It's not about the destination
How to leverage your brand purpose to connect with more customers
Yesterday morning, I listened to four inspiring roundtable discussions hosted by Adweek—where leaders from some of the most purpose-driven brands discussed actionable ways to leverage purpose to create authentic connections with consumers.
And after listening to all four of these talks about the power of brand purpose, I left with this takeaway:
Your journey is more important than your purpose.
Having a clearly defined brand purpose is essential for any brand in the 2020s. But what’s more essential, and what is actually going to drive engagement with customers, is how you communicate your brand’s journey toward that purpose.
I define your brand’s “purposeful journey” as made up of three distinct elements:
The goals you set for your brand—which align with your purpose
The work you do to achieve these goals
The results that align with these goals
In the past, all of these elements would not necessarily be consumer-facing parts of your brand narrative—they would be more the stuff reserved for board meetings and annual reports.
But today, your customers are your board members.
They are the people who you check in with and answer to in terms of showing your goals, your work, and your results. You need to think of them and treat them as part of your team—a team that’s along for your journey with a vested interest in your success.
Setting Goals That Inspire Action
In order to inspire action inside and outside of your company, it’s good to set some smaller, more immediately achievable goals—as well as big, broad goals looking twenty, thirty, even one hundred years into the future.
And as you set your goals, recognize that your goals will (and must) evolve over time.
Think of Your Goals in the Long Term
Sonika Malhotra, Co-founder and Global Brand Director of Love Beauty and Planet
When Love Beauty and Planet put the word “planet” in the brand name, the team was “signing up for big things.”
Originally, Sonika said, they set goals around sustainability for the first two years. They rallied funding and went after supply chain improvements.
But, after two years, they realized that this was too short of a time period to truly make a dent. So, the company released a report to the public—detailing where they were able to make a difference, and where they were not.
Then, they put much bigger stakes in the ground, making 9 year commitments. They’ll release annual reports to show their progress on a regular basis, but continue thinking in terms of bold impact.
Think of Your Goals as Opportunities to Focus
Sophie Bambuck, Chief Marketing Officer of Everlane
In her Adweek talk, Sophie warned of the danger “trying to touch everything.” She stressed that the best strategy is to pick a topic.
Of course, the topic can be one with big impact potential and wide reach (for example, keeping the planet cool).
Think of Your Goals as Having Growth Potential
Maddy Rotman, Head of Sustainability, Imperfect Foods
Imperfect Foods started with a mission to eliminate food waste. But as they grew, that mission expanded to touch all the pieces along the way, including the supply chain.
Now, Imperfect Foods is trying to fix the broken food system.
Three Powerful Keys to Increase Engagement
Listening to the Adweek speakers, I saw three keys emerge. To engage consumers with your purpose in the most powerful way, your journey needs to be:
Customer-Facing
Continual
Communal
Let’s dig in to what each one means—and how the different speakers touched on the keys in their discussions.
On Being Customer-Facing
It’s now common to have your mission or your statement of purpose on your website. But in the 2020s, you need to go beyond this.
Be transparent about your purpose, your goals, and your strategy—and make them extremely public.
Shideh Hashemi, Chief Marketing Officer, North America, IKEA
Customers are in the driver’s seat, according to Shideh. And you need to be prepared to engage them at the level that they want to be. That means putting everything you’re doing out there, and letting them decide whether and how much to engage.
IKEA’s vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people—and a better life is more sustainable. So, IKEA has its entire sustainability strategy explicitly on its website.
You can also read the company’s yearly sustainability report, which includes information from across the IKEA value chain and provides a summary of performance measured against the IKEA sustainability strategy.
On Being Continual
A strong statement of purpose is meaningless if it just sits there on your website. You need to show that you’re taking action and making progress towards your goals. These actions may succeed, or they may fail. But that’s ok.
As long as the actions are happening, and they come from a genuine place, you’ll be able to engage consumers with your journey.
Sonika Malhotra, Co-founder and Global Brand Director of Love Beauty and Planet
Sonika stressed the importance of remaining honest about and authentic about the brand’s successes and the brand’s failures.
In a world where consumers are leading, you need to able to establish trust where you are owning up for things that are good for you and things that are not.
Sonika shared a story about Love Beauty and Planet’s packaging. At launch, they were able to use 100% recycled plastic on the bottles, but they were not able to on the caps because of manufacturing limitations.
In their messaging to the consumer, they were upfront and honest about this limitation.
It took a few years for the manufacturing teams to “crack” this—but they finally have. And the 100% recycled caps will be launching in the next few months.
Maddy Rotman, Head of Sustainability, Imperfect Foods
Maddy stressed how important it is for every brand to look in the mirror, highlight the changes it is making, and take the customer along on the journey.
“It won’t be quick,” Maddy says. You’ll need to set goals, and update your progress along the way. The most important work doesn’t happen overnight.
Holly Thaggard, Founder and Chair of the Board, Supergoop!
Supergoop! was started with a very big goal—create the end of skin cancer.
And they think of every single product they formulate is a continual new way to work towards this goal. They put sunscreen into different formulas and types of products in ways that make it as easy as possible for customers to protect their skin in any situation and reapply throughout the day.
On Being Communal
Everything your company does and says is a potential discussion point with consumers, and an opportunity to get them involved.
The best brands are prepared to embrace these discussion—to receive feedback, to interact with people 1:1, and to bring people into the brand in fresh ways.
Kate McCagg, Head of Custom Ads, International, Amazon Advertising
Kate stressed the importance of always asking your customers, ‘Does this resonate with you?”
Don’t think you know. You’re not a proxy for your customer, no matter how much you think you are.
An open dialog with customers about what you’re doing is key.
Kristin Turner, UX Principal Designer/Design Co-Lead of Black Employee Network, Amazon
Discussing the risk brands sometimes take in putting out a message that might not land, Kristin said that all brands need to be having dynamic conversations.
Maybe it’s an “Ask Me Anything” call to action, or a room on clubhouse, or a local meetup. Whatever the medium, brands need to get customer feedback on how they are approaching their purpose.
We all make mistakes. And brands do too. If this happens, brands need to be humble and move forward with intent.
Sophie Bambuck, Chief Marketing Officer of Everlane
This year, Everlane set a big goal: remove all virgin plastic from its supply chain. The company is currently at 90%. But to get to 100%, they need partners.
So, Sophie and her team have launched a new program called The Next Collective—inviting anyone who can to help them tackle these goals.
Because the reality is, no one can do it alone.
Maddy Rotman, Head of Sustainability, Imperfect Foods
Maddy said that Imperfect Foods is constantly asking its customers questions—and crating opportunities for in-depth conversations.
Customers of Imperfect Foods can directly see the impact they are making with their feedback.
Holly Thaggard, Founder and Chair of the Board, Supergoop!
In direct response to their customers, Supergoop has created a large range of options for their sunscreens—including accessibly priced formulas; formulas for different skin types, skin tones, skin textures, and skin colors; and even formulas made to perform in different climates.
All of these options add up to more people with protected skin… and less potential for skin cancer.
In Conclusion
It’s great to be a brand that leads with purpose.
But need to plan for the full journey in order to engage customers authentically and consistently—now and one hundred years from now.
Have Branding Questions?
Are there any branding topics or questions you’d like me to write about next? Let me know in the comments—or shoot me an email at kimberly@brandsthatgetyou.com. I want to make sure I’m writing about what’s most relevant to you!