Keep your promise, keep your customers

If I had to pin down the definition of branding it would definitely be something like, "The Promise To Your Customer"

I could stop there, as it’s as close as most people in branding have managed to get if you want a quick answer. Having a promise covers ‘how you build a brand’, and ‘how you keep a brand’. However the answer doesn’t quite explain how you might find that ‘promise’ in the first place or find a promise that is different enough from your competitors. Hopefully this article may help you with that.

A simple form of a promise might be seen in a company's ‘Strapline' which, in my experience having worked with SMEs, is an element of branding that is largely ignored. A strapline doesn’t always have to define an inherent promise and may just be an instruction to your audience, like Nike’s ‘Just Do It’. Not so much a promise, more a way of attracting the right type of determined, serious customer that Nike wish to deal with. Anyway, I'll blog about straplines another time!

Sometimes a promise is highly nuanced, sometimes it’s mind-blowing and everything in between. Put simply, to maintain your brand you need your customers to keep coming back. So one of many golden rules would be to just keep your promise rather than break it.

In my many years of building BIG brands for small businesses, I've managed to compile a top 10 list of promise categories. If you haven't worked out your implied or upfront promise for your customers to buy into, then hopefully this list might give you some ideas.

1. The ‘don’t have a promise’ promise

Didn’t expect that did you? I merely put this first, in case anyone’s thinking that the best way to not break a promise to your customer is to not have one to break! I can’t argue with the logic, but I would suggest it’s not the best strategy to sell or market yourself especially against competitors who will undoubtedly be promising something like being The Quickest, The Friendliest or The Crumbliest…

2. The ‘WHY, HOW, WHAT’ promise

Another part of building your brand is to look at your passions and values and I tend to ask 3 questions to find that within a business owner. ‘Why do you get up every morning?’, ‘How are you going to change the world?’ and ‘What do you stand for?’ If we take Anita Roddick of 'Bodyshop' as an example, her passion was to create a range of products that can be produced by not testing on animals. It therefore doesn’t take a great leap to translate an internal passion or philosophy into a ‘Promise’. In this example, the promise would be that all the products are not tested on animals. That might sound simplistic, but sometimes these things need pointing out! I urge you to keep reminding yourself of your values as this would be a useful starting point, which might need a little simplification to make the promise more immediate or transferrable.

3. The ‘under’ promise

The one strapline for me which implies the most low level promise of all is Tesco’s ‘Every little helps’. It literally suggests that they will do as little as possible in order to help. It would therefore suggest that the promise will be quite easy to keep. This version of a promise is actually a good model, especially as a start up. The one thing you might be keen to do early on in a business is to promise the earth. The usual problem with that is you may place yourself in a precarious position of letting customers down when you become overworked. However, under promising and over delivering is always the best strategy. Don’t put yourself in a situation where keeping your promise becomes difficult. If you know you can deliver something in 30 minutes, promise to do it in a hour. You’ve had 30 minutes extra time to not make a mistake and the customer could get it 30 minutes earlier than expected. You both win.

4. The ‘company name’ promise

Your business name could be the element that defines the agenda of the promise in the most clearest way. Take EASYJET or KWIK FIT, the implied promise is screaming at you. I would imagine that these companies did intend to show the benefit of their company within their name, but may not have understood that they also created an everyday double edge sword? If a customer’s experience becomes difficult with EASY jet then they are instantly off brand. Because the implied promise is ever present in the name, your business has a consistent reminder to focus on making every interaction as easy or kwik as possible. You’re not going to forget. That’s the crux of it, you are either ON or OFF brand at the point of keeping or breaking that implied promise.

5. The ‘measurable’ promise

The ‘company name’ promise could fall into this category as well, especially, if like Kwik Fit, you start to suggest how quick your quickness is going to be. Back in the day when we used to have our holiday photos processed by Snappy Snaps we were already presented with an implied promise of speed by the ingenious alliteration of the combined benefit and product monicker. After that we were then offered some more specific promises of turnaround to get our snaps back. Next day, same day and even within 3 hours. You may be in a market, where time or speed or price is critical or better still, moveable. You can then offer different versions of the same promise. Businesses often call these Service Level Agreements (SLAs). You might see, Gold, Silver, Bronze levels of service or Diamond, Ruby and Sapphire for instance. Garages offer different Service levels, printers offer different turnaround times and adjust the price accordingly. Even the Post Office offers 1st class post, 2nd class or Special Delivery with certain guarantees at certain times. All of which are very measurable. If the special package doesn’t arrive before 12.00, the promise is broken.

