A brand promise is usually one or two sentences that accurately communicates what a consumer should expect when interacting with a brand. When a business creates a brand promise, it is making a declaration of assurance. Brand promises are often seen as extensions of brand positioning statements that explain why a business exists. A brand promise then tells the consumer how a product is service is better than those of a competitor.
Aspect
Explanation
Brand Promise
– Brand Promise is a statement or commitment made by a brand to its customers, conveying what they can expect from the brand in terms of quality, value, experience, and benefits. It serves as a pledge and creates specific expectations in consumers’ minds.
Clarity
– A brand promise should be clear and concise, easily understood by consumers. It sets the tone for the brand’s interactions with customers and helps align marketing messages and customer experiences.
Consistency
– Maintaining consistency between the brand promise and the actual customer experience is critical. Brands must deliver on their promises consistently across all touchpoints to build trust and credibility.
Customer Focus
– The brand promise should be customer-centric, addressing the needs, desires, and pain points of the target audience. It should communicate how the brand can solve problems or fulfill aspirations for customers.
Uniqueness
– An effective brand promise often highlights what sets the brand apart from competitors. It emphasizes the brand’s unique value proposition and what makes it different or better in the eyes of consumers.
Examples
– Apple: Apple’s brand promise is “Think Different,” emphasizing innovation and creativity. – Nike: Nike’s promise is “Just Do It,” motivating customers to take action and pursue their athletic goals. – Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola’s promise is “Open Happiness,” suggesting that their products bring joy and unity.
Reputation
– Over time, a consistently delivered brand promise can help build a strong brand reputation. Customers associate the brand with the promised attributes, creating loyalty and advocacy.
Measurement
– Brands can measure the effectiveness of their brand promise through customer surveys, feedback, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and brand perception studies. These metrics gauge how well the promise aligns with customer experiences.
Evolution
– Brands may need to adapt their brand promise over time to remain relevant and responsive to changing consumer preferences and market dynamics. The core values and identity should remain intact while allowing for evolution.
Importance
– A well-crafted brand promise is essential for building brand identity, fostering customer loyalty, and creating a distinct position in the market. It helps guide marketing efforts and shapes how the brand is perceived by consumers.
Conclusion
– The brand promise is a foundational element of brand strategy. It defines the relationship between a brand and its customers by setting clear expectations and building trust. A strong and authentic brand promise is a key driver of brand success.
Brand promises can be overt in nature – with courier company FedEx being a prime example. The company motto “when it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight” is a public promise which the company has never compromised.
Brand promises can also be less overt. McDonald’s delivers on familiar, consistent, and affordable meals without incorporating making specific promises around these characteristics. Instead, the brand promise of McDonald’s is the less tangible ability to help families take the guesswork out of choosing a restaurant.
Three steps to creating a successful brand promise
1. Define the promise
The most successful brand promises will combine the personality, mission statement, values, and USP of a business into a succinct and deliverable package.
Combining these important elements ensures that a business creates a brand promise that is not only authentic but unique.
Here, the brand promise should be written down for clarity. But the promise itself must also be present in a less tangible form. That is, the promise should be reflected in every aspect of internal and external business culture.
2. Deliver the promise
Next, determine how the promise might be delivered. FedEx’s promise of overnight delivery seems simplistic on paper, but tremendous buy-in from employees and other relevant stakeholders is consistently required to make this promise unbreakable.
At this step, it’s important to remember that cutting corners and making promises do not mix. Businesses who promise to prioritize consumer needs without first determining what they need are doomed to failure.
3. Track and adjust performance where necessary.
While it is true that there is some degree of art in developing a brand, businesses still need a trackable strategy in place. Engagement metrics will provide clear insights on whether a brand is resonating with its audience or whether marketing needs to reconsider its approach.
Surveys and questionnaires are also a great way of determining whether consumers understand a brand. Indeed, carefully worded questions can reveal a range of insights around the credibility and authenticity of a brand promise.
