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<h1><span style="color: #808080;">To the degree your brand meets the expectation of your customers, will define the true value by which your brand is measured.</span></h1>
I absolutely love these fast food images from a blog called <a href="http://alphaila.com/articles/?p=452 " target="_blank">Alphaila</a>. (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.

<strong>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? </strong>

<strong>Think about it.</strong>

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