Brand promise can make you or break you

A corporation's brand promise is the commitment to deliver made between the brand and its audience. A brand promise motivates the audience to buy. So ultimately what is important is to live by the brand promise. If the brand doesn't deliver the promise, it will die. In a Gallup survey involving four-million customers, it was found that one in five unhappy customers feel that the brands they patronized were not keeping up with promises (Timmerman, J. 2013).

The brand message, the customer expectation, and execution have to be aligned with one another. The minute there is disengagement, people will begin to be disinterested in the brand. It's like making a promise to your friend and then not keeping it. But a friend might give you a second chance, a customer will never give a second chance.

I believe that as a brand it is important to be able to touch the heart of customers and prospective customers. Doing that will help us emotionally connect to our audience. For instance, I am not brand conscious at all. But when it comes to my shoes, it has to be "Adidas." Over and above, if anyone asks me to recommend some good pair of shoes, I recommend Adidas. So without actually paying me, I have become a brand ambassador. If a customer is emotionally engaged with a brand, they become fully engaged brand ambassadors. Gallup finds that an effective brand promise is compelling, connecting and credible.

A lot of thinking goes into setting up a brand promise. And more efforts go into keeping the brand promise. A brand promise must be able to convey a compelling benefit, it must be authentic and credible, and it must be kept every time (Hinge Marketing). A few examples of brands that have kept their promise are FedEx's "Your package will get there overnight. Guaranteed," Apple's "You can own the coolest, easiest-to-use cutting-edge computers and electronics," McKinsey & Company's "You can hire the best minds in management consulting," and The Nature Conservancy's "Empowering you to save the wilderness."

Before developing a brand promise, the company should ask itself a few questions, What is the value of the company and its brand?; How is the brand different from competition?; What are the attributes of the company’s brand?; Then, what is the company’s brand promise? Companies that manage to answer these questions honestly, create a livable brand promise.

Reference list

Elements of a Successful Brand 4: Brand Promise. Hinge Marketing. Retrieved March 7, 2014 from website

Timmerman, J. (2013). Your Brand Is Your Company's Engine. Gallup Business Journal. Retrieved March 7, 2014 from website