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Business Purpose – Brand Context

April 27, 2009 •

Last month I blogged on the pur­pose of a busi­ness and the prob­lems that can arise when orga­ni­za­tions lack a clear sense of pur­pose, or when they define suc­cess nar­rowly in finan­cial (share­holder-cen­tric) terms. Today’s post focuses on busi­ness pur­pose and its links to cor­po­rate brand strat­egy.

In the con­text of brand strat­egy, pur­pose ener­gizes the organization’s “heart” — the inter­sec­tion of cor­po­rate strat­egy, the organization’s shared val­ues, and its fun­da­men­tal rea­son for being. Pur­pose is the “zen of the brand,” in com­pa­nies wise enough to define and be guided by a clear sense of cor­po­rate pur­pose.

What Is Purpose (brand context)

Purpose as the Essence of Corporate Identity

Pur­pose ani­mates the brand, infuses it with mean­ing, shapes and inspires the moti­va­tions of employ­ees. When employ­ees iden­tify with the organization’s pur­pose, when it gives mean­ing to their work, cus­tomers ben­e­fit.  The brand promise will be grounded in some­thing mean­ing­ful and endur­ing – some­thing that should out­last the cast of char­ac­ters who lead the orga­ni­za­tion at any given point in time.

For the world’s best-loved brands, employ­ees who closely self-iden­tify with the pur­pose become pas­sion­ate brand evan­ge­lists; the com­pany, its prod­ucts and the peo­ple behind them inspire cult-like loy­alty among the cus­tomer base. Among yoga afi­ciona­dos, Lul­ule­mon, a designer and retailer of high-end yoga gear, comes to mind. Nord­strom was once like this, as was BMW.

Apple was like this in the early days, when I worked on their mar­ket­ing team. It’s painful to leave a job with a com­pany that’s infused with a strong sense of pur­pose, par­tic­u­larly when your self-iden­tity gets inter­twined with the company’s mis­sion. When you leave an orga­ni­za­tion like that and end up work­ing in “nor­mal,” run-of-the-mill com­pa­nies, it can feel like Par­adise Lost… Noth­ing is ever quite the same.

Beyond the “cult of Steve,” beyond its “cool fac­tor,” one of the rea­sons why the Apple brand has had such pow­er­ful res­o­nance among global con­sumers is the last­ing power of its guid­ing pur­pose – and its endur­ing impact on two gen­er­a­tions of Apple employ­ees. Despite occa­sional mis­steps, Apple has enjoyed a long tra­di­tion of delight­ing its cus­tomers.

A clear and mean­ing­ful pur­pose, one that inspires employ­ees to do their very best, can be a source of long-term com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, even when prod­uct gen­er­a­tions come and go. This has cer­tainly been the case for the core Dis­ney brand.

If you want a more aca­d­e­mic ratio­nale for this premise, check out Richard Ellsworth’s Lead­ing with Pur­pose, a well-researched book on the sub­ject of cor­po­rate pur­pose and its impact on cor­po­rate per­for­mance.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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