Branding: A Brand is a Promise

Many business leaders and professionals will say the phrase "we have to develop our brand, market it, make it powerful and recognized". Unfortunately, most of them are thinking about the physical image of it and not what it stands for.

A powerful brand is the reflection of general recognition of a consistently delivered relevant promise.

As a leader of a business or someone trying to create a personal brand those are the terms under which you have to think about branding. A great logo, trademark, a nice picture, a great bio, or creative catch phrase will just take you so far. Without a consistent delivery of a relevant promise all of that will fail in regrettable loss.

If you are in the process of creating a strong brand for your business, department or personal, let's break the concept down to ensure the key messages are addressed.

The end state of a successful brand is general recognition and desire. How you achieve that is by first defining your relevant promise followed by relentless consistent delivery.

What is your promise?

Whether you think in terms of a product, service or individual is irrelevant. The concept remains the same. What does your [thing] promise? Here are some examples of successful brands promises (this is how they resonate with me, not necessarily what you find in the companies' website):

Oreo - indulgent, familiar, comfort treat
Apple - ahead of time, innovative, simple and exclusive
Starbucks - relax, slow down and enjoy life in a nice place
Google - clean, fast access to all knowledge
McDonald's - fast and cheap

Are these promises relevant?Well, ask the millions of people who use these products and services every day. So, what is your product's or your personal promise? Is that relevant to your clients, customers or consumers?

Note quality is not in any of the promises listed above. Quality isn't something you promise, it's something you deliver. Quality is expected. It's also subjective to your promise. So let's talk about consistently delivering it. What would happen if you had to wait 15 minutes for a Big Mac once? How about twice in a row and in different stores? What if the next 2 iDevice generations deliver only new case colors and new sizes (this sounds familiar)?

The most fundamental way to keep a promise and creating general recognition is to delivery it consistently every time. There is not much to be said here. Start lagging and your brand will fall apart. Deliver consistently every time and word will spread. It's that simple!

As companies grow there is a constant battle for that consistency. The more people you depend on to do it the more difficult it is. It all goes back to the people you have. Hire the right people and train them well otherwise you will kill your brand as fast as you can say "I killed my brand". But that's a whole new subject.

It's ok for companies or professionals to adjust their promise over time for some of them become irrelevant or a commodity, but some of the brands won't survive that. It may be just as easy to develop a new one.

Some new brands may have the same promise as yours, and they will take over general recognition and desire because of better delivery execution. A good recent example is Blockbuster and Netflix. New brands have the advantage of starting from where you currently are and focus on making it better. That's why smart companies and professionals keep innovation top of mind. You can't rest of past success for too long. Actually, not at all.

Are you delivering a relevant promise, and consistently? Yes! Keep doing it and innovate. No! Go back to the drawing board.

Futurology: The real Superman is coming

Let's take a look into the future.  If the image you think of when someone mentions Superman is the muscular body with a yellow and red diamond shaped crest in the chest, red Speedo, boots and cape over a tight blue suit, perfect hairdo and angel face, you may be disappointed.  The real Superman that will be around us soon will be everything but that, at least in most cases.  In fact, you will likely be part of the new Supermen and Superwomen army coming up.

Don’t expect a being from outer space either, who was lucky to land in a place where his natural power became super in comparison to normal humans.  The new Supermen will be technology made.  Driven by the human impatience with the lagging interaction with technology caused by an unfit “middleman”.  This middleman which is completely inadequate to handle the speed demanded by the virtual, lightning fast world is, well, your body!  Have you noticed lately that the devices we carry today are capable of unimaginable things and that the biggest issue we have making them more effective is the fact we still need to touch or talk to them to make something happen?

Did you ever remember you had to send a message or needed some information while in the middle of something else, let’s say driving or taking a shower or in a business meeting?  You had to make the unacceptable decision to give up and let the opportunity pass.  In some other cases you tried to reach to the phone while driving to eventually decide it was not a good idea after almost hitting the car in front of you?  Well, you are ready to become Superman and accept the implications.

If our body is not fit to what is required in this new world, what is the rational decision to make?  You may say retire the body, which as we saw in the movie Matrix it is a possible concept that may be developed overtime.  However, I believe there will be a short-term solution that will bridge us to that future.  Connecting the device directly to our brain.  Bypassing and upgrading the human body instead of retiring it will be the intermediate stage.

You will become our 21^st century version of the Man of Steel.  Not as colorful and romantic.  Instead, a more realistic version of the comic books.  You will be able to multitask without the annoying interruption of reaching to a device.  Think and it happens!  Need to instant message during the meeting to get the latest update?  Done.  Need to make a calculation that would be impossible without a calculator?  Done.  Need to call or text someone while driving without losing sight of the road?  Done.  Research the internet for knowledge, play an interactive game, read a book, send a message, order pizza, get the latest football scores?  Done, done, done.  Nothing else needed other than to think about it.

Along with that there will come the interface with bionic arms, legs, exo-skeletons, etc.  You have become Superman.  However, anywhere there is one, there is also kryptonite.  In our case our internet bills.  Don’t pay them and you’ll get dumb and weak, and you may find yourself frozen in the middle of the street trapped in your shiny Superman suit begging for help.

This transformation will open all sorts of business possibilities.  Imagine the possibility of marketing on the spot directly to someone’s brain!  How about all the data that can be collected.  Today’s Big Data concept will pale in comparison to what is coming, so much so we should call it Not Really that Big of a Data.  But this is content enough for a whole new blog!