Brand Purpose: A Guide to Defining Your Company’s Mission

When I first began my career in brand management, the concept of brand purpose was unreachable. Everyone talked about its significance, but few could explain what it really meant or how to describe it properly. Through experience and study, I realized that a well-defined brand purpose is more than simply a statement; it serves as a guiding star for all aspects of a company’s operations and relationships.

What is a Brand Purpose?

Aside from earnings, your company’s brand purpose is the reason it exists. It’s the basic mission that guides your business decisions, forms your culture, and connects with your target audience. A clear brand purpose brings your team together and attracts customers who share your beliefs.

Components of Brand Purpose

• Vision and Mission: These define your brand’s purpose. The vision explains long-term goals, whereas the mission describes day-to-day operations to attain them.
• Values and Beliefs: These principles drive your brand’s purpose and define what is important to your organization. Sustainability, innovation, and customer-centricity are common values that serve as the foundation for a strong brand purpose.
• Influence on Stakeholders: A real brand purpose analyzes the influence on all stakeholders, including as employees, consumers, communities, and the environment. This comprehensive approach ensures that your brand positively contributes to society and fosters trust among all stakeholders.

The Importance of Brand Purpose

• Strategic Alignment: A defined brand purpose unifies your team and informs strategic decisions. It guarantees that everyone in the organization works toward a common purpose, which improves coherence and efficiency.
• Motivational Driver: A meaningful brand purpose gives employees a sense of purpose and motivation, which makes their jobs more enjoyable. According to Harvard Business Review, employees who feel purpose in their work are more than three times more likely to stay with their companies.
• Customer Loyalty: Customers are more likely to stick with brands that reflect their beliefs. A strong brand purpose generates emotional ties, motivating customers to support your brand and choose it over competitors.
• Market Differentiation: In a saturated market, brand purpose distinguishes you. It tells a distinct story that distinguishes your brand, making it more memorable and appealing to your audience.
• Resilience and Adaptability: Businesses with a strong brand purpose are better positioned to face challenges and adapt to change. Their purpose provides a solid basis that helps them navigate uncertainties and stay focused on long-term goals.

How does Brand Purpose Differ from Brand Vision, Mission, and Values?

Brand purpose, Brand vision, Brand mission, and Brand values are basic concepts that form a company’s identity and strategy, yet they each play a unique function. Understanding the distinctions between these concepts is critical for developing a unified brand strategy:

• Brand purpose: The basic reason your company exists, highlighting its dedication to having a beneficial impact on society or its surroundings. It adds significance to the company’s existence, encouraging both staff and customers.
• Brand vision: This is an aspirational purpose statement that defines what the firm aims to accomplish in the future, establishing a long-term objective for where it is going. It provides a future goal, motivating the team to strive for excellence.
• Brand mission: The company’s current goals and the strategy it will use to attain them, serve as a practical road map for daily operations. It focuses on the present, outlining the methods and actions needed to achieve the goal.
• Brand values: These are the ideas and ethical standards that influence the behavior and decisions of a company and its workers, reflecting what the brand stands for and symbolizes. These ideals ensure that every action made complies with the brand’s ethical and cultural standards.

When integrated, these factors form a comprehensive approach to a successful brand strategy. This alignment guarantees that the organization communicates a consistent and compelling narrative, from its top aims to its workers’ daily actions. A well-defined purpose, vision, mission, and set of values are critical for driving a business to long-term success and sustainability, as well as building a brand that customers trust and support.

How to Define Your Brand’s Purpose

Defining your brand purpose entails a set of strategic actions that combine your company’s roots, key values, and audience data to form a cohesive mission. Here’s a complete approach to developing a compelling brand purpose.

Step #1. Reflect on Your Company’s Origins

Begin by revisiting the reasons for your company’s inception. This reflection might uncover the key challenges you set out to solve, as well as the reasons that pushed your founders. Understanding these fundamental characteristics can give you significant insights into your brand’s underlying purpose.

Question to Consider:

• Did your founders notice any market gaps or needs?
• What distinctive solutions did your organization intend to provide?
• Which values and principles were significant to your founders?

Example: When I worked with a tech business, we explored the founder’s aim of bringing technology to neglected populations. This thought assisted us in developing a purpose statement that resonated strongly with our staff and customers, emphasizing equality and accessibility.

Step #2. Identify your core values

Core values are guiding concepts that shape your company’s activities and decisions. To determine these values, conduct workshops or questionnaires with employees at all levels. This inclusive method ensures that the identified values are genuine and reflect your company’s culture.

Steps for Identifying Core Values:

• Workshops: Host interactive sessions where employees may discuss and vote on the principles they believe best represent the organization.
• Questionnaires: Distribute questionnaires to get a wide range of feedback from employees in various departments and levels.

Use our Core Values Identification Template to help with this process. This template can assist arrange talks and ensure that everyone contributes.

• Outcome: You should have a list of key principles that accurately reflect the attitude of your firm.

Step #3. Understand your audience

Understanding the values and concerns of your target audience is critical to ensuring that your brand’s purpose connects. Conduct extensive market research to gain insights into what is most important to them. This alignment can improve the relationship between your brand and your customers.

How to Understand Your Audience:

• Surveys and Questionnaires: Directly inquire about your audience’s values, preferences, and expectations.
• Focus Groups: Hold detailed discussions with a chosen group of customers to gather deeper perspectives.
• Social Media Listening: Monitor social media conversations and trends to gain insight into the topics and values that are important to your target audience.

According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, 81% of consumers believe they must trust a brand before buying from them. This emphasizes the importance of matching your brand’s purpose with consumer values.

Step #4. Create a Purpose Statement

Create a purpose statement based on the insights gained by reflecting on your company’s history, establishing fundamental values, and knowing your target audience. This statement should be straightforward, short, and inspiring, capturing the heart of your brand’s objective.

Elements of a Purpose Statement:

• Clarity: Ensure that the sentence is easy to understand.
• Conciseness: Be succinct and to the point.
• Inspiration: It should inspire and connect with your employees and customers.

Example: Patagonia’s purpose statement is “We’re in business to save our home planet.” This powerful phrase is consistent with their environmental principles and appeals to their environmentally concerned clients, effectively demonstrating their commitment to sustainability.

Step #5. Integrate purpose into your operations

Every component of your business should be based on a clear brand purpose. This promotes consistency and reinforces the purpose of your everyday activities and relationships.

Integration Strategy:

• Marketing: Make sure your marketing strategies and messaging reflect your brand’s purpose.
• Product Development: Ensure that your products or services are consistent with your brand’s purpose.
• Customer Service: Teach your customer service team to exemplify your brand’s goal throughout their encounters.
• Employee Policies: Create policies that promote and support your brand’s purpose internally.

At a retail company I consulted for, we incorporated our purpose of promoting sustainable fashion into supply chain practices, marketing campaigns, and employee training programs. This comprehensive strategy reaffirmed our commitment to sustainability at all touchpoints.

By following these steps, you can create a brand purpose that not only connects with your target audience but also motivates meaningful actions and decisions within your organization.

Brand Purpose Examples

#1. Patagonia

Patagonia made waves when its creator, Yvon Chouinard, donated his US$3 billion firm to a trust and non-profit to tackle climate change and safeguard undeveloped territory. Chouinard seeks to promote a new kind of capitalism that prioritizes environmental action, even at the expense of personal financial loss, exhibiting true brand purpose.

#2. Bodyform

Bodyform, a period care brand, is committed to overcoming menstrual taboos and empowering women. They revised their purpose to “help create the conditions for women to live the life they want, by breaking period taboos” and developed significant initiatives like #wombstories to engage meaningfully with women.

#3. Octopus Energy

Octopus Energy provides low-cost, clean energy to make energy “fair, clean, and simple.” Despite never making a profit, they have absorbed over £150 million in costs to offer the UK’s lowest variable tariff and established Octo Assist, a £15 million fund to assist customers facing high energy bills.

#4. Ruby’s in the Rubble

Rubies in the Rubble makes sauces from leftover ingredients to reduce food waste. Their purpose is to prevent food waste by utilizing farm produce that is defective or surplus. Since 2011, they’ve saved 351,600kg of fruits and vegetables and 294,500kg of CO2E.

#5. Cushon

Cushon, the world’s first net-zero pension fund, seeks to enhance financial futures by encouraging healthy saving habits. Their “Zero Reasons Not To” campaign raised awareness about the financial and environmental benefits of net-zero pensions using engaging content such as “The Healthy Pension” animation.

