Bringing all staff on board through appropriate internal communications, rewards, and incentives is also as essential as any other element.Īnd then - when it’s all in place, and it’s time to implement - Gillette might provide a salutary lesson. Brands need to become more innovative in their measures, and think about how they measure things like trust, reputation, earned conversation, and even positive customer experience. Many companies are driven by measurements such as top-of-mind awareness, which are tied to above the line advertising but are often irrelevant to purpose or business outcomes, and can’t be used to measure them. Internally, alongside metrics, firms need to establish new ways to measure and reward success. If a brand stands for something, how do customers feel that through their different touchpoints and experiences? Customer service, experience and so on sound pedestrian - but are vital for brands who want to have a credible purpose. This process might mean tackling hard issues - such as whether an authentic purpose can be achieved while customer experience teams are still often entirely separate from marketing and advertising departments. Setting up the right metrics for success is also vital at this stage. Without this legwork, brands are letting everyone down at the first step. Generating insights from the market, from customers, and from inside the business - and tying these together to create something that actually works rather than doing something that feels tacked on (or tacky) - is essential. As the companies above show, standing by your purpose in a real way translates to a long-term stability, sales and love from the public.īut before purpose becomes public, and when it comes to deciding what a brand’s ‘purpose’ might be, companies need to work much harder. When brands put their money where their mouth is, it pays off for everyone. They state that they’re “in business to save our home planet…We aim to use the resources we have-our business, our investments, our voice and our imaginations-to do something about it.” If that means sacrificing sales for values, they will (although the opposite happened and they gained sales). In the U.S., Patagonia is much loved for being driven by values. The company puts principles above profits, and is founded on a set of values that translate to a different, fairer and better way of doing business. Co-op is owned by its members, not big investors, and those members have a say in how it's run. Even if you only know Co-op as a supermarket, if you become a member and shop there, 1% of what you spend goes to local causes - £19 million across the UK in 2017. That means putting proper metrics around them.īrands like the UK’s Co-op put its values above anything else in its operation. In short: if you want to get a measure on whether a brand really has a ‘purpose’, follow the money - not the headlines.Ĭompanies who want to claim purpose as a core value need to go beyond saying they believe in being responsible, and actively stop doing things that may be in conflict with this - things that may be in an ethical grey area or unsustainable. For these brands, those values matter so much, that they set targets and measure their impact, and genuinely invest to achieve them. When we talk about purpose, trust, social impact or taking a stand, the companies who do it right put their values first. And they both come down to one thing: money. After months of brands jumping on feminism, #metoo, protests (from Nike to Pepsi) and more, we’re back to asking if it’s right or wrong for brands to attach themselves to the issues that matter.īut there are two big things missing from this discussion: values and metrics. It’s just a few weeks into the New Year, and Gillette has already reinvigorated the ‘brand purpose’ debate for 2019. Purpose is still a keenly sought-after trend in advertising, but the best companies - Patagonia, Co-op - don't just talk about a purpose, they put real thought into how it informs their business, and put real money into making that purpose a reality, argues Blue State Digital's Samir Patel.