To the degree your brand meets the expectation of your customers, will define the true value by which your brand is measured.

I absolutely love these fast food images from a blog called Alphaila. (There are more if you have the time to visit.) They are perfect for illustrating the false promises brands can make to their audience/customers.  Now I am not picking on these fast food brands, I want to know how anyone continues to believe they will receive the product as promised, when the reality is so starkly different. Especially when people are in the store consuming the sorry reality right in front of a large poster beautifully illustrating the fantasy. Don’t these fast food companies realize that what they promise is a big fat lie?

Promises matter to people. If you don’t deliver what you promise to people, in time, you won’t matter to them. This is true in every product category. This is true in all walks of life.  More importantly, in our social media crazed world, vetting out broken promises made to consumers has instant ramifications to the credibility and trajectory of your brand’s perceived value.

Advertising images make implicit promises. When the product doesn’t match up to the advertised promise, isn’t that like cheating, or on some level, stealing from people’s hopes? Perhaps most advertising (in any form) is useless crap. Maybe brands can get away with this sort of thing because nobody is really paying attention anyway. But it’s worth thinking about… sh*t or shinola.

Like these brutally honest images, ask yourself if there is some part of your marketing and visual messaging that over-promises and under-delivers. In what ways could your marketing imagery be breeding mistrust and degrading your brand’s value?

Think about it.

I got this little ditty in my inbox and just had to share. Brilliant! Hope you enjoy it.

I am usually not that interested in advertising. But lately, as I snoop around around the trade press, I run into stuff that absolutely makes me crazy… and the latest bro-ha-ha over the red wig bit found in Wendy’s  TV spots is another case in point of advertising that is not based in a compelling positioning.

See the AD AGE story by  pundit Bob Garfield: http://adage.com/garfield/post?article_id=124975

Here’s another marketer that allows it’s agency to mastermind an absurd idea to break through the crap/clutter to engage young males to buy Wendy’s burgers. Of course, it did nothing to increase Wendy’s same store sales, the CMO behind it leaves along with the agency behind it,  and a new agency comes in to create an even more unforgettable effort.

Like my last rant/post, the problem lies not in the advertising, but  in the positioning of the brand… or lack thereof. Wendy’s is a brand that is lost, and whenever marketers get lost (nobody cares) they resort to tactics that are solely based in getting attention. But no matter how much media money is spent on these “big ad ideas”… the brand suffers. Nobody is listening because nobody cares. Here’s why:

Wendy’s has lost it’s relevance. It’s only differentiating functional attribute–unfrozen beef patties cooked to order– no longer means that much to anyone. There is no white hot center of competitive advantage that grounds Wendy’s messaging.

Wendy’s food quality and delivery is no better or worse than the competition, so why bother.

Wendy’s apparently does not value creating a customer experience that people love to engage in and sneeze to others. The stores are dull and generic.

Wendy’s (along with a host of other marketers) who have no compelling brand positioning will always be victimized by the “creativity” of advertising agencies who’s only purpose is to make attention-getting ads, not build brands.

With regard to the competitive landscape, you would never see IN & OUT BURGER resort to these aimless messaging tactics. They don’t have to, they have what Wendy’s does not– a compelling value proposition that manifests itself into a long line of cars around its drive through windows, and a wait for a table inside their wonderful store environments.

Dave is not happy…