Seasoned brand strategist with a sharp instinct for human behaviour, branding, and communication. Winner of 70+ national and international awards, including six Effies. Known for getting to the heart of the matter, creating engaging brands and stories that move people.
A brand promise
is essential
Length
7 min. readtime
Date
29 October 2025
A brand. Everyone has an idea about what that is. Some think of a logo, others of a name, a proposition, an archetype, a USP, a positioning, or simply a pay-off. It’s all true, but it’s not enough.
“To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated, noisy world and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So, we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Our customers want to know: who is Apple, and what do we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?”
Apple is the most valuable brand in the world. Apple never talks about technology, the best computer, or the fastest processor. Steve Jobs didn’t see computers as machines, but as “a bicycle for the mind.” Technology that enables you to realize your potential, challenge conventions, and think fundamentally differently.
Nike doesn’t sell sports shoes. Nike celebrates athletes. Since 1964, Nike has been built on the brand promise: “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” The promise transforms the receiver: you are an athlete, someone who embodies strength, ambition, and perseverance. People don’t say they wear Nike sports shoes – they say, “I wear Nikes.” Nike is part of their identity. Nike’s promise is lived just as strongly internally as externally. While this phrase is hardly visible to the outside world. There, Nike uses the pay-off “Just do it.” A brand promise is like a good action perspective. It gives employees a tool to know what to do. Every Nike employee knows that they have only one task: to make every customer feel like an athlete.
Nike has not invested in its brand in recent years. The last brand campaign dates back to 2018. The focus in marketing was on the lower funnel, its own channels, and online sales. Investments were made in online advertising to attract as many visitors as possible to Nike.com. As a result, Nike became less and less visible and failed to create new market demand. That is, of course, fatal. Even for a strong brand like Nike. Investing in your brand remains vitally important.
A brand promise is fragile and must be handled with care. Google was the first to make all the world’s information accessible and usable for people. Googling has even become a verb. Their original motto, ‘don’t be evil’, gave people both internally and externally the confidence that Google would never abuse all this knowledge. With the introduction of Alphabet, ‘don’t be evil’ was replaced by ‘do the right thing’. But that means something completely different. Who decides what ‘the right thing’ is? Google?! Since then, trust in Google has been declining. That’s how sensitive it is. You can easily make the wrong choices.
A brand promise is essential
A brand is the foundation on which everything rests: your business, your organization, and your marketing & communication. A strong brand promise gives direction to everything you do, both internally and externally. Without a strong brand promise, there is no cohesion, and that leads to fragmentation: isolated campaigns, new designs, or temporary hypes. Without a brand promise, there is no direction. No course. No meaning. A brand promise is essential for everyone. And everyone can do it. Every person, every organisation, every company. I have created brand promises for athletes, politicians and writers. A brand promise is essentially something human: who am I? What do I mean? What do I stand for? Everyone should know that for themselves. Because that is where your strength lies. Your distinction and unique value. So, if you think that a brand promise is only important for the big international brands, you are wrong.
One of my favorite brand promises is that of Hyperfly, a brand in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world. They make the most beautiful gi’s, but they sell a mindset. An inner conviction. Their brand promise: “You can’t teach heart” touches the soul of a warrior. Every detail in their designs, from the materials to the aesthetics, reflects their promise: a warrior is not in the body, but in the heart.
Their manifesto is not a brand story, but a philosophy of life.
A record is not what defines you.
Neither streak of medals nor trophies can make you.
You don’t win through any amount of wealth or even accomplishments.
Talent may be a wonderful thing, even a gift.
But it means nothing without Heart.
What defines you is your Heart, your Courage.
The courage to stand up for what is right, yes, to sometimes stand alone.
To never stop, to not let the random misfortunes of life strike you down;
But to have the Heart to continue, no matter what the circumstances;
No matter how many times you have to try; it doesn’t matter how much you lose;
It means to never accept defeat; it means to either Do or Die – that is all that defines you.
You can’t teach heart.
“You can’t teach heart” touches on something much deeper. Your heart is what makes you human. You can’t learn that. It’s already there. It’s your essence. And it’s unique.
In a world where reason increasingly dominates, AI increasingly calls the shots and seems to be replacing our human voice, remaining human is perhaps the strongest form of rebellion. Otherwise, we might as well become robots right away. George Orwell’s words are more relevant than ever: “It’s not so much staying alive, it’s staying human that’s important.”
