Purpose-Driven Brands Are The Way Of The Future
A brand’s purpose is not to maximize profits.
Now, more than ever, people are keeping a close eye on which brands they interact with. Before, the product’s function and price were considered the essential information consumers needed from a brand. Now, consumers are looking for more.
Creating a brand purpose is not checking a box. It’s digging deep to ask yourself what really matters to you.
Algorithms are getting increasingly more precise— in fact, right now, Google Docs is attempting to predict which word we are going to type next. To break through the choices presented in our everyday lives, brands must stand for something.
Products on a shelf no longer rely solely on placement and design to catch people’s eyes, and push advertising is no longer sufficient. Power Digital found that consumers are less likely to trust brands with sponsored ads and influencer ads. Instead, they prefer to hear about brands from close friends who have had a personal experience with the brand. All this to say, consumer trust must be earned. You might be thinking, “How do I earn that trust?”
It starts with purpose.
When a brand loses connection to its core purpose, they lose touch with its reason for existing. Capgemini found that 87 percent of people believe brands have a larger role to play in society. At Hoot Design Company, we echo this finding. At our core, we believe brand has the power to create change and move culture forward.
We work from the assumption that a brand either is or is not purpose-driven. While we cannot create a purpose-driven brand, we can work with purpose-driven brands to help them gain a deeper understanding of what they stand for (Brand Heart), build an identity that leverages this information (Brand Identity), design a culture that is aligned with this information (Brand Culture), and work with them to share who they are in a way that is authentic and communicates their deepest priorities (Brand Experience).
“How do I know if I’m a purpose-driven brand?”
A purpose-driven brand is any brand that exists to do more than just make money. It’s a brand that believes in a just cause or seeks to live out a deeper purpose. If you find yourself wanting to have a greater impact than solely realizing profits, but don’t know where to start, you’re not alone. Discovering and articulating your purpose requires deep introspection into what your priorities are and how your business connects to them. For this reason, we partner with formally trained psychologists and management consultants in this discovery work.
We tend to fall in the camp that most brands want to realize not only their profit potential but also realize a greater impact potential as well – responding to the call from consumers to play a larger role in society. Yet, we often run into situations where leaders struggle to articulate what that greater impact is, or they work from the assumption that their teams intuitively understand the brand’s greater purpose.
When you don't invest in your brand and do the work of discovering and articulating your purpose, you unintentionally create knowledge gaps that lead to a plethora of results: inauthentic external messaging, misguided leadership, disengaged employees, and short-sided decision-making, to name a few. These situations leave both your consumers and employees feeling confused, and trust begins to break down.
Some of the strongest hits to dominating brands come from the poor treatment of employees. While companies like Amazon seem untouchable, recent outcries regarding employee treatment flooded news sites exposing the reality and mistreatment in Amazon factories. While Amazon has an extensive page on positions regarding issues like climate change, immigration reform, and housing equity, the company’s damaged reputation leaves consumers feeling like these are primarily for show and have no true weight behind them.
This is why brands must put their purpose into practice. And to practice your why, you must first discover and articulate what it is.
We understand all brands are at different points in their journey. Whether you’re just getting started, wanting to rediscover why you started in the first place, or ready to prioritize reaching your impact potential beyond profits, it’s never too early or too late to do this work.
Brand has the power to shape the way we live. Imagine a world filled with brands standing for something greater than themselves. That’s a world we want to be a part of and are dedicated to building.
Ready to own your brand’s purpose?
