What's a Brand Promise?
Read this from RainToday.com (and click on the links for fun!)
Embrace Your Brand: Lessons from a Brand Promise Gone Wrong at the Bubble Room
Last week I was celebrating my honeymoon in Sanibel Island, Florida, when we visited one of my favorite restaurants from my childhood, the Bubble Room. The Bubble Room is not known for its spectacular food or location, but its ambiance.
Movie memorabilia and chatchkies cover every inch of the restaurant from the last 100 years. The most impressive part is the montage of over 3,500 (yes, three-thousand five-hundred!) photos adorning the walls of movie stars including icons like Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, and James Cagney to lesser remembered greats such as Leo G. Carroll, Harold Lloyd, Abbot and Costello, Carmen Miranda, and so many others.
I remember visiting the restaurant as a child, walking around with my parents and grandmother trying to see how many of the stars we could recognize. (I don't think there is a soul out there who could get them all!) I was very excited to return there with my new husband, who happens to be a bit of an American history buff and pop culture goofball...ahem...aficionado.
And then...disappointment. (Not with the husband—it was my honeymoon after all—but with the Bubble Room.)
I didn’t remember the food being quite so bad, but that was just the start. I asked a waitress about all the photos and if she knew who any of the stars were, she responded with a passionless "not really" as she continued putting along. "No one knows anymore. The old manager used to, but he moved to Tampa."
The Bubble Room has branded itself as a funky place with lovely and interesting memorabilia. While on the exterior (quite literally) they follow through with this brand promise, it’s just a sheen. Scratch the surface by talking to people that work there and you get a wet blanket over the fun. (Come to think of it, much like the slough of Italian dressing they covered my lettuce pile with before they brought my meal.)
To differentiate and brand yourself around something you must actually be that something. Live that something. You can grab someone’s attention with your outward facing brand message...your pictures on the walls. However you must deliver on this promise through the people.
The most memorable brands are created through experience. Regardless of your service, passion, enthusiasm, and fit, your people have the greatest impact.
Brand does not occur in the boardroom with your advertising firm in a brainstorming session. Each and every member of your team must embrace, exemplify, and live your brand promise. It is equally important to promote your brand internally as it is to promote it externally. In a service business your people are your brand and you need everyone to march to the same drum from your executives on down.
What’s Your Brand Promise?
To get yourself and others in your firm thinking about your own brand promise and practices, ask yourself and have a discussion around these questions:
- What is our brand promise?
- How do we communicate our brand externally?
- How is it communicated internally?
- How is our brand promise supported internally?
- Does everyone in our firm have a clear understanding of this promise and what it means to deliver on it?
- What experiences do our prospects and clients have with us that demonstrate this promise?
- What do we do (specifically) to deliver on this promise?
A Brand Promise Delivered
I wish the Bubble Room had embraced their brand the way I implore you to do.
What if, as a part of their employee training process, they required staff to become familiar with the memorabilia and photos on the walls? They have to know the wine list, why not learn about the picture of Fritz Lang’s 1926 Metropolis in their section? (And get extra points if they can talk about the 1984 re-release set to music by Pat Benetar, Billy Squier, Freddy Mercury, and Loverboy?)
What if, as a part of your dining experience, you were encouraged to "test our staff" by asking about different pieces of memorabilia and the people in the photos?
This would not only create an interesting ambiance but I bet the food would taste better, too. It would get visitors interacting with the servers in a way that delivers on the brand promise, leaving patrons with the desire to come back and sit in a new section. Last but not least, the servers would have fun and feel engaged, and isn’t that what truly makes for a great service business?
And remember, RainToday...Dark by Midnight.
Erica Stritch
General Manager,
RainToday.com
estritch@raintoday.com
P.S. Special thanks to the new hubby for providing the obscure (to me at least) movie star references and entertaining YouTube videos.
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