#mslconnect11 live blog: Nationwide's Mark Mills, ABC

Rather than bother everybody's Twitter stream with updates, I thought it would be better to provide presentation thoughts here (and serves as good note-taking for me).

Mark Mills, Nationwide Insurance: "Connecting Employees with the Brand"

Using a powerful brand can most definitely help drive engagement.
68% of customers are turned away by an employee's indifferent attitude.
Corporate reputation is how you are perceived. A brand is how a company wants to be perceived.
Social media has brought about brand hate. So easy for customers to leave reviews and potential customers become reactionary.
Employee communications must be helping to deliver the brand promise to employees so that they become brand ambassadors.
A company's culture is the collective behavior of all employees, some of which will be good and other parts will be bad.
When the brand says "On Your Side," employees must live that.
"I Care" is a customer outreach effort that puts the brand "On Your Side" in action.
Nationwide has launched a mobile app (currently just Blackberry) so that remote employees can access the intranet on their smartphones. They are doing 10-12 stories a week on the intranet.
The company has embraced the user of Yammer (but it does require employees have an email address and Internet access).