Brand Promise: The good, the bad and the ugly lawsuits.

Imagine you are driving back home from a long day at work or school and the day has rendered you tired and thirsty. You pass by a billboard for a popular beverage like Liquifruit with a tagline that goes something like “Refreshes like nothing on earth” naturally you would be compelled to buy it right? Or you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is look at yourself in the mirror, and all that you can see are the imperfections on your face e.g. pimples, wrinkles, uneven skin tone. Then your mind flashes back to an ad you've seen by skincare brands like Olay, Neutrogena, and Vaseline for Men etc. With a model who has flawless radiant skin supposedly achieved by religious use of the product. Naturally you would gravitate towards considering or buying the product right? Let us take a deeper look as to why that is.

To lure consumer interest companies utilise a little trick in the marketing sphere referred to as a ‘brand promise’. A brand promise is when a company makes a statement using images, copyright or both as to what you can expect from interacting with their product/ service. It is most effective when addressing consumer needs whether they are to look younger, quench a thirst, support a cause, feel secure etc. And the promise is often gets associated with the company name, logo and products/services.

Most of the time it works out well for the companies in that it garners brand loyalty and support. As long as consumers believe and experience a brand’s promise they will stand behind it. There is also a dark side to a brand promise such as what happens when a brand does not live up to it. Olay experienced the failure of a brand promise with their ‘Definitive Eye cream’ when female consumers did not achieve the same results as the products former model Twiggy. Dannon’s popular Activia brand yoghurt had consumers paying more for its product under the premise that it had more nutritional value that most. It was later found that Activia was as plain and ordinary as any other brand of yoghurt. Dannon ended up having to pay $45 million dollars in damages to consumers who had filed a lawsuit against the brand.

A brand promise can be as beneficial as it is damaging to a brand. So have you ever supported or bought a product/ service based on the brand promise only to be let down? Do you know any brands that actually live up to their promises?

Reference:

http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/brand-promise

http://www.businessinsider.com/false-advertising-scandals-2011-9?op=1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2013/08/19/when-a-brand-promise-backfires/2/