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Brand Ambassador is a marketing term for a person employed by a company to promote its products or services within the activity known as branding. The brand ambassador is meant to embody the corporate identity in appearance, demeanor, values and ethics. At the most basic level, they have the sole responsibility to represent the company in a positive light and express the message of the company in a way through which consumers can gain a further understanding of the company. However, the term can be optimally expressed as a diplomat; a representative of an organization, institution or corporation that best portrays the product or service.

A modern definition of a brand ambassador can be thought of as a hybrid between a Public Relations (PR) Representative and a Human Resources (HR) Representative. Thus, acting as an extension of the organization that educates a target audience about the concerned brand, with or without an economic or monetary compensation.

Rise of Brand Managers
Over decades, the concept of brands and branding has evolved to what it is today. Starting from 1870's consumers were familiar only with a few products, however a wider range of markets began to develop, as a result consumers became more aware of brands. Through the year 1915, manufacturer brands were established and developed further, in turn increasing reliance on brand advertising and marketing. The Great depression that took place in 1929 led to a severe drawback in brand progress, as result companies were left with very few options. For the sake of their brand and survival in a hopeless market, companies such as Procter and Gamble, soon followed by General Foods and Unilever developed the discipline of brand management. The "brand manager system" refers to the type of organizational structure in which brands or products are assigned to managers who are responsible for their performance. They not only aim towards creating brand awareness within the consumer market but by coordinating corporate resources, brand managers hoped to provide the best marketing strategy for each of the company's brands.

Era of Change
Post World War II, around early to mid-1950s and all the way from 1957 to the mid-1960s, the move towards adopting brand managers gripped firm after firm. By the year 1967, 84% of large consumer packaged goods manufacturers had brand managers. In fact, brand managers were also being referred to as "product managers" whose sole priority shifted from simply brand building to boosting up the company's sales and profit margin. For several years to follow, many companies recklessly hired brand/product managers using the P&G exemplar. Even though, employing a brand manager played an essential part of an effective marketing strategy it was often mandated in haste with unrealistic expectations of prompt results. Over the course of several years, brand managers continued to exist. As expected soon this system ran its course and was termed as ill suited for the current environment. In the 1990s, Marketing UK highlighted that brand managers are a part of an "outdated organizational system" while "the brand manager system has encouraged brand proliferation, which in tum has led to debilitating cannibalization and resource constraints."

Evolution of Brand Managers to Brand Ambassadors
From the span of 1990s to early 2000, brand management itself evolved as brand asset management. In 2000, Davis defined Brand Asset Management Strategy as “a balanced investment approach for building the meaning of the brand, communicating it internally and externally, and leveraging it to increase brand profitability, brand asset value, and brand returns over time.” Traditional marketing strategies that included Brand Management, focused on brand managers as the primary spokesperson of the brand. However Davis propagates this model never died down, in fact it changed immensely to incorporate brand champions and ambassadors in place of brand managers.Thus, brand asset management included a reformed version of brand managers known as "brand ambassadors." A Brand Ambassador was employed by an organization, usually to document its products and services in a positive light. Apart from being an important aspect of marketing and branding strategies, a brand ambassador has the ability to serve versatile functions as per the need of the company. Often, they form the face of the company, business or organization they work for and are looked upon as a reliable source of information with respect to the product concerned.

Concepts
Much like its predecessor, brand ambassadors need to be carefully selected in order to serve optimum function for the brand. Since their inception, brand ambassadors have acted more as "endorsers" or "brand champions" which is again a fairly relative and evolving term. They serve multiple functions to a brand and have integrated into various forms that companies can use and customize according to their needs. The endorsement system makes up a consistent part of a company's budget. The traditional model of marketing portrayed the brand ambassador as an asset whose loyalty was compensated by monetary terms. The 1990s saw a spurious increase in celebrities as brand ambassadors with an aim to hike up consumer attention. It was assumed that integrating a celebrity to a brand would increase chances of it being sold, while companies spent a large sum of money on the same. A stylized version of a model, brand ambassadors much like their past are still significantly focused on increasing profit margins.

However, this conventional model has changed greatly. Today, Brand ambassadors exist in many forms, perform many functions through a wide range of media. As advertising has moved into the digital sphere, so have brand ambassadors. Today, brands use a series of ambassadors for online marketing which a is completely separate spectrum in relation to print, outdoor, radio and television. Advent of social media, has allowed brand ambassadors to "tweet" for a brand or "post/like" anything related to the company.

Celebrity Branding/Endorsements
Celebrity branding or celebrities as brand ambassadors are a marketing facet of the past used till date by a large number of companies to hike up sales of the product. Linking a celebrity face to a brand, gives the brand an identity which the consumer can relate to. Within celebrity branding, there exist several different forms, from a celebrity simply appearing in advertisements for a product, service or charity, to a celebrity attending PR events, creating his or her own line of products or services, and/or using his or her name as a brand. Most of the times a company and the celebrity are bound by a monetary contract.

Self-Branding
Modern theory advocates that a "brand ambassador" need not be an external commodity: it could be you. Biro believes,"everyone owns their own personal brand. Companies and leadership must see the value of this concept for a successful social workplace recipe. If a brand ambassador chooses to represent the company and/or its brands, the individual should do so in a transparent way." Representing your own brand, often means putting a face to the name, several businesses use the innovator as the ambassador. This helps to create a direct connection to the consumer, it is a facet commonly seen within a large array of businesses.

Good will Ambassador
Companies have been using people to represent their products for as long as advertising has existed. The use of the title "ambassador" for such a person is, however, much more recent, and attempts to lend this work more respectability by associating it to the activities of public service goodwill ambassadors. Good will ambassadors are often linked with non-profit related causes, products.

Promotional Model
Some companies call persons engaged to promote products at trade shows and conventions "brand ambassadors". However, such persons are usually known as "promotional models". A promotional model exists in the form of a spokesmodel, trade show model and convention model. Each of these models carry out functions beyond representation of the company in a positive light. They may be required to promote the brand at simply one to many occasions while a brand ambassador is often tied down to one particular brand through the means of a contract over a period of time

Testimonial
Testimonial is simply a way of conveying assurance, in this case assurance is provided by the testimonial of the company or product in question. A testimonial does not advertise the product freely unlike the role of the brand ambassador. A brand ambassador performs the function of a testimonial but a testimonial is not a brand ambassador. For example, a consumer can be a testimonial, since a testimony could be formal or informal. However, a consumer could not always be brand ambassador, since the latter is more commercial.

Brand Advocate
Brand advocate is the marketing term for a loyal customer who is engaged into active promotion of a brand or a product without being paid to do so. They do so because of their positive experience with the brand. A brand advocate is not bound by any contract and is based on the system of "word of mouth." A brand advocate performs functions higher than that of a testimonial with an active spirit and interest.