Some more examples of companies with successful brand promises
Apple – who give consumers a chance to own the trendiest, sleekest, and most technologically advanced electronics.
Lynda.com – offering affordable and convenient high-quality training on a range of topics.
Nike – with an all-encompassing promise to bring inspiration and innovation to world athletes.
Coca-Cola – whose beverages promise to instill a mindset of fun and optimism through refreshing and uplifting experiences.
Additional Case Studies
Amazon: “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Amazon’s promise revolves around placing the customer at the forefront of everything they do, ensuring customer satisfaction.
Zappos: “Deliver WOW through service.” Zappos is renowned for its customer service, often going above and beyond to surprise and delight its customers.
Southwest Airlines: “Low fares. Nothing to hide.” Southwest promises transparency in its pricing, with no hidden fees or last-minute surprises.
Starbucks: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” Starbucks focuses on the personal connection and community-building aspect of their brand, not just the coffee.
BMW: “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” BMW sets high expectations for the performance and driving experience of its vehicles with this promise.
American Express: “Don’t live life without it.” A promise of reliability, utility, and indispensability.
Disney: “The happiest place on earth.” Disney’s brand promise is all about creating magical, unforgettable experiences for families and children.
Volvo: “For life.” While Volvo has often been associated with safety, this promise also encompasses reliability and long-term durability.
Target: “Expect more. Pay less.” Target promises quality products at affordable prices, setting itself apart from other discount retailers.
Slack: “Where work happens.” Slack promises to be the central hub for collaboration and communication in the workplace.
Key takeaways:
Brand promises set expectations for the business to consumer relationship. The promise should permeate every aspect of a business and be authentic, unique, and consistent.
Brand promises can be tangible and overt in the sense that they are explicitly stated. But they can also encapsulate specific experiences that consumers come to expect when interacting with an organization.
To develop a brand promise, businesses must combine aspects of their values, mission statement, values, and USP. Importantly, there must be no potential for the promise to be broken through inadequate due diligence or a lack of employee buy-in.
Key Highlights
Definition: A brand promise is a concise statement that communicates the primary benefit or experience consumers can expect when interacting with a brand. It’s a commitment from the brand to its customers.
Nature: Brand promises can be explicit, like FedEx’s commitment to overnight delivery, or implicit, like McDonald’s offering consistent and familiar meals without specifically stating so.
Creation Steps:
Define the Promise: Combine the brand’s personality, mission, values, and unique selling proposition (USP) to craft an authentic and distinct promise.
Deliver the Promise: Ensure all stakeholders, especially employees, align with and fulfill the promise consistently.
Track and Adjust: Use metrics to monitor the brand’s resonance with its audience and adjust strategies if needed. Surveys can help gauge consumer understanding and credibility of the promise.
Lynda.com: Provides affordable, quality training on diverse topics.
Nike: Inspires and innovates for athletes worldwide.
Coca-Cola: Promises fun, optimism, and refreshing experiences.
Importance: Brand promises set expectations and shape the business-consumer relationship. They should be consistent, authentic, and permeate all aspects of a business.
Outcomes: When upheld, brand promises can boost trust, loyalty, and brand equity. When broken, they can damage a brand’s reputation and trustworthiness.
Other related key concepts connected to branding
Create brand awareness
Brand awareness is a measure of how familiar a customer is with a brand. The greater the brand awareness a business enjoys, the more their products and services are recognizable to their target audience, thus, in theory, augmenting its long-term strength on the marketplace. Brand awareness is a key element of an effective marketingstrategy.
Over time, build up brand equity, one of your most important assets
Brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Position your company and product so that people can identify with your brand
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Define your ideal customers and work hard to get them
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Communicate what makes your product unique to generate a strong commercial use case
A unique selling proposition (USP) enables a business to differentiate itself from its competitors. Importantly, a USP enables a business to stand for something that they, in turn, become known among consumers. A strong and recognizable USP is crucial to operating successfully in competitive markets.
Tell your business story, and make it part of your offering and philosophy
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a businessmodel. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
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Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
