Brand purpose should be the core of your growth strategy, and the reason is in your brain

Brand purpose is the fundamental reason why a business exists beyond making money. When building your brand growth strategy, you should prioritise it for three reasons: it drives emotional engagement and loyalty, clarifies your message and future-proofs your brand positioning.

“Purpose-driven companies have a huge competitive advantage. Employees and customers are hungry for purpose.”

— Rich Karlgaard

Why should your brand purpose be the core of your growth strategy? If you can’t quickly answer this question, you should keep reading this article. On the other hand, if you’re wondering why we are talking about brand purpose at all, you should definitely stick around until the end of this article.

What is a brand purpose?

A brand purpose is a fundamental reason why a business exists beyond making money. It’s the underlying reason why your company is in business and why other people should care about it. So, for example, Google’s purpose is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible, and Disney’s is to make people happy.

A brand purpose transcends the company mission and its leadership vision. It’s a higher cause that connects your organisation to the outside world. It’s a catalyst that will transform your company’s message recipients into an engaged audience, loyal customers and brand advocates. The brand purpose is the fundamental, ultimate call to action that gathers customers, employees, and even investors around an organisation.

A brand purpose never changes. As competition intensifies and creates infinite choices, companies look for ways to differentiate themselves from others. Your brand purpose is your ultimate competitive advantage and the foundation of your future success and growth.

There are three fundamental reasons why your purpose should be the foundation stone of your brand, communication and overall strategy:

• The first reason is purely biological. It is based on how the human’s brain reacts to messages. Focusing your communication on your purpose instead of promoting your products and services, you will be able to engage emotionally with your audience and transform a passive message recipient into a loyal customer and brand advocate.
• Secondly, a clear purpose is the foundation of a consistent brand. It clarifies your written and visual messages, product offers and campaigns.
• Finally, a strong brand is your ultimate competitive advantage. Your brand communicates what your organisation stands for, establishes a market positioning, and conquers your customers’ hearts. That’s what you want to achieve and what your competitors can’t copy.

It’s human nature, baby.

“The higher purpose provides the basis of a relationship with customers, raising the organization above the “my brand is better than your brand” competition and the noise that goes with it.”

— David Aaker, “Aaker on Branding”

“How great leaders inspire action” is one of the most popular TED Talks of all time. In the talk, leadership expert Simon Sinek explains uses his Golden Circle theory to explain how some of the greatest leaders and the most successful organisations in the world can inspire and motivate people.

Based on the Golden Circle theory, great leaders and organisations communicate their purpose, cause or beliefs — the why — before indulging in explaining their superior products’ features or the differentiated competitive offer.

Emphasising why they do what they do, visionary leaders can generate an emotional engagement within their audience. Based on scientific evidence and evolutionary behaviour, humans respond best when messages communicate with those parts of their brain that control emotions, behaviour, and decision making. The reason behind it is deeply grounded in our brain and explained by cognitive science.

The human brain is composed of multiple zones and regions. Each part of the brain controls and stimulates different human functions, behaviours and cognitive processes. The youngest (in evolutionary terms) and most external part of our brain is called the neocortex. The neocortex is the part of the brain involved in higher cognitive functions and is responsible for rational and analytical thought and language. Contrarily, the oldest and most internal part of our human brain, the limbic system, is involved in behavioural and emotional responses. It is this second part of the brain that controls feelings, behaviours and ultimately trust and loyalty.

When you and your organisation communicate about your superior products and competitive offer, you address your audience’s neocortex, the brain’s part in charge of decoding complex information and verbal language. The neocortex can understand a vast amount of detailed information, such as facts, data and features.

On the other hand, when your communication emphasises the purpose, values, and beliefs of what you’re doing, you talk directly to the human brain’s most emotional and intuitive part, the limbic system. Stimulating your audience’s limbic system will generate an emotional reaction to the message and facilitate faster decision-making.

The reason is that the limbic system controls emotions, instinct reaction and influence behaviour.

When we communicate from the inside out — from the limbic system to the neocortex — we’re addressing our instinctive emotional reaction and decision making while allowing our neocortex — the language part — to rationalise those decisions.

(Have you ever noticed how faster is it to make a decision when it “just feels right” vs when “something just doesn’t feel right”, and you would probably end up overthinking before making a decision? — which eventually won’t even make you as happy as you thought?)

Emotions drive actions, not rationality.

Emotions build trust and loyalty.

A brand purpose builds a bridge between the emotional and the rational realms. The purpose inspires action and transforms a company into a visionary brand. Apple is a $ 1 trillion-dollar company because it incites to “Think different”. Not because it builds and sells beautifully designed computers. Tesla recently surpassed 1 trillion dollar market valuation because it is in business “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”, not to build electric cars.

