THE FOUR MUST-HAVE’S OF BRAND PURPOSE

The political satire of Saturday Night Live on Feb. 11 was briefly focused on advertising that uses purpose as its main conceit to sell products. In case you missed it, the skit featured brand managers of Cheetos being pitched by rival agencies, one just wanting to show kids having fun and snacking and the other pitching increasingly absurd purpose-centered advertising tropes like immigration, racial inclusiveness, and transgender rights while touting the cheesiness (no pun intended) of the Cheetos brand.

As a cultural mirror, SNL rarely misses the mark. And it certainly didn’t fail to do so here, playing off the predominance of feel-good brand activism commercials that ran during Super Bowl LI and the Grammys by the likes of Audi, 84 Lumber, Budweiser, AirBnB and Coca-Cola. SNL’s writers clearly think all this brand activism is ham-handedly overplayed, undoubtedly fake and increasingly asinine.

The skit prompted a slew of commentary from the advertising and PR community, with the consensus establishing brand activism into two camps: truly authentic and values-based work versus opportunistic and unsubstantial come-ons. 

My friend David Armano, global strategist at Edelman, wrote a great piece on his blog earlier this week. In it, he poses the right questions for brands and marketers wanting to wade into the murky and politically charged waters of brand activism:

·     Do we have a right to weigh in on a specific societal issue?

·     Have we uncovered and articulated our core values?

·     Do our core values align with our value proposition to the consumer/customer?

·     Is our brand's business operations a good representative of the values we are championing?

·     Does the societal issue fit into our higher purpose at the company/corporate level? Who will we possibly alienate—who doesn't share the same values we do? 

These questions are incredibly important to ask. They are the de riguer first level of self-querying that every brand needs to take.

As the founder of a purpose-led creative shop, I’ve noticed that great brand purpose comes out of even deeper introspection. And if authentically answering David’s questions seems hard enough, this kind of introspection is harder still.

There are four parts to this process:

Intention. Action. Persuasion. Validation.

These are the steps a brand should take after the table-stake questions are answered.

Intention: Perhaps the most important element of figuring out a brand stand is the “why” behind it. In other words, where does the intent come from? Is it genuine or knee-jerk? Has it been a mainstay of the brand’s ethos or is this an opportunistic grab at share of voice in culture? We often ask our partners to articulate their enemy. If the answer is “the competition,” then we know where the intention is coming from. When they answer more ambiguously and esoterically – things like apathy, limitation, status quo, accessibility – our ears perk up. Knowing your enemy lets you know what you’re fighting for. Dove’s enemy is standardized notions of beauty and the anxiety that comes from them, so it fights for all women to remember that everyone is beautiful. Red Bull’s enemy is human limitation, so it strives to give wings to humans that want to defy those limitation in sport, racing and self-expression. Knowing your enemy also uncovers your allies – other brands, advocates, causes and movements – that can be brought into the fray. 

Action: Intention without action is cowardly. Brands that want to advocate for purpose, cause or social impact need to back it up with action. In the context of advertising, much of this action comes in the form of evocative, compelling and emotionally-stirring (positive or negative) storytelling in :30, :60 and long-form formats. Despite the fact that I think the aforementioned work from AirBnB, Budweiser. Expedia and the like is exceptional and the epitome of our craft, it is not enough. Brand purpose must transpose from brand storytelling into brand story-doing. Brands need to actively insert themselves in cultural tension points that are contextually relevant to their intention, and create compelling real-world experiences for people to take part and share. They need to invest their purpose in what we call human-centric media – experiential, digital, social and public relations – to articulate the purpose in culture through action rather than image. 

For instance, Coke’s enemy is “the walls that divide us,” and for years have rolled out great work centered around their Happiness Machines. Who can forget the content from two machines that brought Indians and Pakistanis together in a heartwarming brand film. They’ve created special phone booths that allowed migrant laborers in Dubai to call their families back home for the price of a single Coca-Cola bottle cap. Less weighty, they placed vending machines in college dorms that were activated with two or more people joined hands and hugged it to vend. All of these experiences were centered around bridging the divides between people, and their real-world activations garnered hundreds of millions of views from the accompanying video content. Coke also gave away $106 million last year to over 200 charities and organizations around the world, a figure that the company says represents 1.2% of its entire operating income in 2016. The brand walks the walk and lets the money do some talking, too. 

