FCMC 2016 Brand Promise Schildwachter
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In June 2016 at the Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference, I was asked to present thoughts on how to craft a brand promise.
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FCMC 2016 Brand Promise Schildwachter
- 2. Steve Schildwachter Chief Marketing Officer BrightStar Care @SteveS1
- 3. What it includes Ground Rules Target Complete and Concise Brand Not always obvious Frame of Reference Who’s your competition? Point of Difference Only one thing Reason(s) to Believe Helps process things Classic Brand Positioning
- 4. Align Promise and Reality
- 5. Team Effort
Editor's Notes
- (Acknowledge how perfect the session description is, especially the definition of a brand promise as a statement that guides the brand’s growth.)
- The classic brand positioning is the best place to start. First rule is always knowing your consumer, of course, and in a classic brand positioning it’s OK to be a little more complete….as in a paragraph….but you can still say you’re concise if you limit your paragraph to what’s really relevant. Brand in most cases is pretty obvious, whether it’s Checkers or BrightStar Care, but sometimes it isn’t. Once we were line-extending a popular air freshener but tried naming it something too far afield from the parent brand and product. Frame of Reference is, without question, the most-overlooked part of this exercise. It’s not always obvious who your competition really is. The Point of Difference is what we call the Brand Promise, and whatever you call it, it’s got to be just one thing. In my humble opinion the brand promise, or brand positioning, should not have reasons to believe. But I kept it here because most internal audiences can’t stop at the point of difference without knowing or saying more. That’s OK, because nobody writes these sitting alone at a desk; it’s a team exercise. And often the real point of difference is buried on a list of rationale. You bring it forward during the process.
- This story starts with a consumer insight. We were selling bug spray and it seemed pretty easy: Problem Solution. Mosquitoes were the problem and OFF! was the solution. But when conducting consumer research we saw the reality was more Problem Problem. Most people disliked putting on bug spray almost as much as they disliked mosquitoes. This epiphany inspired us to write a new brand promise that not only kept us honest with consumers (admitting faults, doing more specific segmentation), but helped us rally the organization to change what R&D was working on. Most of the work was very long-range, involving a lot of lab time, but we sped up development of a handheld mosquito protection device – think of it as the OFF! You don’t put on. Result was a +55% increase in sales. The Reality should influence the Promise….and the Promise can influence the Reality. (It’s intentional that this slide is titled “Align Promise and Reality” instead of “with”. Because sometimes the Promise recognizes the Reality; sometimes the Promise bends the Reality.)
- A year ago this month I returned to franchising when I started as CMO at BrightStar. The first thing Shelly Sun said to me was: “We need a new TV commercial on air by September 14th.” The good news was – and is – that we have an authentic, powerful story. The challenge was to improve upon previous advertising that (1) wasn’t in consumer language and (2) didn’t differentiate us from competition. To get there, we had to craft a brand promise. Who answered the challenge? A team. We worked internally with critical departments like Clinical Quality, and with groups of franchisees in a face-to-face work session. Naturally we consumer-tested what we were working on but the main point was that we took the time to bring along all stakeholders for the ride. One small example from the ad: “Joint Commission” becomes “same standards as the country’s best hospitals”. Since then our brand promise has guided all our marketing communications. Today, our consumer inquiries driven by Marketing are double what they were a year ago. All this was made possible by a clearly articulated brand promise.
- Your two biggest enemies in crafting a brand promise are Complexity and Documentarianism. Complexity seems easy to define, but how many times have you found yourself wallowing in it? These days, probably a lot, and it’s our job as marketers to simplify it for your colleagues, customers and consumers. Documentarianism – OK, I made up that word. It’s really the problem of words on a page. A brand promise you never make to the consumer because you don’t live it out day to day on the job. The document is an end unto itself.