Jay Miletsky

The brand promise is the benefit the brand will deliver to consumers – and keeping that promise is one of the most important things a company can do. The brand promise can be expressed directly, made crystal clear, or it can be subtle and unspoken; either way, a promise is a promise and needs to be kept.

Suppose you’re planning a vacation. You visit a Web site that promises to provide more comprehensive information on remote destinations than any other travel site on the Internet. While using the site for research, you notice that it speaks highly of the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean, detailing an exciting night life, a championship golf course, and award-winning restaurants. You’re sold! You book your flight, pack your bags, and head out, anxious to play a round of golf and dance the night away. There’s only one problem: the Web site neglected to mention that a hurricane that hit the island a few years back destroyed the golf course, which was never rebuilt. It also left out the fact that the night life consists of bars and clubs that are open only during specific months of the year – read: not when you’re there. So much for “comprehensive information!” the bottom line: The site did not deliver what it promised. It promised comprehensive information, but the information it actually provided was old and incomplete. The next time you are planning a trip, it’s highly doubtful you’ll return to the site for information.

While trust can be difficult to build, losing it can be a much quicker process. Keeping the brand promise is key to building trust in a brand. Initially, the consumer can only go by what the brand promises and assume that that promise will be kept. If the promise is kept, then the brand is strengthened. A positive reputation has been maintained, and the expectation of positive future experiences with the brand is increased, making it more likely that the consumer will use that brand again. If the promise is broken, the brand is breached, raising doubt and diminishing trust – and regaining consumers’ trust is often impossible.

Do consumers really give a brand only one chance to fail? It depends on the brand. How much leeway a company has in breaking its promise will largely depend on its longevity and history – or, put another way, how much trust equity the brand has built up. The more trust consumers have in a brand, the more likely they’ll be to forgive broken promises – to a point.

Take Nike, for example. Nike makes sneakers – the sneakers are their product. Their brand reputation is delivering high-quality, stylish products that will enhance athletic performance. When a consumer purchases a pair of Nikes, the expectation is that the shoes will be comfortable and last a long time, even after aggressive use. For decades, Nike has kept that brand promise and met consumer expectations, even though (to my best recollection) that promise has never been expressly stated. Now suppose a consumer purchases a new pair of Nikes and they fall apart in the middle of a basketball game just two days later. That consumer will be annoyed, but his confidence in the Nike brand won’t have taken too much of a hit. Because Nike has built enough trust equity to overcome a single bad experience, chances are the customer will assume it was just one bad pair of sneakers off the assembly line, and will obtain a new pair. But now suppose that a few days later, the consumer’s ankles start to hurt during his weekly tennis game because the sneakers aren’t proving the proper support. Will this consumer buy another pair of Nikes? Maybe, but his trust in the brand will have been shaken – and he just may look at a pair of Reeboks the next time around. Sure, after enough time has passed, the consumer might write off these negative experiences and buy the Nike brand again, but there is no question that on some level, damage will have been done. And of course, most brands don’t have the time, money, or exposure that Nike has to overcome isolated negative experiences. Brands must take care to keep their promises each and every time in order to develop the trust necessary for gaining and retaining consumer loyalty.

While the brand promise often has to do with the quality of a product or service, that’s not always the case. McDonald’s doesn’t claim that eating there is akin to dining in a five-star restaurant. Their promise is to provide you a quick meal that is inexpensive and tastes good. Women don’t buy sweatshirts from Juicy Couture because of their promised high quality. The subtle promise is that if you own Juicy products, you will be part of an elite, fashionable crowd. The promise in this case involves lifestyle factors rather than product-related factors, such as speed or quality.

As brand builders, marketers must manage how the promise is expressed and how consumers understand it to make sure they’re not inadvertently promising something they can’t deliver. That’s one of the most challenging things about marketing: The brand understands the promise, and the agency understands the promise, but does the audience? Building a brand involves using tangibles (Web sites, advertisements, etc.) to communicate intangible concepts such as a promise or personality in a way that makes sense, is perceived as desirable by consumers, and on which the brand can realistically follow through.