rebrand. What was important at this stage was to communicate what this means for them as valued employees of the organisation and what it means to the business. We encouraged participation in two easy ways - to flood the social gates with page follows and posting their own content celebrating the milestone with a branded hashtag of #NCSmiles.
In the second phase – Invite – we further equipped employees with social media toolkits to prep them in creating the social storm from their very own feeds. In the toolkits, we formally invited them to be part of the brand’s social narrative – providing them with rationales for their involvement in a larger cause and providing them with a step-by-step guide to going from social shy to social savvy. This tactic of mobilising employees on social also hinged on LinkedIn’s algorithm to cut through indirect feeds through employee connections whenever Employee Generated Content were created to generate traction.
In the final phase – Explode – we allowed employees to take over and spread their brand pride on social. We first activated the Leadership team of over 90+ people to propel the social storm, leading by example. This involved switching out to branded profile images, status updates and banners to burst onto the social scene with the refreshed brand look, feel and vision. Employees are also further incentivised to create Employee Generated Content (EGC) by pitting departments to flaunt their rebrand swag merchandise and flex their creativity through different formats, such as videos and multi-photo posts. An essential part of this phase was also monitoring the social storm from EGCs and ensuring we sustain the hype. We utilised the LinkedIn My Company page to interact, respond and reshare selected employee posts to encourage their efforts, leverage the LinkedIn algorithm to further boost the visibility of the posts through increased engagements.
The result was an explosion in the form of a social storm. In just four weeks, all the way from the pre-launch stage, launch and post-launch stage, there was a 90% increase in employee engagement levels post-launch compared to pre-launch levels. Social feeds saw employees utilising their social toolkits by posting organically with branded hashtags, interacting with the brand’s posts and other employees’ posts. In totality, there were 32,000 organic engagements supercharged by EGCs. This was unprecedented considering pre-launch levels where employee presence on LinkedIn was sparse and dismal.
Page Level:
There was a 200% increase in follower growth on the LinkedIn page compared to the previous month. This signals the heightened visibility of the brand’s presence on social boosted by employee participation, garnering new audiences to follow the brand in its new defined chapter.
Post Level:
There was a 15% Page Engagement Rate, compared to past performance benchmarks of 5%, with employees contributing to the success of the rebrand’s posts through posts interactions.
Beyond the rebrand, employees continue to play a pivotal role in the brand’s social presence to date. We currently run a monthly internal newsletter (NCSocial Scoop) to keep employees updated with internal happenings, social tips and internal contests to encourage further active participation. This year, NCS has expanded onto Instagram and TikTok, signalling their continued commitment to keeping employees engaged on social. Armed with their Employee Social Playbook, employees stay as empowered as ever to be the first in line for NCS on social from hereon.
