Don’t Departmentalize Brand Promise
Strategy drives an organization. This has become business gospel. It has also led to pigeonholing management of ‘brand promise’ as a communication issue, rather than a key strategic lever that can drive process refinement throughout a company. Imagine getting a promise from someone you don’t know. How valuable is the promise, what does it mean? You evaluate it based on factors such as the giver’s integrity, politics, past experience, corporate culture, and even the conditions under which it was made. A promise made anonymously, lightly or from someone unreliable doesn’t carry weight. Similarly, your brand is the summation of promises made to a consumer through previous use, contact, communication, word-of-mouth and possibly a bit of fantasy on their part. So ‘Brand Promise’ will not affect consumer opinion of your brand if your corporate culture, product attributes and service delivery don’t align with the promise. In other words: Brand-is-Promise and Promise-is-Brand.