Brand = delivery / promise

Deciding your marketing focus should not be that difficult

I love simple ideas. Especially the ones that make complex subjects easy to understand. Because we only control what we understand. May simple ideas lack depth and detail but they still are robust enough to give us clarity and focus. The following is a simple idea about what a brand is. I came across it while waited to meet our CEO. This writing is barely more than a reflection on my original scribble still ready for discussion.

Brands live in our minds. They are constructs of our beliefs and experiences about them. Our beliefs are based on what we heard and experienced about a brand before. They are the internalisation of all the marketing’s explicit and implicit promises. This is what we expect to experience next time we meet the brand. And then, when we actually meet the brand, we compare our experience, the delivery of the marketing’s promises to our pre-existing beliefs. Whatever the result of this comparison may be — confirming, exceeding or conflicting our expectations — that will be the brand for us for that moment. The promises vs the delivery.

This idea suggests that your brand is ever changing with every single brand-people interaction. It also means that promises set expectations about delivery and experiences, and also correct beliefs. One will have an effect on the other regardless the marketer’s intent.

People’s individual and unconscious comparisons determine your brand. So you can understand your brand’s health by a simple division: it is the ratio of its delivery and promise. To be precise, the sum of all the beliefs and all the experiences of your entire market.

Simple?

Well, we will tell you where your marketing should focus at least:

• Do you over-promise (or under-deliver, if you will)? Give your product or service a decent boost.
• Should we just say to do what you already do well to do it a bit braver and louder? Do so.
• Do you exactly walk your talk? Well, it will change soon, so you better ‘walk faster and nicer’.

OK, see the details of the three different cases.

Closing a positive communication gap

If your brand’s delivery exceeds its promise their dividend will be over one. This result suggests that you have a positive communication gap. You can close this gap by telling better what is possible to deliver. Telling it to more people, telling it braver and clearer. The answer to your problem lays in communication.

Enhancing delivery

If you deliver exactly what you promise your score will be one. This may suggest you reached perfect harmony. But things do not stay still unless they are dead. Stay prosperous, and thus be able to control changes you yourself have to change. It is time to develop new or unlock latent opportunities in your offer and in the way your consumers experience it. Product and service design will help you there.

Closing a negative communication gap

When your brand’s promise exceeds its delivery your score goes below one. This signals that you are over-promising. You either simply stop it and start a more realistic communication or you start decrease the expectations of your consumers. Beyond communication means you can close this gap by product or service development.

So what is the delivery / promise ratio of your brand? Should you better tell what’s possible to deliver or your offer needs some polishing?
Life is just way more complex than that? And where should the numbers to the calculus come anyway? Let’s discuss and find the answer together. Just keep it simple.