Artful Realist

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Explaining why a chocolate cupcake tasted so divine makes us love the cupcake a little less, while explaining why a movie was so horrible makes us hate the movie a little less.

// Sarah G. Moore
Assistant Professor, University of Alberta School of Business
Author of “Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid: How Word of Mouth Influences the Storyteller.” Journal of Consumer Research: April 2012

(Source: jcr-admin.org)

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The US Marines Corps has just introduced a new advertising campaign entitled “Toward the Sound of Chaos.” The campaign builds off of research conducted by JWT that demonstrates potential recruits value “helping people in need.” This data point has been verified in numerous other studies I’ve written about in this blog and in my new book, Brand Real. Justice and community are consistently listed by young people 18-24 as important values that they seek in their brands.

This campaign is a significant reframing of the Marines as a brand. The question is: do you think it represents a new promise? And if so, is it credible? Check out the whole campaign, including an original series of videos created for Facebook.

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Stake Promises, Not Positions

A brand promise is not the same as a brand position. It is a common nugget of brandlore that the two phrases mean the same thing. They do not, though they are related to each other. A position asserts a line of argument (as in “what position shall we take in this message?”) or it pinpoints a location in perceptual space (as in “which position do we or shall we occupy in the mind of the consumer?”) Positioning thrives on “open space”—perceptual territory that your brand can claim because it is unclaimed by competitors. Imagine you operate a brand in an environment where every competitor uses a red logo. To effectively position your brand, you might choose to make your logo blue because that color is “ownable.” This example is a gross oversimplification of positioning, but it illustrates one reason a position is different from a promise. You position to be different and to stand out. It’s an essential activity, indeed, but it is possible to reposition a brand by focusing on purely cosmetic changes and not deliver any real, incremental value. In contrast, when you make a brand promise, you still stake a position, but you also create a covenant with consumers. You commit to deliver value.

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A sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an … agent does than if it describes what something is, what properties it has.

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Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

I love this quote because it validates something I have been telling brand strategists for years: a brand promise should be active, not existential. Strategists love to write promises that declare what a brand is. But these promises are harder to grasp and less likely to stick in memory. We understand characters in action. The next time you think about defining your brand this way — “Brand X is a …” — think again. Don’t tell me what your brand is. Tell me what it does.

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