My friend Bob Wheatley, CEO of healthy living agency Emergent, had a blog posting the other day that I thought made an excellent point about how actions and experience overtake words, and the experience has to live up to the promise, lest brand equity be completely squandered.
“What’s the price of breaking a promise and expectation?” he wrote. “What is presented as hand crafted comes through as factory made, and in that bright shining moment the aura of disenchantment comes home to roost … The price of failure to build trust is just too great. Reputation is everything and reality is the truth serum administered daily by measuring the gap between promise, purpose and actual proof.”
Bob writes: “There have been too many trips to disappointment junction. What we now have is a belief breach in the brand relationship … Every brand, every business today lives in a glass house. What can be known will be known digitally, quickly and by ever-larger audiences. So the distance between anticipated outcome and actual experiences must be closed. The trophy in the battle for future growth will go to those marketers who understand the significance of this behavior principle. Sweating the details of how everything works to deliver on expectations is required. What you say, especially do and provide must all match up.”
And, he adds: “Trust sits at the core of everything in marketing and in business. Having respect for the consumer’s welfare and intelligence should share equal stature in how strategies are created. Employing trusted sources and voices as part of the marketing mix are vital to helping validate what is promised.
“This is the price of admission, now, to a brand relationship.”
You can read the entire posting here.
“What’s the price of breaking a promise and expectation?” he wrote. “What is presented as hand crafted comes through as factory made, and in that bright shining moment the aura of disenchantment comes home to roost … The price of failure to build trust is just too great. Reputation is everything and reality is the truth serum administered daily by measuring the gap between promise, purpose and actual proof.”
Bob writes: “There have been too many trips to disappointment junction. What we now have is a belief breach in the brand relationship … Every brand, every business today lives in a glass house. What can be known will be known digitally, quickly and by ever-larger audiences. So the distance between anticipated outcome and actual experiences must be closed. The trophy in the battle for future growth will go to those marketers who understand the significance of this behavior principle. Sweating the details of how everything works to deliver on expectations is required. What you say, especially do and provide must all match up.”
And, he adds: “Trust sits at the core of everything in marketing and in business. Having respect for the consumer’s welfare and intelligence should share equal stature in how strategies are created. Employing trusted sources and voices as part of the marketing mix are vital to helping validate what is promised.
“This is the price of admission, now, to a brand relationship.”
You can read the entire posting here.
- KC's View:
