The Promise Gap
Every brand makes a promise through advertising, positioning, and messaging, but few organisations reliably keep it. That ' s largely because the people who make the promise( marketing, communications, brand, and customer experience teams) are rarely the same people who deliver on it.- Shiru Wanyoike.
The Promise Gap
Tom Sitati Shiru Wanyoike Carolyne Gathuru
The Promise Gap: Why Brand And Customer Experience Are Not Separate Conversations
This column piece is adapted from the BrandedCX LinkedIn Live panel discussion hosted by Brand Integrated Consulting and LifeSkills Consulting featuring Tom Sitati, Shiru Wanyoike and Carolyne Gathuru.
Executive Summary
Most organisations still run brand and customer experience as two separate conversations, owned by two different teams. A recent BrandedCX LinkedIn Live event, hosted by Brand Integrated Consulting and LifeSkills Consulting, argued that this separation is exactly where brand promises break down.
Every brand makes a promise through advertising, positioning, and messaging, but few organisations reliably keep it. That ' s largely because the people who make the promise( marketing, communications, brand, and customer experience teams) are rarely the same people who deliver on it. Frontline staff, contact centres, IT, operations, and finance are the ones actually charged with keeping it in various ways.
The space between the promise made and the promise kept is what the panel called the promise gap. This paper summarises the panel ' s core argument and translates it into a set of recommendations for closing that gap. The lessons are applicable to organisations of any size, from the micro and small, to medium, to the large conglomerate.
The Centre Has Moved to the Customer
For decades, brand authority sat centrally such that organisations decided what they stood for and communicated it outward. That model has shifted. The power has shifted away from the organisation. Customers now set the terms, from customised products to real-time expectations shaped by whatever they experienced five minutes earlier on a different platform. The brand is no longer something an organisation hands down- it is something the customer decides, continuously, based on how the promise plays out for them.
The centre for brand and customer experience is not a departmental issue- the centre is actually the customer.
Where the Promise Breaks: A Familiar Pattern
The panel described a failure mode most organisations will recognise: a campaign could launch with billboards, video, and social content, all built on a bold promise. Customers respond and start calling in- the contact centre, the sales force, and then the frontline staff, who were somehow never briefed, have no idea what was promised or how to honour it.
Every brand makes a promise through advertising, positioning, and messaging, but few organisations reliably keep it. That ' s largely because the people who make the promise( marketing, communications, brand, and customer experience teams) are rarely the same people who deliver on it.- Shiru Wanyoike.
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