Brand Promise: How to Communicate in One Statement?

Art Lapinsch -

I would like to start with a quote from the first post in this series:

For a brand to exist it needs a sender and a receiver.

If the promise of a sender matches with the associations of a receiver we have good branding.

The first step of a branding feedback loop is the brand promise.

Let's see how we can work with that 👇

Brand Promise: Combination of Brand Vision and Brand Purpose

Good branding is aligned top to bottom.

When distilling a brand promise you would start with:

In an ideal scenario, your brand promise is a one-liner that captures the brand's vision and purpose.

Nike: Just Do It.

It is a combination of:

  • Vision: A world where everyone is an athlete
  • Purpose: Nike's goal to empower all athletes
  • Promise: Just Do It.

Stripe: Payments Infrastructure for the Internet

It is a combination of:

  • Vision: The Internet economy will be the majority of the economy
  • Purpose: Increase the GDP of the Internet
  • Promise: Payments Infrastructure for the Internet

Bottomline: One Statement to Capture the Brand Strategy

A good brand promise captures is like a guiding light for brand strategy.

  • Internal alignment: Your team knows how to communicate into the market
  • External commitment: Your customers know what to expect and how to think of your brand

It is the first statement that a customer would see when navigating to your website.

In other words: your brand promise can be your tagline.

🤞

This post is an excerpt from my online course Fundamentals of Brand Strategy where you learn how to build successful brands.

The self-paced online course contains 5 hours of video material and teaches you how to use the Brand Pyramid.

Brand Pyramid in Action: Use it to create, audit, and improve your brands.
Learn the Fundamentals of Brand Strategy 🧰

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Further Reading

Short Excerpts from the Course

These posts are short snippets of the course curriculum 👇