Look into the heart of any great brand and you’ll find a family of ideas. These ideas are a brand’s lifeblood, the pulse that creates action, the oxygen that creates inspiration — the ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘what’. They must be simple, useful and inspirational ideas, beautifully articulated and perfectly connected.
Brand Purpose — the ‘Why’— remains of paramount importance. It’s the idea behind the brand’s existence, but also, more importantly, it’s a reflection of why the world needs it.
"Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them."
Purpose is an idea to inspire and unite, an immutable north star to guide every action and decision we make. This north star lives where three circles meet: what we love (passion), what we are best at (skill), what the world needs (insight).
In common with many other kinds of ideas, Brand Purpose faces a key challenge: making it happen. Moving from abstract to tangible, vague to specific, intention to action. Purpose cannot live without action, it’s about doing — a brain in a jar cannot be purposeful.
That’s why Purpose is so much more valuable than the often used ‘Essence’, which is an abstraction, the brand bottled, it’s ultimate distillation. Neat, but impossible to touch, incapable of moving.
Purpose is an idea that changes, motivates and inspires us to do something, to act.
When connected to action, there’s convincing evidence** that having the right purpose attracts talent, enhances engagement, drives growth, loyalty, innovation, distinctiveness and salience. At the same time, though, there’s ample evidence to show that purpose is a box-ticking exercise for many businesses, big talk and little walk.
This year, Havas ran a Meaningful Brand Survey across 30 markets and 395,000 people. It proved consumers’ trust in brands is at an all-time low with only 47% of brands seen as trustworthy. Most tellingly, a dismal 34% of consumers think that businesses are transparent about their commitments and promises. The survey concludes that:
"Consumers are surrounded by what they perceive as empty or broken promises and we are starting to see the impact of this mistrust on brands."
Cynicism about self-serving ‘corporate wokeism’ is also growing. One blistering attack comes from Vivek Ramaswamy, who was CEO of a $7bn biopharma company until just last year. In Woke Inc, he writes that ‘by mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elites prey on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning…’
Likewise, workers report a chasm between their employers’ espoused values and their actual experience on the ground. In 2020, MIT analysed the official corporate values statements of more than 500 large organisations and compared these to more than 1.2 million Glassdoor entries employees wrote about their companies.
MIT’s conclusion makes for depressing reading: ‘There is no correlation between the cultural values a company emphasizes in its published statements and how well the company lives up to those values in the eyes of employees. All of the correlations between official and actual values were very weak, and four of the nine were negatively correlated.’
It is worth noting that this survey was pre-pandemic, which has been the ultimate stress test of both purpose and values, eroding employee engagement and the understanding of values, culture and purpose.
After a decade of brands right across the spectrum scrambling to claim a purpose, we are at a new dawn. To quote Terry Tyrrell:
‘We are now moving from the age of purpose to the age of delivery. Consumers need proof of purpose.’
So how do how we move from idea to measurable action and provide the proof of purpose that all stakeholders need? Of course, the purpose needs to be right in the first place (that’s a pre-requisite).
So, therefore, this idea must be designed properly. It needs to be authentic and meaningful. It needs to be true to the provenance, culture and the history of the brand. It needs to hit the sweet spot between the 3 circles of passion, skill and insight. It needs to be beautifully articulated and perfectly connected to all the other ideas within a business or brand. It needs to be simple, useful and inspirational. It needs to create a sense of yearning:
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
Bringing your purpose to life
Once the purpose is designed well, how can we bring it to life? Three ideas:
1. The ratchet of transparency.
State your Purpose clearly and specifically, then frequently report actions that evidence it. This should create a virtuous circle. Set targets, align incentives, reward performance.
To counter accusations of ‘woke washing’ and ‘virtue signalling’, also record actions that go against your purpose. Putting yourself on the rack might feel painful, but it’s a humble, honest and credible approach that’s more likely to accelerate progress.
To counter accusations of self-serving purposes, make your sacrifices known. For example, you resisted a lucrative chance to expand into a place with a poor human rights record. Or you delayed a product launch in search of more sustainable packaging. In the words of Nike, show that you ‘believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.’ Show that you are guided by more than raw profit.
2. Role models.
Personifying your purpose makes it tangible. Traditionally, the founder takes that role. But that only works when your leader is Yvon Chorinard (Patagonia) or Elon Musk, not WeWork’s Adam Neuman or Uber’s infamous Travis Kalanick.
So instead, you could choose some ‘purpose champions’ from across your business, perhaps in one-year cycles. The champions would ‘live the purpose’, proving it true through their actions, evangelising and storytelling across every channel and corridor of the business. In doing so, they might just enjoy experiences that shape their perspectives and make them rich sources of insight for ‘on-purpose’ innovations and experiences.
3. Purpose gym.
Many knowledge workers are asking themselves, ‘Why should I go into the office?’ — often without a satisfactory answer.
What if we reimagined the office as a purpose gym? Where a company’s ‘idea’ becomes reality — a place where you put yourself through the paces of purpose. Packed with all the inspiration, coaching and kit needed to get the ‘why’ pumping through your veins so that you can transform it into the actions of ‘how’ and ‘what’.
What would this gym look like? Who would be in it? And what would it do for you? Even the creative exercise of answering these questions is a great way of re-engaging with a purpose – just imagine the power of a real, tangible, carefully constructed purpose gym.
As we enter an even more sceptical age, we need proof of purpose to unlock the much-hyped rewards of defining the ‘Why’ of brands and businesses. Now is time to hit the gym and get the talk walking and maybe even running.
Written by Hugh and Jamie, after a conversation with Terry Tyrrell.
*Our purpose at Strategy by Design is to make ideas more useful, simple and inspirational.
**Evidence for purpose effectiveness
– To attract talent: 88% of CEOs and 90% of postgrad students say a business needs a clear purpose to attract the next generation of talent, Cranfield School of Management
– To engage employees: 84% of employees working for organisations with a shared sense of purpose are engaged, compared to 32% of those without, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
– To enhance commercial performance: 63% of CEOs indicated that emphasising purpose within their business had driven revenue growth, PWC
– To drive consumer preference: 63% of surveyed global consumers prefer to purchase products from companies that stand for a purpose that reflects their own values, and will avoid companies that don’t, Accenture
