Friends Don’t Let Friends Become Chandler Bing

Friends gif

Everyone is talking about Friends like it’s the mid 90’s again. But I used to say, “Friends don’t let friends watch Friends” because I was SO cool (But secretly, I totally watched it, and I bet you did too).

Monica was the neurotic but beautiful one, Rachel was the beautiful but approachable one, Joey was the handsome but stupid one, and Phoebe was the manic, pixie, ditzy one. And Chandler was the one that all the guys kind-of identified with. He was an average dude with fairly clever zingers, not the most handsome one, but he ended up with Monica in the end.

But here’s the thing: while everyone liked Chandler, I bet you couldn’t tell me what his job was. I bet you could list every single character’s jobs and even tell me several of Rachel’s jobs, but you’d get stumped when you get to Chandler.

You probably have a company full of Chandlers — out there on social media being mildly clever and likable, yet no one knows what they do, much less what their company does. In essence, this is what employee advocacy is all about. It helps everyone’s friends* know that Ross works in paleontology and just discovered a new dinosaur and Monica is a chef and has developed an improvement on the cronut, and Rachel is now working for a clothing designer that just released a new line, and Joey just landed a role on the new Hulu series, and Chandler has a new job. That’s right, while he worked for the majority of the show as a statistical analyst and IT procurement specialist, by the end of the series he landed a job at an advertising agency as a copywriter, allowing him to pursue his passion (I had to Google that, but to prove that my ignorance isn’t uniquely mine I got as far as “What was Chandler’s…before it auto-filled ‘job’ at the end”). His job was so unique, it seems even HE had trouble talking about it, and what his company does.

Right now you probably have hundreds of Chandler’s working for you “wasting” time, or at least opportunities, on social media. They’re smart and likable and no one knows what they do. The average facebook user has 388 “friends” (How you doin’?*), The average LinkedIn user has 930 connections. Given that most people prefer to do business with a company that they have some personal connection to, could it BE any more obvious, you need an employee advocacy tool.

 

*Do you see what I did there? I am sorry. So, so sorry.

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Adrian Dayton is the Founder of Clearview Social, an internationally recognized speaker on social media for business development, and author of multiple books and white papers including most recently the strategy guide, “10X Your Website Traffic.”