‘Brand Purpose’ - the New Headline!

Populations are booming, Technology is advancing, and Businesses are trying to become a force for something good. The idea of ‘taking a stand for something’ is becoming essential and greatly important for brands, as it may appear as a convincing and enticing force for customers.

Shreesh Pandey

Shreesh Pandey - Founder & CEO of MSP India Corporation, a Marketing and Advertising Solution Network, https://mspindia.co.in/

Brands, these days, are in a rush to stand for something, to have a social or commercial purpose as it is an important factor for customers while choosing products or services. Populations are booming, Technology is advancing, and Businesses are trying to become a force for something good. The idea of ‘taking a stand for something’ is becoming essential and greatly important for brands, as it may appear as a convincing and enticing force for customers.

In the recent past, brands were successfully running while focussing on different factors and brand promises, but now, the market has witnessed a great shift targeted towards ‘Brand purpose’ for most of the goods and services. With this seismic shift of ‘brand purpose’ aiming towards a positive change in society, most of the businesses, whether small-scale or large-scale, have started glorifying and redefining their objectives.

This is a positive change. However, what is more important to dig into the matter is the urgency to stand for some positive social behaviour change of the consumers. With this, companies have started putting together the brand purpose, a ‘story’ ahead of the purpose, plan and actions. They seem to be in a hurry to come up with a new storyline that redefines their ‘modified purpose’, be it ensuring good in the lives of the people or a certain section of society; or making the planet greener and cleaner. This is exactly what made ‘brand purpose’ hit the headlines again but unfortunately for various wrong reasons, as businesses jeopardized such opportunities to genuinely play a positive role in society by making this a marketing gimmick.

Needless to say, every brand is constantly trying to be better than its competitors. To be better in the eyes of their customers, marketing is one of the topmost priorities for brands. Because of this nascent discipline, the responsibility of creating ‘purpose’ has been given to the marketing team and that is exactly where they go wrong as the purpose is being used more as a marketing strategy and less as a plan of action. To understand it better, we can term it ‘Purpose Wash’. But how can one avoid ‘purpose wash’ in the first place?

To begin with, we recognize areas of work where one can start from and acknowledge that there is no point in pursuing the purpose in one area when other areas of your brand are doing huge amounts of damage.

It is also significant to acknowledge that brand purpose is the only way ahead to make a successful presence in the market for any business but at the same time, it must reflect in the company’s organic image without any filter or photoshop.

So, let’s find out how exactly can businesses work on delivering an effective purpose strategy. Here we highlight few things that businesses must work upon to deliver an effective purpose strategy, avoid purpose wash, and to ensure great success:

One of the key things to remember is that the business strategy should be made to ensure that the Purpose is delivered, not just talked about. The gap between words and deeds, intent and action, is what we need to overcome.

The purpose must be aligned with a sustainable business strategy. It means that brand purpose must not only drive action but also be created along with a sustainable action plan on how to achieve it.

Last but not the least, business strategy should have one aspect to ensure great help to society. The idea of ‘purpose aiming’ to make a societal change or stand for something positive must be taken sincerely by brands even if it requires them to come together to make it happen.

The brand purpose provides strong corporate culture and offers clarifications, adding value to the lives of consumers and society, thus, placing the products and services at unique positions among the competitors.

In sum, the World is amid the time of crisis and it becomes significant to recognize that by using social issues to informed advertising and marketing decisions, brands are solidifying their identities, building trust and are setting themselves apart from the competition.

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