Hey hey!

Cue the song - Promises Promises by Naked Eyes while reading this email. 🎵🎵🎵

Of all the fascinating things I get to do working with different businesses, the one I love the most – by a longshot – is playing the role of interpreter. I get to work with CEOs and their teams to translate the value of products and services into stories, messages, images, and experiences.

C’mon. How cool is that?

Most of the time, we start this process in a workshop where we ask a ton of questions (you’ve heard them all before, nothing new here). We ask questions like:

Me: What is it?

Larry: It’s a productivity SaaS platform for teams that enables them to work together more efficiently.

Me again: No, really. What is it? Tell me like I’m a 3rd grader.

Larry: It’s a shared note-taking tool.

Me: OK, Who is it for?

Larry: It’s for teams of all sizes, from small startups to large corporations.

Me: No, really. Who is it for exactly?

Larry: It seems to work best for small virtual teams.

And on it goes.

But then something happens about 4 hours into the day. An AHA!

It usually happens right after the question that makes everyone uncomfortable – how is this really any different than all the other note-taking tools? Which let me tell you, when you get down to the nitty gritty, is a very hard question to answer.

Well it’s better, faster, easier, more convenient, etc.

But then, something magical happens. Real honest talk. You get to the real value of the product, why the team was inspired to develop it, how it gets better the more it’s used, etc.

In other words, we get to the point where we translate how the mix of the company’s people, partners, processes & systems, and their products and services come together in the right proportions to create something of actual tangible value in the marketplace.

Now comes the fun part. How do you translate the value you’ve created into a promise, and then pay off that promise with everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) the company does.

In other words, if your brand promise is to “make it easier for small distributed teams to feel like connected & unified teams” . . . then how do you deliver this promise in everything you do?

The answer is, USE THE BRAND PROMISE AS YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. When your brand promise is your operating system, it guides the products you develop, the teams you hire, the partners you work with, and the tools and systems that drive your business.

And when the brand promise guides everything you do, expressing your brand promise becomes more than empty rhetoric.

In fact, it can become downright evangelical! Because you are walking the talk.

And it feels soooo good. 🙌

We developed a system around this approach called BrandOS™ and we’ve been using it with clients for a few years now, but we’ve never really shared it publicly. So, if you’ve read this far, here you go!

There’s a whole process to getting to the brand promise (which is a better way of saying strategy IMHO), but once you start looking at your entire operation through the lens of your brand promise something shifts. You get clarity around what to do and what not to do, and also what to say and how to say it.

I encourage you to take a look at your operation through this lens, and if you need help (or just want to chat about this - which I could do endlessly), you know what to do. Just hit reply!

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Also, here’s 3 things I’m contemplating right now:

• What do you do in Seattle or Vancouver when it’s raining? Seriously! I’m headed there in 24 hours for spring break and it looks like it will be raining the whole time. Boohoo. If you have ideas, hit reply and let me know!
• You may have seen me post David Ogilvy’s ‘How To Write’ on LinkedIn, but damn, it’s so good.
• I’m starting a little research project on the practical applications of brand messaging architecture both internal and external to the organization. If you’re interested in a conversation on this, I’d love to connect.

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Thanks for reading to the end! Happy weekend.

Ginger

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