Marketing for Growth by The Economist

Author:The Economist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs

Higher purpose

The most valuable brand proposition statements are those that describe a higher purpose for society as much as for the firm. Jim Stengel, a former Procter & Gamble marketer, describes this phenomenon in his book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies. He shows how brands that demonstrate a wider societal benefit satisfy customers more. Dove, a soap brand, has built its brand proposition around “The campaign for real beauty”. It shifted its promotional emphasis from an idealised beauty to the “real” beauty of everyday people, building credibility through global research into different attitudes to real beauty to highlight that everyone is beautiful in their own way. Dove’s use of real-size, real women rather than the usual size zero models was revolutionary. It also funds the Movement for Self-esteem, which aims to widen the definition of beauty and inspire girls and women to take great care of themselves.

Employees like working for businesses that have a higher purpose and to share that purpose. Psychological research suggests that people generally want to do something meaningful at work. This is particularly true of generation Y employees, those born between the late 1980s and early 2000s during a time when there was a marked increase in social and environmental consciousness. They recognise that they will probably have to work well into their 60s or even 70s and care more about the future society than other demographic segments such as generation X (those born between 1966 and 1977) or baby-boomers (those born between 1946 and 1965). They want to work for organisations that are genuinely engaged in making a difference as well as making money.

Higher-purpose brand propositions emotionally engage employees and customers with a cause they can feel part of. The greater meaning the brand proposition has, the greater satisfaction customers and employees get from the brand in their different ways. For marketers, this means using social pressure and other psychological arm-twisting based on a sound understanding of what determines the way those in the target market behave. Higher-purpose brand propositions are difficult to implement successfully. For service businesses, the higher purpose is critical because services need to engage and galvanise work colleagues to perform their role better and keep on doing it over time. Big brands such as Ford, Zurich and Vodafone have hundreds of thousands of employees around the world. The brand proposition needs to motivate and provide guidance for their actions and behaviours. A functional statement can tell them what to do, but it requires something more meaningful if colleagues are to take personal ownership of the brand and align their behaviour around it (see Chapter 8 for a discussion of internal growth levers).

IBM, although well-regarded as an IT business, sought to increase its relevance and differentiation through developing and executing a higher-purpose proposition. It set itself a much bigger goal than the installation of the IT infrastructure systems than it was currently providing. In its own words, “it turns out that being connected isn’t enough”. It therefore established a new vision for the company based on the idea of a “Smarter Planet”.

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