Clarity and Consistency

“Clarity brings results.”

— Donald Miller, “Building a StoryBrand”

Our cultural distrust in emotions and creativity in decision making goes back to the Enlightenment and the 18th century, when French philosophers discovered the power of rational thinking. In the wake of le “siècle des Lumières” — the “century of the Enlightened” — modern economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and, finally, Juan Stuart Mill in the 19th century developed the homo economicus concept.

Since the appearance of the homo economicus, business has been the realm of rationality. The homo economicus is a model for human behaviour that suggests that humans are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested. It assumes that human beings are perfectly rational and that they act purely to maximise their utility. Within this theory, a decision-making process reduces to a mere cost and benefits analysis.

Today, thanks to the work of behavioural economists and Nobel prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler, we are finally accepting that humans are not that rational after all. Instead, emotions, cognitive biases and habits play a huge role when we make decisions.

A brand purpose will help you to clarify all your messages. Without clear messages, all your potential customers will hear is faint noise.

Anyone involved in a brand-building process knows the fundamental rule of branding: consistency. Visual and verbal consistency is the key to building a recognisable and relevant brand. And consistency is nothing more than the result of clear and uniform communication across different channels and platforms. The combination of consistency and clarity and purpose-driven organisation create solid and focused brands.

A focused brand knows what it stands for and why people want it. An unfocused brand is broad and doesn’t stand for anything. The lack of focus and clarity in why a company exists besides its products and services will dilute its marketing efforts and alienate its audience. An unfocused brand relies on short and medium-term marketing tactics (PR, social media, paid ads, affiliates etc.) instead of long-term strategic branding.

Using different words, an unfocused brand has a constant need to put its message out there, relying much heavier on promoting its product or services to generate sales. A focused brand, on the other hand, can on a devoted audience and loyal customer base.

An unfocused brand will go with the flow, create campaigns with unclear or mediocre results. In contrast, a focused, purpose-driven brand will nurture itself from the inside out, capitalising on its clearly defined reason to be.

Patagonia is probably my favourite example of brand consistency. Patagonia’s purpose is to be in business to save our planet. In June 2020, Patagonia announced that they would stop all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram because of the platform’s involvement in hate speech and climate change misinformation. Yet, despite the Facebook boycott, Patagonia year-over-year online sales grew by 17.4% in 2020 compared to 2019.

Patagonia decided to stay true to its purpose and stand up for its own and its audience’s beliefs.

It paid off.

Future-proof your brand for growth

“Without a clear sense of purpose, companies tend to grab at short-term gains while incurring the long-term loss of their identities”

— Marty, Neumeier, ZAG

In the previous section, we had a tasting sample of how brands with a clear purpose set up future growth and success. Unfortunately, in a world dominated by quarterly results, fierce competition and hyper-growth pressure, companies and employees usually end up being swamped in daily operational activities trying to achieve difficult short-term results.

Strong brands are the backbone of radical differentiation from your competitors and long-term profitability. A purpose-driven brand is a powerful tool to “counterweight to the dominance of short-term financials in managing businesses” (Aaker, Aaker on Branding). It can act as your North Star while seeking sustainable growth and profits.

In 2004, Bob Iger took over a creatively and financially fatigued Disney. His first decision as CEO of the company was recentering the strategy to its core purpose: to create happiness through great branded content. The strategical realignment allowed the company to focus on its core purpose and capabilities, removing the external noise and setting up the company for future growth and success.

In 2006 Disney acquired Pixar. In 2009, Disney bought Marvel and in 2012, Lucasfilm. In 2020, Disney launched its streaming platform, Disney+. In the same year, the Mandalorian, the Disney+ show based on the Star Wars universe, was the third most-streamed original content according to Nielsen.

Disney’s comeback wouldn’t have been possible without a refocus on its core brand purpose. A brand purpose act like a guiding light allowing everyone in the organisation. From the leadership team to the employees, everyone would understand why they are all there and what they want to accomplish and provide a filter for daily decisions.

A brand purpose is a mantra that represents the DNA at the core of the company. It’s when your brand purpose aligns your organisational culture with your long-term strategic goals while captivating an external engaged audience that magic happens.

When you clarify who you are and why you do what you do, you future-proof your company. Your purpose is your ultimate competitive advantage because it makes your brand unique and irreplaceable in the minds and hearts of your customers.

All the rest is unwanted noise.

• David Aaker, “Aaker on Branding” (2014)
• Marty Neumeier, “ZAG” (2007)
• Simon Sinek, “Start With Why” (2009)
• Brian Sooy, “Raise Your Voice: A Cause Manifesto” (2014)
• Donald Miller, “Building a StoryBrand” (2017)
• Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow” (2012)
• Richard Thaler, “Nudge, the final edition” (2021)