Brand Promise & Purpose Definition
A brand promise is an articulation of what target customers can expect from their experience with your brand.
It reinforces your purpose; it replaces or aligns the numerous disconnected missions, visions, company values and customer charters evident in so many organisations that are often contradictory, confusing and of little practical value in running a business. And it’s the heartline that runs throughout your customer experience.
With a brand promise usually seen as being the Marketing Department’s baby, the challenge is to gain buy-in and commitment across your whole organisation. Without buy-in from HR and other operating functions it becomes little more than an advertising slogan.
Watch Out For...
It’s all too easy to focus more on the sizzle than the substance. Don’t let the effort default to creative copywriting rather than nailing the fundamental commitments you will make. Focus on content first; creativity second. Shiny content can only go so far, but if it actually captures the brand promise, it can galvanise a workforce.
How Smith + Co Can Help
- Executive workshop – a workshop with your senior team to review the data, refine the purpose and agree the way forward
- Draft a ‘strawman’ brand promise – detailing the specific commitments that will underpin the brand promise and inform the experience design
- Draft the as-is and to-be customer journey and customer experience – for your target customers as input to the customer experience workshop
Creating Value For Customers
Insight into employee engagement with the brand is especially important for brand promise definition as the commitments made will be the principles which guide employee behaviour and ultimately translate into the customer experience on the front line. We use the results of our employee experience survey to inform the drafting of a brand promise which is easy to understand and meaningful to the employee, and something which empowers them to meet and exceed customer expectations in line with your overall brand purpose.
“Smith+Co have a deep understanding of the complexities of customer experience and were extremely effective in helping us to build our brand around customer experience. I recommend that companies focusing on customer experience take advantage of their expertise.”
Lorena Baker Harris, Director Corporate Marketing
