What Makes a Strong Brand?
Your logo is not your brand. Neither is your name nor your trademark. If so, then what is a brand?
As we discussed before, there are probably as many different definitions of a brand as there are brand strategists. That said, the most commonly agreed-upon description is the following: “A brand is a promise.”
You might be wondering, a promise of what exactly? We are not talking about a promise of what you will do. Instead, it’s a promise of what your customers can do with you in their life. Brands are built by promising and delivering something relevant and different that is perceived as valuable by others.
Brands are built by promising and delivering something relevant and different that is perceived as valuable by others.
Promises come in all shapes and forms.
As an example, a shampoo could promise
- a functional benefit (makes your hair more manageable),
- a sensorial benefit (smells like beach waves),
- an expressive benefit (makes the user look nonconformist),
- or an emotive benefit (makes the user feel sexual).
Some practitioners prefer to use different terms like brand essence, brand mantra, power words, positioning statement or brand statement. That reminds us of the famous line from William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
What matters is not what something is called, but what it is. So, regardless of how you prefer to call it, a brand is a promise.
Not all brand promises are strategically appropriate. As strategists, we use four criteria to evaluate the strength and the fit of a promise.
Not all brand promises are strategically appropriate. As strategists, we use four criteria to evaluate the strength and the fit of a promise.
1.
The first one is ‘alignment’. We often use the following analogy with our clients. Their company is a car, their business strategy is the driver, and their brand strategy is a passenger.
Brand strategy must always follow the business strategy. That’s why the first criteria of a powerful brand promise are the alignment between business strategy and brand strategy.
If you have a lean business model, chances are you outsource most of your non-strategic services, which results in loss of control over some customer touchpoints (i.e. moving your call server to India). In this case, your brand is likely not to be a servant brand.
2.
The second criteria is ‘relevance’. Your promise has to be highly relevant to your customers, or they will tune you out. If you don’t promise something appropriate, meaningful, and valuable, your customer will no longer spend time listening to you.
To evaluate the relevancy of your promise, you can use the famous Jobs to-Be Done framework. According to JTBD, a job is a goal or an objective independent of your solution. The aim of the job performer is not to interact with your company but to get something done. Your service is a means to an end, and you must first understand that end. If your brand effectively solves their problem, then your promise is relevant.
3.
‘Distinctiveness’ is the third criteria. We live in the — so-called — ‘Attention Economy’. Communication specialists state that people’s attention is a scarce resource. That’s why, according to the traditional model called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action,) the primary communication task of a brand should be to grab people’s attention.
That’s a tall order because first mass production, then the internet made differentiation very difficult for brands. There is a sea of sameness out there. Consequently, the global brand consultancy BAV Group’s study shows that brands have become 200% less distinct from one another over the last two decades.
Finally, let’s remember how brands are built: by promising and delivering something relevant and different that others perceive as valuable. That means a promise has two sides: (1) the declaration of the promise and (2) the delivery of the promise.
If you fail to deliver on your promise, you will end up in a worse overall position than if you hadn’t made any promise at all. That’s why whatever you promise; you’d better be able to deliver.
Let’s end with an actionable tip. If you want to build a strong brand, first you must come up with a promise that is in line with your business strategy. Then, it would help if you made it as relevant and different as possible. (Note that relevancy precedes differentiation). Finally, you have to deliver on it, religiously!
