Article originally written for AEBRAND
Every day, brand managers of all sizes and from various industries contact consulting firms for help in clearly defining their purpose.
One question we should all ask ourselves when faced with a project of these characteristics is what is the real motivation, the real reason for the pursuit of this purpose.
Sometimes, managers who have a relationship with the brand but do not represent the center of management want to give their brand a purpose at all costs as a means to connect with their audiences or, directly, to sell more or improve their reputation.
This approach is completely dysfunctional because an organization cannot convey a purpose and not take it into account in internal decision making or in the behavior of the company. Let us imagine that it is a person in our environment who acts in a way that is contrary to what he or she claims to be, could we trust that person?
The same thing happens with brands; a brand that claims to have a purpose but does not turn it into a real motivation for the company, a way of seeing the world sought by senior management that permeates the entire organization, is not a functional brand.
A brand with a purpose created from a communication point of view solely to clean up image or improve perception is doomed to suffer the consequences of living in a paradox, risking not being integral and falling into the oblivion of brands that disappoint.
They will be able to stay alive as a company, even continue to have a lot of turnover, but as a brand they will have no credibility and at some point this will turn against them.
A brand decision maker must ask questions directly related to its purpose:
- How has it influenced the latest decisions we have made?
- Have our decisions brought us closer to him?
- What action plan have we defined to achieve our purpose in the coming months/years?
- What have we had to say No to in order to be true to our purpose?
If with these questions we realize that the company is not consistent with its purpose, it is certainly better to rethink it than to "shoehorn" it in.
Photography: Michal Parzuchowski