Brands are what they do. Not what they say.

A brand is a promise to the customer. To act a certain way, to deliver a certain service or product, to provide some level of value and do it consistently.

That is the theory, at least.

In practice, many companies confuse making the promise with keeping it. Marketing describes an attentive, effortless and customer-focused organisation. Then the customer calls, visits or tries to return something and is met with indifference, forms to be filled and outsourced “customer support”.

Despite this, many mediocre companies are successful because changing service providers is a hassle. Not because customers are loyal. But because a lot of services we use are sticky and the competition isn’t much better. After all, the supermarket closest to you may be your daily choice, even if it is far from your first choice.

Brand building is not (only) a marketing assignment

Products can be copied. Features become standard. Yesterday’s innovation becomes tomorrow’s entry requirement. What competitors find much harder to copy is an organisation that delivers a distinctive experience consistently—from the first advertisement to the invoice, handling a complaint and the eventual goodbye.

Marketing can explain the promise, but it cannot deliver it alone. The promise is fulfilled, or broken, by products, processes, environments, interfaces, policies and people. In other words, by everything the organisation does.

A brand is therefore not what a company says about itself. It is what customers learn to expect from the company’s behaviour. If the experience is memorable, useful and consistent, people may talk about it. If the experience is “meh,” no amount of explanation will make it remarkable.

This makes designing the customer experience crucial to brand building. Applying service design bridges the gap between what you promise and what you deliver. It is how a brand stops talking and starts doing.