How Do You Assess the Impact of Brand Purpose?

Measuring the impact of your brand’s purpose is critical for understanding its efficacy and making data-driven decisions. Here are detailed ways to evaluate the impact:

#1. Employee Engagement

• Surveys: Conduct frequent employee surveys to assess how connected and motivated your personnel is to the brand’s purpose. Tools like Gallup’s Q12 poll can provide information on employee engagement levels.
• Turnover Rates: Track employee retention and turnover rates. A strong brand purpose is generally associated with increased staff loyalty and lower attrition.
• Productivity indicators: Monitor productivity indicators including output quality and efficiency. Employees who are engaged and have a connection to the brand’s purpose are more likely to produce.

Example: At a healthcare organization where I worked, we used quarterly surveys to assess how well employees identified with the company’s objective. The results showed a 20% improvement in job satisfaction after incorporating the brand’s purpose into daily operations.

#2. Customer Loyalty

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Conduct NPS surveys to assess customer satisfaction and loyalty. This indicator represents the likelihood that buyers will promote your brand to others.
• Repeat Purchase Rate: Keep track of the frequency with which you make the same purchase. Loyal clients who understand your brand’s purpose are more inclined to return.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Calculate the CLV to comprehend the long-term value of customers who are committed to your brand’s purpose.

Example: A retail company I consulted for experienced a 15% boost in repeat purchases after launching a campaign focused on their brand’s purpose of encouraging sustainable living.

#3. Brand Perception

• Social Media Listening Tools: Use tools like Brandwatch or Hootsuite to track talks about your brand. Analyze sentiment and themes to better understand public perception.
• Brand Surveys: Conduct frequent brand perception surveys to get input on how your target audience perceives your brand’s purpose.
• Public Relations Metrics: Monitor media mentions, tone of coverage, and the ratio of good to negative news. Example: Using social media listening techniques, a tech business I worked with saw a 30% spike in positive remarks about their objective to improve digital accessibility.
• Consumer Feedback: Regularly gather and analyze consumer feedback via reviews, focus groups, and direct surveys. This qualitative data provides more insight into how effectively your brand’s purpose resonates with your target audience.

Can a Brand’s Purpose Change Over Time?

Yes, your brand’s purpose may and should adapt as your firm expands and market conditions shift. Here’s how to efficiently handle this evolutionary process:

#1. Regular Review

• Annual Strategy Meetings: Schedule annual meetings to examine and debate the importance of your brand’s purpose. Involve important stakeholders from all departments to gain a comprehensive perspective.
• Market Research: Continuous market research keeps you up to date on industry trends and customer behavior. Use this information to determine when a change in brand purpose is warranted.

Example: Every two years, a consumer goods business I worked with reassessed its brand purpose. This method enabled them to shift their mission to emphasize environmental sustainability, better harmonizing with shifting consumer attitudes.

#2. Flexibility and Adaptation

• Iterative Refinement: Allow for iterative modifications rather than major overhauls. Small, regular improvements can keep your brand’s purpose current while minimizing disturbance.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Maintain open communication with employees, customers, and other stakeholders regarding prospective changes. Their feedback can provide significant insights and aid with seamless transitions.

Example: As data privacy became more of a concern in their sector, a software company changed its brand purpose to include a focus on it. They conveyed these adjustments through internal town halls and customer newsletters to ensure that everyone was on board.

#3. Maintaining Core Values.

• Consistency: While your brand’s purpose may change, the basic principles that support it should remain consistent. These principles serve as the foundation, guaranteeing consistency and stability even as the purpose evolves.
• Alignment: Ensure that any changes in brand purpose remain consistent with your fundamental beliefs and long-term goals. This connection helps you maintain credibility and trust with your audience.

Example: A financial services company kept its basic value of honesty while modifying its brand purpose to promote financial awareness and empowerment, which reflected broader societal requirements.

Conclusion

Defining your brand’s purpose is a journey that involves introspection, teamwork, and dedication. A well-defined purpose not only makes your brand more appealing but also promotes long-term success. How will you define or refine your brand’s purpose today?

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References

• Qualtrics
• Brandfolder
• Canva