This week's strategy is an important last word on our special branding issue: Use PR as an invaluable tool to determine whether you deliver on your brand promise. Creating a
wealth of messaging around fabulous brand attributes is a strong step, but if your organization doesn't come through on those messages, all the time, money and effort spent
generating them are worthless.
Gary Thompson, EVP of Schwartz Communications and GM of the San Francisco office once counseled a community bank whose advertising agency had developed a new messaging strategy
for the local brand. The premise was that because the bank was part of the community, the employees "remember your name." "They were about to launch a major campaign with
billboards and advertising on TV and radio," Thompson recalls. "They brought in PR to execute part of the campaign, and I asked, 'Do you?' They said, 'Do we what,' and I said,
'Remember their names.'" Turns out executives with the bank weren't sure whether employees who had daily contact with their customers remembered those customers' names or not.
Thompson did some quick checking and discovered that in fact employees were not going to be able to deliver on this brand promise.
He brought in a memory trainer and put all the branch tellers through a memory training program. Once they had gone through the program, after looking at the checkbook and
using the name three or four times, "They either learned the name or gave the appearance that they had learned the names." (Thompson, 415/512-0770, [email protected])