What’s the one thing you can promise to deliver every time? This question is a big one. You likely asked yourself this question early on in your career and came up with an answer. Though as time has gone by, you may be using the same talking points over and over. I want to encourage you to ask this question again, and to really think about it at a deeper level. Why? Because things change. What motivates your audience to engage may have changed. Aspects of your organization may have changed. It is important to make sure you are communicating consistently, though you want to make sure the points you are making are creating the brand story you want to communicate.

Your Brand Promise

Your brand promise is that thing you can guarantee to deliver every time. Three things that should be true of your brand promise:

• It should be crystal clear across your entire team
• It should be solid enough in which to easily build your communications strategy upon
• It should be crystal clear to your audiences

To help clarify your organization’s brand promise, get together with your team and try out the following activity.:

Team Activity: Clarify Your Brand Promise

Time: 1 hour Supplies: sticky notes, sticker dots, and markers Goal: to clarify your brand promise by exploring where you are most valuable to your audiences and identifying the aspects you can guarantee to deliver consistently.  Pose this question: What value do you provide to your audiences?

1. Have each person individually write one idea per sticky note for two minutes. There are no bad ideas at this stage — the more ideas the better! Have each person stick their ideas on a common wall.
2. Together, group everyone’s sticky notes into thematic areas on the wall.
3. Give three sticker dots to each person and have each person vote on the top three value themes using the stickers.
4. Use the rest of the time to discuss why each person voted the way they did, and strive to curate the list to three to five value statement themes.
5. Give each person one sticker dot and have each person pick the value statement they think is the value your organization is most likely to be able to deliver every time. This should be the basis for your brand promise.

Having a strong grasp of your brand’s promise will allow you to both develop and execute your communication strategy to ensure that your audience understands who you are, what you stand for, and why they should support your mission.