Professionally speaking, I’m a corporate communications guy, focused at present on engaging Best Buy employees to learn, love and live their company’s brand – so they convince our customers to love it too.

The practice of engendering brand love goes by many names: internal branding, internal marketing, internal brand engagement, employee engagement, employee brand engagement, employee branding and/or marketing. I’m sure there are others, but I’ve learned that trying to describe the work via a simple, pithy name is a 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 values with employees to ensure that they are happy and engaged; and eagerly, enthusiastically and consistently delivering the brand’s promises  to customers.

It’s important work because happy customers come back again and again, and they recommend your business to their friends and family. That makes for a healthy and robust bottom line. Every successful business wants that.

On the surface, the concept is quite simple. Making it happen is less so. My team and I are working to bring the Best Buy brand to life for customers consistently, in every location, across all of our corporate brands, all around the world. That means delivering a clear, compelling brand message; and then getting all of our 180,000 or so employees on the same page.

The how of all that is what keeps me up at night.

How did I get here?

Until Aug. 2008, I was a foot soldier in IBM’s formidable global communications army, where I had held a variety of roles from June 30, 1999 to Aug. 15, 2008. 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 Ellie (The Dog™); and preferrer of beer over wine, classic rock over all other genres, 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).

I am also a hobby photographer, and you’ll see my photos peppered throughout these pages.

Disclaimer to keep us all out of trouble: 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 existed at any time, anywhere.