Who are you? Your Brand Image

It was a time we used to worry only about how other people perceived us. Now, we have an additional worry because we also have a digital existence.

The same, of course, is true of businesses and organizations. They all have to have a public brand that should define why they exist.

However, the challenge is determining the most effective brand so your target audience will want to engage with your organization to generate revenue.

The Harvard Business Review addressed this issue head-on this month.

The authors of the article: The Right Way to Build Your Brand quoted John Wanamaker, the famous merchant, complaining:

"half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half".

The authors Roger Martin, Jann Schwarz, and Mimi Turner drew a large database supplied by the World Advertising Research Council that empirically identified the kind of brand advertising most effective for attracting new customers and converting them into loyal repeaters.

It all comes down to whether your brand promise is clear and if it is provable?

I personally knew Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza. He barely avoided bankruptcy for years until a moment of desperation, he came up with the slogan:

"Delivery in 30 minutes or your money back."

He kept that promise, and customers responded, saving the company until he sold it for a fortune.

McDonald's created a similar promise of fast food delivery

Another example the authors cite is Geico's promise that "15 minutes could save you 15%. It is direct and verifiable. All State's promise, "you're in good kid all Matt's hands," is not so easily proved.

So, in developing your brand promise, you need to decide both what the promise will be and whether you can deliver it?

The studies by the Retail Association ranked the order of promises for effectiveness, and this is what they found.

1. Emotional Benefits to the customer such as Coke's promise to "have a Coke and a smile" or DeBeer's famous "a diamond is forever." To be effective, your customers must experience the emotions you promised.

2. Functional. We all expect FedEx to deliver on the promise that our packages will arrive overnight.

3. Enjoyable. Uber promises to give you the smartest way to get around, focusing on the ease of ordering transportation and simple payment.

When developing your brand promise, pay attention to the research that found that the most effective promises are memorable and valuable.

Keep in mind as you work this out two pieces of advice the authors shared that I strongly believe are the marks of all great organizations.

First, develop your brand promise by carefully listening and understanding your customers. It's called ethnographic research. Listen to them and put yourself in their shoes. Your final product or service has to reflect something that delivers what they want, not what you necessarily want. I also give this advice to first-time entrepreneurs who are understandably excited about their creations. They are meaningless unless the marketplace wants what they've created.

Then, once you have your customer brand promise clear, it is "all hands must be on deck" to ensure that your company delivers on that promise. The authors point out that involving all the departments and employees involved in implementing the customer promise becomes a unifying strategy. If any department fails, the promise fails, and your company's image will be hurt. It has to be a collaborative approach mapped out in advance before the brand promise is announced to the world.

If you put those building blocks in place, I promise your organization will deliver results.

You can take that to the bank!