6. The ‘price’ promise

To me this one is quite dangerous if a business is reliant on being the cheapest, but there are some nuances to consider. Take Poundland or Pound Stretcher, we’re back to an immediate implied promise even with the name, but I mention them in this category because the name centres on price. However in this instance it’s not suggesting it’s the cheapest. The 99p store suggests that!! If you’ve been in one of these types of stores you’ll know that some things are not simply ￡1 or perhaps a multiple of items will be sold for a ￡1, so there is some grey area regarding the implied promise. The more dangerous promise would be something like ‘we will never be beaten on price’. With this promise you are opening yourselves up for some tough scrutiny from your customers or they are going to take advantage by pretending they can get your product cheaper. You’ll then have to put in clauses about geographical distance and age or version of similar products to make sure like is being compared with like. All of which takes time and effort and you could be losing even more margin. On the other hand you may get more customers coming through the door on the initial marketing of such a promise. Swings and roundabouts I guess. Different versions of this sort of promise would be to suggest figures like 20% off your next purchase or 'buy one get one free' and so on. It’s not all about being the cheapest though. Like Stella Artois, you could promise to be reassuringly expensive! Some customers want to be seen to be buying the most expensive, so you could tap into that. One promise I’ve never quite understood was John Lewis’s ‘Never knowingly undersold’. I get that if a customer finds the same product elsewhere, John Lewis will refund you the difference, what I’ve never really understood is the parallel acceptance of John Lewis carrying the kudos of being slightly more expensive than similar positioned stores. That aside, the concept of ‘We’ll price match’ or ‘Refund the difference’ is a marketable promise. 'No win, no fee' for lawyers would be another price promise. I’m sure you can think of others.

7. The ‘competitive benefit’ promise

This category just about covers everything else that the above promises don’t quite fall into. We’ve covered quickest, easiest, cheapest or dearest, so you just need to think of a superlative adjective that you can compete on. Biggest, smallest, tallest, strongest, funniest, happiest, safest…maybe you can even think of companies that already promise these things. Other superlative adjectives that don’t end in ‘est’ would be a promise that starts with ‘the most…’ e.g. amazing, beautiful, intelligent, complex, revolutionary and so on.

8. The ‘emotionally inspirational’ promise

First of all I’m not suggesting you promise to make people cry. This category has a far stronger need for customers to buy into the philosophy or ethos of the brand. A stand out promise or strapline came from the telecoms company Orange (now EE) with it’s ‘The future’s bright, the future’s Orange’. I would say that this kind of statement is more about creating a promise that asks the customer to engage on a different level than the previous promise types. Apple’s ‘Think Different’, and Nike’s’ ‘Just Do It’ are almost turning the tables onto the customer. There’s an implication that the companies themselves promise to act in these ways, but more importantly these companies want you to act this way as well. This sharing of philosophy attracts the audience that these companies want as customers. They want customers who think and behave like them. The inherent promise to the customer is that they will be part of a family, feel welcomed with like minded people, part of a special gang. Sky’s ‘Believe in better’ or L’Oreal’s ‘You’re Worth it’ have similar sentiments. Nothing concrete like price or service, just a shared warm fuzzy feeling.

9. The ‘no-holds barred’ promise

This kind of promise is a different type of brashness to the superlative adjective and could be just an adjective or something outrageous. Carlesburg lager used to promise that their product was ‘Probably the best beer in the world’. Cleverly (or advised by their lawyer) they did put the word ‘Probably’ in the promise. However, recently they’ve had to change their promise because they had to finally admit it wasn’t true. Another high profile company with an outrageous promise was Red Bull's ‘Gives you wings’. Most sensible consumers readily bought into the alignment of Red Bull’s extreme or high risk sports. They could take the mental leap that by engaging with the product would give them the sense of being associated with high flying risk taking. That was until one consumer (more likely a competitor) legally took them to task and complained that upon drinking the product, no wings appeared and the gentleman in question found that he couldn’t fly. You may now notice that Red Bull have added 2 more ‘i’s in the word wings, giving us Wiiings’. Slightly sticking a proverbial 2 fingers to the court's decision to amend their implied promise. Bigger and bolder promises could take the form of BMW’s ‘The ultimate driving machine’. If a customer suggests that they’ve had a better experience in another driving machine I wonder what the recourse is? Much like any of the above promises, if the customer’s experience is that you haven’t kept your implied promise you are suddenly, at that point and in the mind of that customer, off-brand. So be careful what you promise!

10. The ‘we’re so sorry we broke our’ promise

Clearly I’ve put this in to give us a top 10, as I only had 9!! Sorry for that. However there will be a time when a customer is disappointed and I do urge you to have systems and processes in place to cope with a broken promise. In fact, counter intuitively, here is where you can create customers for life even more so than simply doing what you promised you would do. Quickly admitting where you’ve gone wrong and just as quickly offering to fix the problem (and possibly doing a bit more on top) is where you can really score loyalty points and create great PR. Trying to blame everything or everyone around you on why something didn’t work out will not help you in the long run. Sort out the problem, offer discounts or freebies or similar incentives and your customer has a great story to tell their friends. It’s a great opportunity for some free marketing. But don’t rely on it for a complete marketing strategy, you will go out of business!

That's it!

Take care, stay safe and I'll see you on the other side...I promise!