A good purpose has become the ultimate advantage.
Industry
Above | Employee huddle reviewing their company mission and objectives
If you’re like most visionaries, you’re resistant to change, but be mindful of hidden biases as you look for inventive ways to shatter your assumptions and work smarter into the future.
Decision-making blindspots
Assumptions hurt businesses.
You can’t go a single day without hearing the phrase’ brand purpose,’ but what does it mean? In short, it’s a brand’s reason for existence beyond making money. Today, many companies are jumping at the chance to signal their social and environmental credentials. For good reason, too, it’s what people want. Consumers are determining the fate of brands with their purchases. And when all things are equal, they will choose to purchase from a brand that has a positive impact.
Doing good has become the ultimate competitive advantage, a golden ticket to future-proofing your business. Getting it right will earn you a place in popular culture, improve your reputation and increase your market share. Getting it wrong could spark public outrage, claims of insincerity and the possibility of a boycott. The stakes have never been higher, and success depends on converting brand purpose into action. After all, purpose without action is pointless.
Our shared thoughts
Get the basics right.
The journey towards social impact begins with ensuring your brand is doing no harm. It can be easy to forget that business is a part of society; it has a responsibility to it. Thus, companies have a duty to contribute to people’s lives positively. Sadly, some of the world’s biggest brands use tax loopholes to avoid paying their debt to society legally. Some years ago in the U.K., Facebook only paid £15.8M in tax one year despite collecting a record £1.3B in sales. Avoiding tax can cause long-term reputation damage, as seen in the past with Starbucks, Amazon and Google.
In contrast, brands that pay their fair share will no doubt win public approval. A great example is Patagonia, which has used $10M in U.S. tax savings to combat climate change. So, when Patagonia says, “We’re in business to save our home planet,” people believe them. Fulfilling your responsibility as a business provides a foundation for brand activism. It begins with thinking beyond your four walls, looking after your employees and not destroying the environment. There’s not much point in having a lofty brand mission if you’re not even holding up your end of the social bargain.
Think long-term.
Building a meaningful brand is hard work. It requires changing the way things have always been done. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But it’s not; you need courage, conviction, vision and a champion at the very top. The scale and depth of transformation demand a long-term approach. It’s a rare commodity, considering the average CEO spends less than five years on the job.
To make matters worse, most companies are under constant pressure to deliver short-term results for shareholders, often at the expense of building long-term value. The good news is that we’re reaching a tipping point, characterised by mass adoption of socially responsible and environmentally sustainable business practices. To quote Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Sørensen, “In the long term, social and environmental issues become financial issues.” In 2010, Unilever launched an ambitious plan to decouple business growth from environmental impact. Nine years later, Unilever’s sustainable brands are now delivering 70 per cent of its growth. Such success is predicated on making society a stakeholder in your business.
Embrace co-creation.
The complexity of global issues is far too great for anyone to tackle alone. Such problems require new thinking, innovative approaches and unprecedented collaboration. As the saying goes, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” To improve things, brands need to look beyond their boundaries; this means collaborating with others to co-create a more equitable and sustainable future for all. Co-creation represents a substantial growth opportunity for brands. It’s a chance to embed new thinking, practices and doing good into the core of their business. One of the best examples of co-creation is Lego, which has teamed up with Sesame Workshop to help Rohingya and Syrian refugee children learn and heal through play. Lego is realising its brand purpose by investing $100M into the programme. This move will help Lego win the hearts and minds of a new generation of fans eighty-seven years after the company’s inception. Finding the right strategic partner will help turn a global mission into local, grassroots social and environmental activation.
In conclusion.
Doing good has become the ultimate competitive advantage for brands in the twenty-first century. In an increasingly overcrowded market, your brand’s contribution to society becomes consumers’ decisive point of difference. Brand activism fuelled by conscious consumerism will fundamentally change the nature of business. The scale and depth of change are comparable to the rise of digital technology in the 1990s and early 2000s. Similarly, those who embrace this new reality will win the hearts and minds of a new generation of consumers. Alternatively, those who fail to adapt risk entering the annals of irrelevancy, which already includes a long list of extinct brands. In the end, like most things, the difference between the two scenarios will boil down to talk versus action.