Tim Connelly is director of internal brand communications at Best Buy Corp. in Richfield, Minn. He is a husband, father, landlord, home remodeler, amateur photographer and a guy his doctors say needs to shed pounds. This is all blog fodder.

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Professionally speaking, I’m a corporate communications guy, focused at present on – pick one! – internal branding, internal marketing, internal brand engagement, employee engagement, employee brand engagement or employee branding and/or marketing. I’m sure there are others, but I’ve discovered that trying to describe the work via a simple, pithy name is a mostly fruitless pursuit.

I have seen a handful of articles and blog posts offering subtle points of differentiation among all those similarly-named disciplines, and I’m not going to quibble beyond saying: In my view they’re all getting at the same thing, which, at its core, is:

Promoting the company’s brand and/or values amongst employees to ensuring that they are happy and engaged, and eagerly and enthusiastically deliver the promises of the brand to customers.

That’s important because happy customers come back again and again, and recommend your business to their friends and family. That makes for a healthy and robust bottom line.

So with all that in mind, I’ve adopted Internal Branding to describe what we’re up to.

The concept is fairly simple, but making it happen is less so. My team and I are working to ensure that the Best Buy brand comes to life for customers consistently, in every location, across all of our corporate brands, all around the world. That begins with our 180,000 or so employees.

I am always on the lookout for someone with whom I can share thoughts, insights and ideas in this area, and from who I can learn. Some companies drive fabulous internal branding campaigns on purpose; others happen to do a pretty decent job without thinking much about it; and a great many stink up the joint – and presence or lack of purpose really doesn’t matter.

All that said, I need to point out that opinions expressed in this space are those of the author (that’s me), and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Best Buy or any of its affiliate companies – or any other company, government, agency or entity (plant, animal or mineral) that has ever existed anywhere.

Until Aug. 2008, I was a foot soldier in IBM’s formidable global communications army, where I had held a variety of roles since June 30, 1999. My last gig there focused on equipping IBM sales teams in banking and financial services to engage with their clients and, more importantly, driving the company’s sharpened strategic focus on increasing client value. Prior to that, I toiled in internal and intranet communications across five different business units and CHQ.

Personally speaking, I am a resident of Minnesota, a husband (to The Wife™), father of three (The Oldest Daughter™, The Middle Daughter™ and The Son™), master of four (two dogs, a cat and a guinea pig RIP, Chloe and Woodrow); and preferrer of beer over wine, classic rock over everything else, pie over cake, day over night, Huskies over Cougars (by light years!) and Diet Coke over any kind of Pepsi.

I am originally from Tacoma, Wash. I got my B.A. from the University of Washington, and an M.A. in Teaching from the University of Puget Sound. I have worked as a corporate communications guy, manager and director; newspaper editor; high school teacher; print salesman; corporate print production manager; freelance writer; cub newspaper reporter and professional soccer team PR guy (in reverse order of appearance).

So now you know.