The Evolution of Brand Promise: From Fantasy to Reality

Last Updated on November 7, 2024

While brands remain significant, the modern consumer increasingly prioritizes exceptional experiences over brand names alone.

The power of branding traditionally rested firmly in corporate hands, with trust built methodically over decades through unwavering market presence and tight narrative control. Here, we’re talking about Marlboro, Coca-Cola, Ford, and others.

Today’s brand landscape has undergone a seismic shift, where brands exist only after delivering real experiences.

Modern brands are forged as a direct result of consumer interactions, where authentic engagement and verifiable delivery of promises matter more than polished advertising campaigns.

Companies like Apple, Tesla, and Airbnb exemplify this new paradigm – their brand value emerges not from corporate messaging but from the collective experiences of their customers, shared instantly across digital platforms.

„Branding seems helpful if you’re talking about yoghurts, and you’re trying to decide which one to buy from the 50 different brands on offer. Even that could fire back today as shown in the in the case of Müller Milch supporting right wing politicians. Maybe thats why they bought “Weihenstephan“ a brand havily created by the clients experiences of a high quality product. Thats why #Brandingsmells” Joerg Geissler

The Era of Aspirational Branding

In the golden age of traditional advertising, brands were masterfully constructed through controlled messaging and mass media campaigns.

The patient building of visual identity became an art form, where companies like Coca-Cola, Ford, and IBM rose to become household names.

Their success stemmed from the consistent repetition of slogans, logos, and aspirational promises. At its core, this era thrived on what might be called „vicarious living“ – you weren’t a cowboy, but you could smoke Marlboro.

This powerful concept of Brand Affinity allowed consumers to buy into a dream, even as they remained passive recipients of carefully orchestrated brand messages.

The power of branding rested firmly in corporate hands, with trust built methodically over decades through unwavering market presence and tight narrative control.

The Age of Experiential Truth

The Evolving Definition of Branding

Traditionally, branding was the art of association – creating mental shortcuts that linked products to desired feelings, status, or identity. Today, branding has evolved into something more fundamental: the orchestration of experiences creates meaningful relationships between companies and their audiences.

The Importance of Branding for SEO

Brand significance is becoming increasingly important in search engine optimisation; the traffic value of brands and the associated conversion rate can be enormously valuable. We like to click on well-known terms or brands.

Brands create trust and increase the recognition value. This has a positive influence on the click rate and therefore also on traffic. If the user has the choice, they will click more often on a search result with a positive image of the respective brand in their head. This is precisely why it can be worth investing in your brand and anchoring this positive image in the minds of potential customers.

SEO is more than just a tool for making you appear more prominently in search results. It helps more people get to know you (referred to as brand awareness). Semrush

The Importance of Branding for Social Media

Social media branding allows you to bring order to all the clutter (and there is a lot of it) so that you stand out to your target audience and ultimately make more sales, generate leads and increase sales.

It is not easy to realise social media branding strategically, tactically and operationally. The art of social media branding is not to pick up on all the trends, but to utilise selected ones wisely.

Contrary to popular belief, companies don’t sell products — they sell branding. They sell experiences, feelings, and ideologies. HubSpot

Clay is a global branding and UX design agency and is considered the best in the world

Thanks for the article’s image to https://unsplash.com/@quynhlmph14759