Having an aged and high maintenance cat as a pet, my wife and I frequently end up at Petco. I have always had rather poor perceptions of Petco as a retail brand: my daughter likes looking at the goldfish but that does not compensate for lackluster experiences with typically disengaged sales and delivery staff. These perceptions changed recently and it was all related to one thing: our local Petco manager promising to shave his head.

I know this is probably puzzling, so let me explain. As we were checking out with our usual array of cat food and litter a few Sundays ago, the Petco sales clerk appeared unusually eager to hear about our experience. He asked if everything was okay, if there was anything else that we needed and if there was any way he could be of more help.

Hearing we didn’t need anything further, he then solicited our participation in an online customer satisfaction survey Petco was conducting. He told us excitedly that it was really important that we participate, as their store manager had promised to shave his head if the survey reached 1,000 completes. The entire staff was hard at work driving participation with this in mind. No doubt, the end goal was to obtain valuable customer feedback the brand could use to improve the customer experience. But what struck me was the genuine interest the sales clerk had in encouraging people to fill out the survey. It was as if he was motivated by something more, a greater sense of purpose perhaps.

While most people know that Petco is “Where the pets go,” I think one could argue that employees feel a deeper commitment to its customers—the pet owners. Aside from its tagline, Petco describes itself as “a privately held specialty retailer that provides products and services that make it easier for customers to be great pet parents.”

Further looking at this head shave from a brand standpoint, I believe it offers many lessons as to the impact and importance of storytelling and leadership engagement.

One: Engaging employees

By making this promise, the manager really focused his employees on multiple goals. First, he got the employees to promote the survey with customers. Second, he also got them focused on the underlying objective of the survey: to increase customer satisfaction

Two: Engaging customers

The promise of the head shave does more than just serve as a humorous market research incentive for customers (which is no mean feat itself; it beats and is cheaper than the typical iPod drawing). It creates a story that gives customers a much richer perception of Petco: as a brand where the store manager cares, where he is willing to put his own follicles on the line. It changed my perception of Petco from an unfriendly necessity to a place that seems much more involved with the community, a differentiating and hard to achieve attribute for a retail brand in this age of mega-stores. After all, it worked for me and my family, as we chuckled remembering the story from the sales clerk, while completing the survey at home.

The head shave has also created a story, one that I repeat, per this article, that contributes to reinforcing perceptions of Petco as a brand that truly cares about your pets and your ability to be the best pet parents.

This doesn’t mean all brands should immediately instruct their managers to shave their heads (certainly no one would get very excited about that promise coming from me given my follically-challenged pate). Rather, it speaks to the power of creating stories and of management and employees who are personally engaged with and committed to a brand. The first step to getting there is an articulated and unified sense of purpose; the stories invariably follow.

Brian Rafferty is the global director, Customer Insights for the Siegel+Gale New York office.