What does your company exist to do? No, not the product you sell.
What does your company stand for? If you can’t answer that question definitively, it’s time to think about your purpose.
Customers are seeking out emotional connections with brands. They don’t want to be sold, spammed or pushed into purchasing products. They want to feel something. Often, they want to engage with brands that they believe are doing something bigger than themselves. These ‘belief-driven buyers’ are dominating the marketplace, launching brands like Toms, Method and Patagonia into meteoric stardom. Purpose-driven brands are seeing a 46% increase in wallet share, and the movement shows no signs of stopping.
To lead with purpose, you don’t need to be a nonprofit or adopt a 1:1 model, though it’s commendable if you do. You don’t even need to rebrand. You just need to identify a bulletproof purpose-based positioning statement that will permeate everything you do. Begin within yourself. What differentiates you? What’s important to you?
Find the higher calling.
A purpose-based positioning statement is not, “Bounty: the quicker picker upper.” That’s a functional, features and benefits tagline. It needs to take into account every aspect of your business from your products and why you created them, to what you created the company to change. Take Method, for example. They are a brand built upon purpose that creates green cleaning products you don’t need to hide under the sink for two reasons: they are stylish, and by purchasing them you have contributed to a larger cause - promoting sustainability and a cleaner world. Their purpose statement? “People against dirty.” They’re taking a stand against dirty dishes and dirty oceans. It ladders up to everything they believe in and every product they make.
One of our own clients, Maine Root, is a great example of a brand built by and for purpose. Maine Root was born in a time where the only options for soda were giant corporate brands with labels chock-full of indecipherable chemicals. They wanted to create something natural and understandable, with real sugar bought fairly and sustainably from sources they could actually trace. Purpose is the foundation of their brand. They care so deeply about their product and walk the walk, giving back to their sugar partners not only by participating in fair trade practices, but by supplying their communities with crucial infrastructure like ambulances.
It’s never too late for purpose.
If you're not like Maine Root or Method, and your brand was not necessarily built on purpose, you can back into it at any point. A great example of this is Clorox. They are a brand built on effective cleaning products. Their functional, product-based messaging has been a staple of their marketing since their inception. Lately, taking a page from their purpose-driven competitors, they’ve shifted their focus from their products to how they change the lives of their customers. Their messaging went from “Bleach it away.” to “Clean is just the beginning,” in which they tell stories of using their products for something bigger, like how one woman only trusts Clorox to keep her newborn safe from germs. They flipped the script and turned the lens on their consumer, creating a purpose-driven message that relates to audiences everywhere.
Owning it.
To be a purpose-driven brand you have to own it 365 days a year in everything you do. Your purpose should shape every decision you make. In fact, having a clearly defined, purposeful positioning statement should make every decision more clear.
Dick’s Sporting Goods’ controversial decision to stop selling a certain caliber of semi-automatic rifles was one they made based not on politics, but purpose. Their purpose is “United in Sport.” They maintained that they would only sell weapons used for true sportsmanship activities that unite people, and stop selling those that they felt were not aligned with sport and divided people.
Defining and owning your purpose is critical to building your tribe of loyal customers in an age where the brands that create emotional connections are the ones winning wallet share. Need some help getting there? We arm brands with bulletproof positioning statements. See how we do it.
