A brand is not a promise
It's time for this myth to die!
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 199
For years, branding gurus have peddled the idea that a brand is a promise.
Marketing gurus, branding experts, and CMOs are happy to play along.
I mean, why not, right?
What’s not to like about bid ol’ corporate entities making enticing huge, too-good-not-to-be-true promises?
Here’s the problem. Promises are cheap.
Any idiot can make a promise.
Just look at the campaign promises of the typical candidate for any role in local or national government.
Candidates to the left and right will make one promise after another—simply to get elected—most of which they’ll fail to deliver on once they’re safely in office.
Think back to the beginning of the COVID lockdown.
After years of branding apathy, suddenly big banks, major airlines and the like were breaking their necks to peddle: “In these troubling times …” and “We’re all in this together … ” messaging.
While they were all promising a similar thing, few of them were looking at what other brands were doing (in order to do something different), and one by one, those brand promises evaporated (if they ever existed at all).
The big issue about promises is that they don’t build brands, ACTIONS do!
If branding was just about promises, then:
United Airlines would still be “Fly the Friendly Skies” instead of “Drag you off the plane.”
Facebook would still be about “Bringing the world closer together” instead of “Selling your data to the highest bidder (and then lying about it).”
Elon Musk’s Twitter/X would still be the “The town square of free speech” instead of a burning dumpster of trolls, bots, and spam.
Tesla would still be a brand worth owning instead of a badge of Nazism
Do you see the patterns here?
The more a brand PROMISES something big and worth aspiring to and the more often (and publicly) that brand FAILS TO DELIVER, the faster that brand becomes a joke, then a corporate liability, and then an example of what NOT to do.
A brand is what you do, not what you say
Your brand isn’t your tagline, your manifesto (heaven help us), or your purpose-driven marketing fluff.
Your brand is the sum total of every aspiration, experience, interaction, and recollection that people have of their exposure to, use of, or ownership of your product, service, or business.
Your brand is every interaction, every customer service call, every social media post, every delivery delay or shortfall, and every moment of interactive truth in which you either overdeliver or in which you completely disappoint.
Apple isn’t strong because it promises innovation—it’s strong because it delivers products people love.
Patagonia isn’t trusted because it promises sustainability—it’s trusted because it backs it up with actions (even telling customers not to buy their stuff if they don’t need it).
Nike doesn’t dominate because it says “Just Do It”—it dominates because, for decades, it has made athletes actually do it in Nike gear.
Broken promises = broken brand
Every time a company overpromises and under-delivers—big airlines, I’m talking to you here—that company slices away at the customer-to-brand-bond of trust.
Trust is the glue that bonds customers to products for life.
Once trust erodes, the days of the brand’s aspirational value to the customer are numbered.
Don’t believe me?
Look at the recent blow back on TESLA cars as a result of Elon Musk’s involvement in U.S. politics. Sales down. Share price tumbling. Cars vandalized. Dealerships attacked.
Bud Light didn’t lose sales through a culture war—it lost sales because its actions (flip-flopping, weak responses, lack of conviction) made its brand meaningless.
Tesla’s brand isn’t suffering because Elon Musk stopped promising self-driving cars—it’s suffering because years of overpromising have made people doubt everything the company says.
WeWork didn’t collapse because it failed to promise a revolution—it collapsed because its entire business model was a lie wrapped in branding nonsense.
Stop promising. Start doing.
If you want a strong brand:
Shut up about your “promise.” Seriously. Nobody cares.
Focus on what you actually deliver. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions.
When you screw up (and you will), own it quickly then fix it memorably!
Trust is built on accountability, responsibility, and dependability. Not perfection.
A brand isn’t what you say it is.
It’s what your clients, buyers, and customers EXPERIENCE it to be—regardless of whether those experiences are real and first hand, or secondhand from someone else’s experiences.
Your brand is what everyone else says, thinks, feels, and remembers it is when they’re with their friends, when you’re not in the room, and when they want to solve a problem with goods, or services, or a product range similar to yours.
If all you’ve got is a lame-assed promise that’s you’ve proved you can’t or won’t keep, or if you’ve previously failed to measure up, or if your promise has let the prospect down in some way, you’ve got nothing.
The bottom line here is simple: Stop making brand promises and start creating brand actions that you stand behind and that you’re prepared to back up no matter what.
Then go from there.
As always, thanks for reading.
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P.S. Next time on Shaking the Tree … Being OK with Zero ROI for Two Years
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.