Your Brand is Your Promise

Remember when your brand was simply the “intangible sum of a product’s attributes”? That according to the father of modern advertising, David Ogilvy. Important news. We’ve evolved. Your brand is not about marketing anymore.

In real life, your brand is your promise. It’s how everyone experiences your company and its products. Everyone. Customers. Prospects. Vendors. Partners. Investors. Lenders. Your people! The ones who actually deliver on the promises you make. It is the basis for your culture.

It begins as a promise made to each other. An internal statement. “This is what we promise to do as a company.” Like wedding vows if only they came with KPIs.

The Brand Promise. It fits neatly in place after your Purpose, Vision, Mission, Values and Business Objectives. And before your Business Strategy, Operations Plan and Marketing Plan. In that order. That’s its sweet spot. Bridging the hopeful with the doable.

We articulate the promise internally so everyone has a way to make it real.

How will our strategies deliver what we promise?

How will our operations support the delivery of that promise?

How will our messaging, in every form, convey that promise?

If you create your Brand Promise as part of a marketing exercise, your company won’t have the structure to support it. It’ll just be about words without operational and cultural meaning.

Here’s a common one. Your Brand Promise includes offering the lowest price. For the record, I don’t like that promise for millions of dollars’ worth of reasons. If you do make that promise, how do you live up to it?

Do your customers have to do all the work? Find a lower advertised price and prove it. Not much of a loyalty booster. Alternatively, do you have a team supported by real-time AI that scours all competitors locally and globally? Are employees compensated for how efficiently they identify a better deal and make a change to your pricing? Or is their bonus predicated on hitting sales targets? Which is kind of like the opposite metric.

What if your promise is mostly about offering the greatest selection? We all shop online distribution sites. The selection is not just large within a category. It’s so huge it’s infiltrated by inferior products. Poorly tagged items that aren’t what we’re looking for. Reviews that range from a 5 down to a 1. How is that helpful? We have more choice and less we can count on. Is that all you’ve got to promise?

When promises are made, the structure has to be put in place to deliver on them. In this next example, a tech company had the right idea but came up short on the execution.

We promise to deliver software tools that are quick to learn, intuitive to use, and are purposely designed to solve the everyday challenges our customers face. We will deliver this promise by listening carefully to what our customers tell us is important to them.

Listening is great. But if you don’t implement ways to respond to what you’re hearing, customers stop believing. In this case, front-line staff were providing direct customer feedback. The specific features and tool sets customers wanted urgently. Things they would pay for! Now! Unfortunately, management would not significantly adjust its software development approach. They had product that was okay but not addressing what was important to customers. Promises weren’t kept. Sales flattened. Customers left. Good employees left. They struggled to stay relevant instead of fighting to keep up with scale. A much better headache to be dealing with.

The promise we make has to be as consistently deliverable as it is defining. It shapes our strategies, operational processes, KPIs, decisions, communication. Our culture. All of it.

This is a Brand Promise made by a large North American residential home and condo builder.

We promise to be sincerely respectful of your trust. We will be transparent throughout our long-term relationship with you so you always know where you stand and what you can expect from us. We commit to delivering this promise by holding ourselves to high professional standards in every area of our business, from how we treat each other to property acquisition, community and home design, building and service. We want you to always feel completely satisfied when doing business with us, and equally happy after our work is complete.

Sure, it’s bulky. Remember, this is an internal statement. Notice how it’s as relevant to customers and external stakeholders, as it is to their own people.

They also created the conditions to make their promise deliverable.

• Processes and technology enable accurate details to be shared with the right people at the right time.
• Issues are immediately categorized for appropriate priority treatment, response and resolution.
• Decision-making is inclusive. When was the last time you heard that? People from all levels are encouraged to present data, research and any information that will help make the best decisions.
• Processes change when change is in the best interests of employees, homeowners and other stakeholders.
• The company hires more women and people from diverse ethnic and cultural groups in senior roles than most builders. It gives them a truly representative perspective of the marketplace.
• KPIs guide everyone in living up to the promise.

In addition to sales growth, this company gained a unique competitive advantage. Builders rely on Tradespeople. By delivering on their promise, they get the best Tradespeople. Lots of them. Homes get built quicker with fewer deficiencies. That benefits the company’s bottom line as much as it does their customers’ lives.

That’s what a billion-dollar company does. On a smaller scale, a busy car dealership gave credence to their simple promise of “making customers and employees feel special”. Everyone at the dealership has $150 per month to use as they see fit. Employees have used their budget to treat repeat customers with movie tickets. Another sent a cab to pick up a customer’s kid from school because the mom’s car was just towed into the shop. A sick employee had food delivered to his co-worker who was working late to cover his shift.

The store’s owners noted that employees don’t always spend their budget. They really do use it wisely. Not because there is a supervisor breathing down their neck. Because trusting them to make others feel special, makes them feel special too. They take it seriously. By the way, the dealership also noticed repair order volume and revenue go up. When they raised prices on a few basic services, they didn’t lose customers to the competition. Everyone likes to feel special.

The people who deliver your Brand Promise have to feel that the promise also applies to them. Here’s a question worth asking around your company. What is our Brand Promise and how are you delivering on it? If you’re not getting the response you would like, it’s time to work on a promise everyone can believe in. From the words to the tactical actions you put in place to make the promise real. Then try this during your hiring process. Share your Brand Promise with candidates. Ask them how they would deliver that promise in the context of their job. If they can’t figure it out, their qualifications won’t matter.

The better you infuse the delivery of your Brand Promise throughout your company, the easier it is for people to believe in you. Trust you. Choose to do business with you. Work for you. Invest in you. Your brand is your promise. Your promise becomes your brand.