A brand is a complex organism. Any time you buy a product or a service, you probably have a mental picture of what your purchase will do and how it will improve your business or life. Often, these expectations are based on presumptions, which can lead to real disappointment when you put an unfamiliar product or service into action.
Sometimes these expectations are built on the recommendations of others. And sometimes, these expectations are communicated by the brand itself. Download the Rebranding Guide — Second Edition. A brand promise can be spelled out to the public, or it can be manifested more subtly in the expression and delivery of the brand experience.
How does an unpretentious American import thrive in a culinary paradise? To Americans and Europeans alike, McDonalds delivers on its brand promise: an inexpensive, familiar, and consistent meal delivered quickly in a clean environment. Use the exercise below, and sub the consumer research for the existing brand for the brands in the marketplace you are entering.
If it is a new product category, think about other categories that people turn to solve the same problem in their lives. You need to talk to your customers. You probably talk to them all the time about their problems and their business.
It may be personally challenging, but it is entirely appropriate to ask them about how they see your brand. Talking one on one to customers will help you empathize with their perspective, meaning that you will be able to see how your brand appears to them. Direct communication with customers can be invaluable for the leader of an organization. Talking in person is ideal.
Video calls are okay, but not as useful. Note that you take as much information in from their facial expressions and body language as their words. Email and text messages are better than nothing but will not give you the full experience. There is no substitute for talking to customers. But they often attract a subset of extraordinarily pleased or agitated customers, thus skewing the data.
Your brand does not exist in a vacuum; you have competitors and live in a market. Even if you have a new and innovative product, customers are solving the same problem in other ways. In the course of doing step one, your customers will invariably compare you to competitors.
You may wince, but it is excellent information. Now you have to take the information and place your brand in the market. Product Category: Define the category of products you are competing in. If your brand spans multiple categories, then define the problem you are solving for people. Quality: Define the level of quality people expect from the brand.
Be honest. Price: Define where your brand sits in the market. Choose one: lowest cost, budget, mid-range, premium, or high end. Values: Define any organizational values that are important for the customer when they chose you. Most corporate values are essential for employees and candidates to hear, but mean nothing to a customer, but some can attract customers, such as environmentalism, product durability, excellence in customers, or evangelizing a lifestyle. If you want to see how a lifestyle can define a market, then read about how we planned out how to place our project brand, Nordeau , square into the mountain sports lifestyle.
Your brand does not serve everyone on the planet. If a brand is to be meaningful, it chooses a subset of people and meets their specific needs very well. Starbucks serves coffee aficionados. Blizzard serves gamers. IBM serves organizations. BMB serves entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and designers. You or your copywriter can rework this base sentence into a statement that is more elegant or catchy.
But you know the content it needs to communicate to your team to keep them on brand and mission. Below is a selection of the brand promises from large brands.
Take note that these are necessarily the best or most useful statements in the world. Whether you take the time to define and communicate your brand promise statement to your team, you have to acknowledge that your brand carries a promise in the minds of its customers.
The more people trust in the brand promise, the more valuable the brand is. So your brand will grow in value and utility if you can make sure your company understands the expectations of customers and meets them every time. Cover Photo by Adrianna Calvo from Pexels. Colin Finkle is a brand marketer and designer with 14 years of experience helping Fortune companies, and now passionately helps Canadian entrepreneurs and public figures at the brand marketing agency, Nordeau.
You can see his work at ColinFinkle. Thank you BMB for the useful information about conceptualizing brand promise. I am happy it was helpful, and I am sure you will do well with your business given you are thinking about the value you are promising to your customers. Written by Martina Bretous martinabretous. For the uninitiated, a pinky promise is usually between two people and it holds more weight than a spit shake, legal contract, verbal agreement, and "I swear on my [insert family member]" statements combined.
It's part of our social contract — once it's been agreed upon, it cannot be broken. A brand promise is the scaled, commercial version of the pinky promise, with the brand holding up one finger and its target audience holding up the other. A brand promise reveals what consumers can expect from a brand across all touchpoints.
It serves as a company's foundational value and informs every aspect of the company, from its messaging to its customer service. Your brand promise should be central to your company, something that remains constant as it grows and evolves. Not every brand promise is explicit. In many cases, it's more of an internal mantra that's shared with employees, investors, and partners. However, when you have built a strong brand identity and clear messaging , your brand promise can be assumed by your target audience.
There's often some confusion between a brand promise and a tagline , so let's break it down. While it can be just as short as a tagline, a brand promise tells consumers, " Hey, this is what you'll find every time you interact with our brand.
One thing to note about a brand promise, it is a promise after all. So when you break it, it can affect your reputation and your revenue. For instance, let's say your brand promise is something like "Innovation at every turn," and your company hasn't come out with something new and fresh in the last five years, that can deter potential consumers. Your brand promise outlines your commitment to your audience. So, to figure out what your promise should be, your first step is determining what your audience wants from you.
It goes beyond a specific product or service, it's more specific to the experience you're providing. For instance, Planet Fitness 's brand promise is based on people's reluctance to join the gym for fear of judgment and embarrassment. The brand, in response, promises to create an environment that encourages people at all fitness levels to go to the gym and feel comfortable working out. Another goal of your brand promise is to set you apart from your competitors.
What makes you unique, is it your customer service, your product, your mission, your values? Use that to offer a promise that's distinctive. In Planet Fitness' case, the brand did something no one else had done: Address the problem with the gym environment, not its users.
As such, place yourself in the shoes of your consumers and envision how you want those interactions to go. Is there a specific feeling involved? What do they have to gain? Once you put those into words, you'll be able to craft a brand promise that reflects the experience you want to promote. Your brand promise should be clear and to the point, something you can say in one sentence. It won't necessarily be as fun as a tagline, but it should definitely inspire trust and confidence.
If you can't articulate your promise in this way, perhaps you haven't fully fleshed out your brand's purpose. If that's the case, start by asking yourself these questions:. Keep in mind that some of these examples of brand promises are assumed and some have been shared by the companies.
Use them as inspiration when crafting your own. What's common across all of these promises is that they never refer to a particular offering or numerical goal. Instead, they are statements that encompass the brand's broader purpose.
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