What is a Brand Promise?
A brand promise is not a marketing slogan. It's the commitment you make with everyone who engages with you—customers, employees, and partners.
What is a brand promise?
At it’s core, a brand promise is the explicit or implicit guarantee you make about the experience people can expect consistently from their interactions with you.
All people: Your clients. Your employees. Your partners.
Your brand promise guides how you design products, deliver services, on-board employees, and do business. It’s the way you do what you do.
While a catchy tagline might hint at your promise, the promise itself goes far deeper. Think of it as the reason why people choose you over anyone else. It’s the experience they can only get from you.
Your brand promise is who you are. Always. It’s the heart of your culture.
“While a catchy tagline might hint at your promise, the promise itself goes far deeper.”
—AMELIA ELLENSTEIN
Your brand promise has ALL the feels.
A company’s brand promise encompasses the intangibles:
Who you are.
How you’re different.
How you’re better.
It’s like a code word for your secret sauce. When you deliver on it consistently, it becomes your reputation. Even people who don’t know your brand promise, know your brand promise because they consistently experience it.
For example, a person who is known for being funny gets that reputation because their sense of humor shows up everywhere. Their constant smile. Their facial expressions. Their tone of voice. The words they choose. The way they dress. How they sign an email. How they behave at parties.
Your brand promise is the same way. If you want to be known for something, it has to show up everywhere in a combination of big and small ways.
No matter what it is, there’s an important factor to remember:
A brand promise isn’t made up.
It isn’t an exaggeration. It’s the honest to goodness truth about who you are and how you do what you do.
Airbnb’s promise is “Belong anywhere.” Apple’s is “Think different.” Day Breaker’s brand promise is “Wake up and dance!”
It can be fun or it can be serious. It can be eloquent or funky. But, no matter what, it should be true. It must be true. You are giving your word to your customers. It’s your promise and you must deliver on it everyday without compromise.
As a guiding principle, a brand promise set expectations.
For CEOs, Founders, and entrepreneurs understanding, communicating, and actively managing your brand promise is not a "nice-to-have" – it’s a fundamental measure of accountability and success.
I worked in an organization where our brand promise was “Easy & Delightful.”
That meant that our products-in-use had to be (you guessed it!) easy and delightful. Our customer service had to be easy and delightful. Employee on-boarding had to be easy and delightful. And, new processes we rolled out internally had to be easy and delightful, too.
Some of the toughest feedback any leader could receive was: “This is not easy and delightful.”
For example:
“There are mistakes in the advertising—stores are scrambling to respond. Everyone’s frustrated. It’s NOT easy and delightful.”
“The check-out process takes way too long. There’s too many clicks and too much data entry. It’s NOT easy or delightful.”
At the same time, some of the highest praise recognized team members when they epitomized “Easy and Delightful.”
For example:
“I watched how you stayed easy and delightful when you worked with that customer even though they were really frustrated. You turned that experience around. Nice job!”
“The new process for one-click orders is so easy and so delightful that customers are raving about it during check out. I wanted to be sure you knew the changes you made are working. Well done!”
“Understanding and actively managing your brand promise is not a "nice-to-have" – it’s a fundamental measure of accountability and success.”
- AMELIA ELLENSTEIN
3 Ways to apply your brand promise to your company.
Once you’ve identified your brand promise, it’s time to walk the talk—from the first marketing message to the final delivery. A brand promise is a promise you make over and over again.
Here are three ways to bring your brand promise to life:
Your Website:
Use your website to define, describe, and demonstrate your brand promise.
On the homepage, highlight it as a differentiator.
Design product pages that demonstrate how the things you sell fulfill your brand promise.
Write your “About Us’ story to share the inspiration for it.
But, here’s the trick:
It’s not about repeating the exact words of your brand promise over and over again. Instead, your brand promise should shine through in your language, images, and information. Everything, in big and small ways, should represent it somehow.
2. Your Client Journey:
Design each step in your client journey to fulfill the promise.
Start by mapping out the client journey, step by step. Then, review each touchpoint and ask, “How do we fulfill our brand promise right here?” Look at marketing materials, systems, customer feedback and confirm that you are actively bringing the promise to life.
But don’t stop there. Take another pass and ask, “Where do we break our promise?” Look for common complaints from customers and your team. Dig into broken or old systems. When there’s a point of friction, it’s a good sign that the brand promise isn’t fulfilled.
3. Your Team:
Train your team on the brand promise and teach them specific techniques to deliver on it in their jobs. Don’t assume people will know how to bring it to life.
Welcome new team members in a way that demonstrates the spirit of your promise.
Tell every new member of your team the story of your promise. What inspired it? Where did it come from? Why does it matter?
Teach a new-hire class on your brand promise and engage people in an activity to explore what it means in their role.
Ask every employee to take a pledge to uphold your brand promise. Require them to sign it.