Persuasion: Here's where the SNL skit truly takes aim – the inability of brands to recognize the inauthenticity of their advertisements and the levels of incredulity on the part of their audiences. In other words, it’s hard to convince a cynical, politically-hardened and ad-saturated populace that you [insert brand here] actually give a shit about making the world a “better” place. There’s an ingrained cultural skepticism around brands – our industry has been making fabricated claims and counter-claims for decades – that only gets worse with the deluge of advertising that seeks to intrude into our everyday lives. The rapid rise of ad blockers and ad-free paid content is a direct consequence of our distaste and distrust of advertising. So it should be no surprise that when done well, a brand’s purpose advertisement will draw out the naysayers. When done badly, those naysayers will draw out their knives.

So the actual work of persuading people of a brand’s authentic intention and vigorous activation of it in culture is a key component to creating a brand’s purpose. If you build it, they will come…eventually. Persuading the audience of a brand to believe and share its intentions is paramount. So much so that Starbucks big purpose ad called A Year of Good and recently aired during the Grammy’s is focused on giving proof of the brand’s purpose bona fides. The spot is filled with statements of brand action and customer thanks, starting with a number of coffee and tea cups that were sold that year, and continuing to remind viewers that Starbucks also helped 8,000 veterans, send 6,535 baristas to college, jobs to 10,000 young people and 22 million trees planted. The work combines real-world authenticity, feel-good vibes and factual back-up to the brands purpose and community efforts. And a key component to the work: it was a thank you to their customers who made it happen. The brand uses words like “we” and “together” and “you,” directing the work’s focus on people not brand, because “it’s your name next to ours.”

Validation: Making purpose worthwhile is the ultimate test of a brand’s intention. It’s long-term and not bottom-line driven. Not only must the purpose be persuasive, it actually needs to positively impact the world and fundamentally change either individual lives or cultural mores. AirBnB’s beautiful Super Bowl ad called We Accept is a continuation of the brand’s purpose of bridging cultural and national divisiveness by creating experiences for people to live among others. To prove the We Accept stand, the company has committed to providing free short-term housing for 100,000 people in need – refugees, victims of natural disasters and aid workers who travel to those places. It has also said it will donate $4 million to the International Rescue Committee, a group that helps displaced people around the world. In this approach, the opportunity for validation is palpable. The stories, advocacy and brand engagements that come from those that the brand will directly help would authentically validate the brand’s purpose. People, not brand values, will be the validation. 

In the new commercial and political landscape, people will invariably become advocates for purpose. Deb Freeman, the chief strategy officer at FCB New York, describes the transformation happening in front of our eyes. In an Ad Age op-ed, she describes “a deep-seated belief that democracy and even humanity are under attack. And, most poignantly, it is giving rise to a new consumer mindset that brands can no longer ignore: the everyday activist. These are activists who are making their voices heard every day, and they aren't going to settle down or return to normal life. For the first time in their lifetimes, they are activating what it means to be a citizen.”

The validity of brand purpose will ultimately rest with “everyday activists.” In an interesting extension, brand’s could act as catalysts, gathering communities of like-minded consumers in support of a particular idea or purpose. Jeb Tilly, a Boulder-based strategist who led Patagonia’s Worn Wear initiative, points to “research that shows there’s been a massive decline in trust of leaders, (which isn’t so surprising) and a surge in trust of ‘people like me.’ In this context, brands have unique power to socialize purposeful messages, giving real people from all walks of life the kind of exposure usually only available to elites, leaders and experts. This makes a purposeful message more believable, accessible. More like a groundswell than a marketing ploy.”

This human-centricity will be the ultimate north star for a brand’s purpose. And because of the fundamentally changed world we now live in, that purpose will be a massive competitive advantage – in business and in culture. I often explain that “purpose is the new digital.” It will change the commercial dynamics in the same way that digital transformed (and is transforming) the way people buy and sell stuff. The brands of the future will all have a purpose beyond just making a profit – in other words, people will support brands that want to dent the world for the better. Almost all the new tech partners that we work with want to beneficially impact the world, not just line the pockets of investors and shareholders. It’s not enough to just make profit anymore (although that’s very important); the profit has to come with a purpose.