HOW TO CRAFT YOUR L&D BRAND PROMISE

A brand promise is incredibly important for L&D teams. It highlights who you are, what you stand for, and your product offering, in a succinct and digestible way for your audience. And although developing a value proposition canvas and learner personas are an incredibly important step of this journey – many L&D teams are left scratching their heads about how to transform those things into a solid brand promise.

So in this blog, we’re going to walk you through the steps you need to take to create a brand promise for your learning function (after you’ve completed your VPC and personas, you can’t skip straight to this step!)

SO, WHAT IS A BRAND PROMISE?

Your brand promise is a pledge you are making to your target audience about what you will deliver to them. What kind of experience can they expect when interacting with you? What standard are you going to hold yourself to? Now is the time to stop thinking of yourself as “the L&D team”. Instead, consider yourself a collective that is on a mission to fulfil your brand promise.

Brand promises aren't necessarily something that you'll ever see in external marketing, because they’re super personal and often internal. But I’ve done some digging and found a brand promise example for you:

And just in case you can’t read that brand promise (that appears to have been carved into wood 🤯) it says…

“To inspire and nurture the human spirit. One person, one cup, one neighbourhood at a time.”

But wait… they didn’t mention coffee at all?!

Yep. That’s right – you don’t need to overtly mention your product in your brand promise. Your brand promise is your “why”. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What keeps you going? What gets you out of bed every morning?

Despite not mentioning coffee, Starbucks' brand promise isn’t a surprise is it? It exudes in all they do. In their adverts, their staff, their stores. Even the way they write names on their cups. It’s very personal, and you can see how they’re trying to nurture the human spirit. And how they constantly deliver on their brand promise time and time again.

So why is a brand promise important for L&D? Well sticking to your brand promise builds trust with your audience – and if your audience doesn't trust you, they’re not going to get involved with your learning offering, are they? But it also unites your L&D function. It gives everybody one purpose to work towards; with no confusing grey areas!

CREATE A BRAND PROMISE IN 3 STEPS:

1. ANALYSE YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION CANVAS.

Use your VPC to identify what your audience wants from you, and what they’ll get from getting involved with your learning offering. Answer the all important “what’s in it for me?” question.

2. CAREFULLY CONSIDER YOUR OFFERING.

You probably have an LMS, LXP, or something similar. What's the experience of that like? If you are promising your people that they are going to get the best learning experience of their life, but your LMS is absolutely pants... There's gonna be a bit of an imbalance, right?! So look at your offering – and be real with yourself about how great it really is.

3. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND MAKE IT CATCHY!

Make sure your brand promise is something your entire team can remember. It should be catchy, keeps your team on path and working towards those set values that you have as a learning team.

The truth is, brand promises are a really simple part of a really big process (defining your product). But they do provide you with a solid foundation that unites your entire function. A strong brand promise will give your team something to believe in, your stakeholders something to understand and your audience something to trust. And those sound like 3 ruddy good things to gain, if you ask me!