Brand Core · Brand promise · Module
Keeping it
Measuring whether the promise actually holds, and what happens when it does not — because a promise with no failure record is unmeasured rather than unbroken.
The idea
How it works
Almost no organisation measures its brand promise, which means almost no organisation knows whether it is kept. The measure is usually available and simply not defined, because defining it makes failure visible.
How a failure is handled affects loyalty more than whether it occurred. That finding is well established and consistently under-acted on, because recovery is a cost with no line item and failure prevention is a project with a budget.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Define the failure condition
What counts as the promise not being kept, in terms someone could measure without a judgement call.
- 02
Report the rate, not the anecdotes
A monthly failure rate makes the promise manageable. Individual complaints make it emotional.
- 03
Give recovery real authority
A recovery that requires an approval takes long enough to lose the customer it was meant to keep.
- 04
Feed failures back to deliverability
A rising failure rate is either an operations problem or a promise that was always too wide. Both are findings.
One level in
The components of keeping it
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The trust reading
Whether customers believe the promise, which is a different measure from whether it is kept.
Learn
Define what counts as a failure. Until then, the promise is unmeasured rather than unbroken.
The other modules in brand promise
The promise
Writing the commitment itself: narrow enough to rule something out, and phrased so that failing it would be recognisable.
LearnDeliverability
Whether the organisation can actually keep the promise every time — which is a question about capacity and process, not about wording.
LearnCommunication
How the promise is stated externally, and how carefully — because overstatement is free when written and expensive when delivered.
Learn