The Promise of a Brand

There are 5 essential questions to be asked when considering the answer to this question. Each question is equally important and the answers must all work in concert if the promise of the brand is ever to be fulfilled. There are many fine, well established and relatively successful brands out there… the most successful will have harmonized answers to these questions.

The Brand Promise can be found in the company’s name, tagline, mission or positioning statement. If the promise is to be fulfilled it must answer positively to these questions:

IS IT…
…Ownable?
…Differentiating?
…Relevant?
…Stretchable?
…and Credible and Sustainable?
 

Download the PDF to see my thoughts on these five points.

Usability vs Brand Reality v1

Take a look back on the usability situation as seen in 2004. A new report coming in 2011 will outline the changes since then and take a look at the current situation.

Did you know that many of today’s large commercial web sites fail to meet user usability needs? In fact, in a study of nine major commercial web sites, only 42% of visitors are able to complete their intended reason for going to the site. This means that 58% of use DO NOT manage to find what they are looking for or make a purchase!

Just recently, Zona Research found that 62% of shoppers on major consumer web sites gave up looking for what they wanted to buy. Even more recently, Forrester Research released results that indicated that 64% of the B2B sites they studied did not receive a passing usability grade.

This is the bad news but there is hope."