Reliability Rules ─ The Ground-Breaking Manual for Using Promises Management to Keep Customers, Build Your Brand, and Grow Your Business

Business is in serious trouble. Just when business needs it most, polls and surveys show that public trust and confidence in business is at its lowest level in more than 15 years. Savvy executives know this, but they tend to react in the typical, but wrong, way. The answer to this problem isn’t found in the typical PR program or employee or motivation team-building initiative. The answer lies in better promise making and keeping. Business in general and marketing in particular are about making and keeping promises—making clearly stated promises that mean something and keeping them in spirit as well as literal fact. Internally, it means building a better corporate culture by making promises that are clear and that align with the needs of co-workers and of the company’s mission and brand. Externally, it means making promises that fit the organization’s abilities and mission and keeping those promises in a way that delivers real value to the customer. But the authors provide more than generalities. They provide a common-sense system—Promises Management--that makes it possible, practical, and profitable for executives in organizations large and small to lead, monitor, evaluate, and align the promises making and keeping ability.

Don E. Schultz is one of the world’s leading authorities in marketing and marketing communications in the last 25 years. He was the lead co-author on the landmark book, Integrated Marketing Communications (9780844233635) (more than 50,000 sold), which established an entirely new way of looking at marketing and marketing communications. He has written several other books on various aspects on marketing, advertising, and business communications. Schultz is Professor Emeritus at the Medil/IMC School at northwestern University and President of Agora Inc, in Evanston, Illinois. He has conducted seminars on IMC, marketing and branding in Europe, South America, Asia/Pacific, and the Middle East.