Branding Your Relationships
Your Brand is Your Promise, So Keep it.
By Tim Pedersen - FFP Online ( article- 3 of 3) 1,2

In our final segment of Branding Your Relationships, we discuss how to guide your corporate brand message to become a delivered promise, rather than a failed expectation.

Promise
We started this defining what a brand is. Simply, a brand is a promise. It’s your company’s promise to deliver what potential customers will be expecting from your brand and its reputation in doing so. The objective is to differentiate your service from others in the market by excelling in maintaining your reputation and building customer relationships. After having established a relationship with your customers, they will come to expect you to deliver on your brand’s promise, time and time again.

I know what you are thinking here; “I have no control over the messaging of my airline?” This is indeed true, however, your corporate brand message starts with the CEO and executive team and it is delivered everyday through each employee. If your responsibilities include marketing, you have control over “spinning” your company message to your most valuable customers. Based on what we have defined branding as thus far, if you have identified messaging that falls short of providing a solution or fulfilling the promise, you need not despair. As an ambassador to the core customers of the airline you are in a position to spin your messaging.

Like political “spin doctors” or pundits that defend or criticize a particular candidate, there are ways to fairly identify positive attributes in messaging. In order for your positives to be really so and have integrity, they must be something that your airline actually delivers. This does not necessarily need to be part of your original company messaging but it does help. So let’s use a generic example; if part of your messaging is the slogan “The on-time, low-fare airline” and you have been running 60% on-time arrivals for the past year, but your fares have managed to be competitive, then you would spin the fulfilment of the latter part of your message in the following manner:

Re-identify a harm in your target market (fares are high, paying more money for airfare takes away from other things that you could be enjoying or need)

Reinforce your delivered solution (we put more money in your pocket to spend on what you love and need)

In many cases, you will not be able to remove messaging that is not being fulfilled, so in our example this carrier will still have “on-time” messaging out there. But spinning your messaging take the focus off of what is not working to what actually is. Loyalty marketing can further developed the spin process by interfacing customers with the working parts of your messaging (the positives).

In our example, # 2 in the spin process could be promoted by offering accrual bonuses on leisure items such as a convertible offered by your car rental partner. “Airline X puts more money in your pocket and Program X rewards you for it spending it on what makes you feel good!”

Living the brand
This process is designed to maintain integrity with your customers. It also goes a long way to integrate and align your brand promise internally. Successful companies live the brand. By ensuring that each employee lives the brand, their behaviour will reflect your company’s values, mission, brand, and goals; they’ll understand your brand’s promise and feel compelled to deliver on that promise.
The above shows you that by “guiding” your message, your customers will view your brand as having delivered on it promise and having met and fulfilled their expectations.

To conduct an internal brand audit within your organization, contact us for a list of questions that will reveal if you are branding your relationships, or just going through the motions.