Chapter 1: What's your direction?
IN THIS LESSON
What is a brand promise?
What impact does a brand promise have?
Step-by-step tutorial on designing a promise for your brand
What is a brand promise?
From Adobe: “A brand promise is a value or experience a company's customers can expect to receive every single time they interact with that company.”
My version? What prospects and clients should expect each time they encounter your brand.
What impact does a brand promise have?
Your mission + vision statement are the internal extension of your brand promise. It is how your staff and you yourself live out the company’s mission and vision. Down the road, when you create brand positioning, that would be the external extension of your brand promise. It’s what others experience and how they begin to form an opinion of your brand.
How to Design Your Brand Promise
Step 1. Remember what your audience wants from you.
If you’ve had an audience for awhile, what do they come to expect from you?
For example, there’s a girl on TikTok (@nudelip) who creates these daily itineraries to make life more interesting. Her promise to her audience is to help them romanticize the hardships that come with being in your 20s.
If you don’t quite have an audience yet, consider the pain points you are attempting to solve for. Your brand promise likely lies there.
Step 2. Where do you meet your audience?
Are you online only? Do you and your audience meet up via social media? Or do you have a physical storefront? Are you a traveling storefront who relies on popups at events and local markets?
All of these places you meet your audience are opportunities to examine opportunities to evoke an emotion or feeling from your audience. What do you want to make them feel, where will they feel this way, and how will you deliver on that?
For example, @nudelip’s might think: okay, my audience finds me on TikTok and that’s where we primarily communicate. The feeling I want these girls to have is like they’re taking back their life, in control of their days, and just feel a smidge happier while navigating the chaos of their 20s.
For the record — I do not know Karley but I think she has created something truly wonderful and I will forever engage with her lighthearted content.
Step 3. Apply your differentiator and be unique.
So once you know who your audience is, where they are meeting you, and what they want from you — it’s time to look inward. What makes your brand so unique?
Karley is unique because she keeps the itineraries so approachable for the everyday girl. It’s not as out of touch as many other influencers - it’s reachable for most girls or easily modifiable.
Your brand promise should be short, sweet, and memorable. It should also fit the positioning of your brand in the market. I recommend pulling on your mission statement, vision statement, and differentiators to really drive this home.
Karley’s brand promise could be:
Romanticizing the life of a 20something female.