Until recently I thought that brand promise is just a function of what you want to do with your product. But I am sure I don’t think so anymore. Consider the case of Domino’s (about my travails with them ). They position themselves as the Pizza delivery experts. That means their clear focus is on delivering pizzas lightning fast. They have been pretty good at that, except that their call handlers are a little short on training.

What really drove me to this post is a comment from my friend who said – in certain parts of a city in India Domino’s refuse to serve/deliver pizzas in 30 minutes to customers citing that the traffic in the approach roads hinders prompt delivery. Think about this (this is largely India specific) -

1. As a city in which Domino’s operates adds more and more vehicles to its roads which don’t expand to match the gap between the demand of better road spaces and the actual physical supply of roads, what happens to Domino’s brand promise. Such a brand promise becomes highly dependent upon the city’s infrastructure.
2. If the city’s infrastructure fails / is under great pressure, then due to this dependency your brand promise is in jeopardy.
3. If you were in Domino’s what would you do – the only feasible solution seems to be open more stores serving smaller areas in order to combat this dependency.

To me, Domino’s brand promise consists of two elements, internal and external. Internal – Process for making pizzas, External – Delivery mechanism. Now we can see the issue in their positioning. The external element is the real pain point (and going forward in India it could become a real problem, with denial of service already happening).

Isn’t it better to architect your brand promise on elements internal – like a Pizza Hut (Taste) or a Volvo (Safety)?

Therefore it’s not just about your product but also the overall environment which also affects what you set out to do with your brand. It’s upto the company to decide the extent of dependency on the external environment.

Let me conclude with a question – Are brand promise and positioning the same? What do you think?

Let us know in the comments.

-Egghead