Deliv­er­ing a brand prom­ise is some­thing we all work hard to achieve. If we reach it, we have advocacy, if we break it, we walk a risky path.

The true mean­ing is to develop enough trust with your cus­tom­ers and key stake­hold­ers that they believe in you and what you stand for. If you fail to develop trust, by provid­ing valu­able inform­a­tion and mak­ing their lives easier, you become sucked into a bubble with all the com­pet­i­tion around you. This hap­pens when cus­tom­ers are exposed to your product and it doesn’t meet what you prom­ise. In turn, the brand suffers.

A cur­rent example is the G4S Olympic secur­ity fiasco. Their prom­ise as ‘the world’s lead­ing inter­na­tional secur­ity solu­tions group’ may be so, but recent events have tain­ted the brands promise.

On the other hand, when Brad­ley Wig­gins wins the Tour de France this week­end, he rep­res­ents a prom­ise that is built by a will to win, cham­pi­on­ing a sport that is unheard of (for Brit­ish suc­cess) and phys­ical and men­tal strength over a gruelling 20 stages. His pref­er­ence to stay out of the lime­light and pro­fes­sion­al­ism is only accen­tu­ated by the poten­tial spon­sor­ship on the hori­zon from healthy food, drinks and life­style brands (to the tune of a poten­tial £5m).

A prom­ise means that cus­tom­ers count on you to deliver and the per­cep­tion that you cre­ate a pos­it­ive exper­i­ence. Your cus­tom­ers chose you for a reason, was it your repu­ta­tion, your abil­ity, your deliv­ery, your per­son­al­ity, your know­ledge? Always come back to those reas­ons that helped deliver the ini­tial success.

By keep­ing focused and true to your roots and beliefs, helps main­tain qual­ity and cus­tom­ers to believe in your product/​brand/​business for many years to come.

It cer­tainly has caused a buzz over the past few months with a great online cam­paign pro­mot­ing the exhib­i­tion of the year to ‘take your busi­ness for­ward’. With a host of reput­able speak­ers and sem­inars, surely this was an oppor­tun­ity that couldn’t be missed and with the added bonus of being FREE, one that the organ­isers should be given full credit for organ­ising and being in part­ner­ship with some noted brands, added that extra credence.

How­ever, with feed­back over the open­ing day caus­ing a mix of frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment, could it be a day out of the office that wasn’t productive?

“VIP recep­tion with #richard­bran­son a com­plete dis­ap­point­ment £94 two glasses wine & richard on stage 2mins of ‘thank you’!”

“No info of any kind, even asked repeatedly, got clue­less shrugs from staff #business2012″

“Today I’m at #Business2012 in the O2. So far I have learnt quite a lot about start­ing busi­ness, get­ting a mentor, dos and dont’s on websites”

So, with enthu­si­asm and belief that the ini­tial ‘teeth­ing prob­lems’ could be rec­ti­fied, how did the clos­ing day bring an end to an event that cer­tainly has the prom­ise for a suc­cess­ful future initiative?

Keep pos­ted to this page and we’ll give updates through­out the day. It’ll be just like you’re there, but someone else is paint­ing the pic­ture for you and you won’t be stung by the lunch­time pan­ini and coffee.…

9.40 — It feels like the last day of Gla­ston­bury, a quiet start with not many people at the main stage, but when you know the head­liner is on (Alan Sugar at 5.25pm) you know it will be packed.

10.30 — This is what regis­tra­tion looks like…slowly get­ting busy

10.35 — Let’s see what the USA Speaker room has to offer (from JT Foxx). Rooms slowly filling up and have to say staff do help and seem to be well rehearsed now

11.00 — Tip: to get the most out of this, don’t spend ages walk­ing round the exhib­i­tion hall, get to the Sem­inar Break­out Rooms. A wealth of know­ledge is every­where. Listen­ing to Ray­mond Aaron, great speaker!

11.45 — Ok, read­ing reac­tion from the first day it was a bit under­whelm­ing. But was that because it was a weekend/Mother’s Day? Now we’re into the work­ing week, it does feels like you’re con­trib­ut­ing to your busi­ness (if it has the cap­ab­il­ity to trig­ger an action). It’s the age old say­ing ‘you get out what you put in.’

12.00 — A bit of Botty, sem­inar room is nearly full

12.25 — Sur­pris­ing how few people use Pay Per Click (on a show of hands in the sem­inar room)

12.40 — Nigel Bot­ter­ill acknow­ledges there have been challenges/​problems with the event. Key phrase used was ‘atten­tion to detail.’ Inter­est­ing state­ment for an event focus­ing on bet­ter busi­ness practice.

14.55 — The 02 is an impress­ive build­ing. Keep­ing things busi­ness related and the power of this par­tic­u­lar brand, can any­one remem­ber the name before The 02?

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