The core of a brand is the promise the business makes to customers and the way it delivers on that promise. Because Brand is what customers expect when they engage with us.
Our customers might set their expectations about us by investing time and attention and energy and money to actually engage with us to know if we are what they want. Or, we might save them all that by clarifying our promise, so they see what to expect.
So, the challenge isn't that we make a product, fall in love with it, and understand everything about it. Our challenge is figuring out how to make our audience fall in love with what we make. The challenge is clarifying our promise in relation to the change we seek to make, and the psychographics and dreams of the people who want that change.
In marketing, promises that last and scale and build great brands aren't the ones that illustrate a list of features. Instead, they inspire and get to people's hearts. Like Uber's promise to its early adopters: There's a magic button on your phone, when you push it, a car will appear and take you wherever you want to be.
One more challenge here: If we make too big of a promise and fall short in achieving it, people will be disappointed and ignore us. If we make too small promises that convey a little value, people will be disappointed and ignore us. If we make too specific or sophisticated promises, we aren't inspiring people or enrolling them in the journey.
We can be on the way to proudly build a great brand when we make a viscerally-touching promise that sparks imagination and pokes emotions, and when we know we deliver (or better, overdelivering) on that very promise.
