One of the biggest brand strategy questions that you can ask your leadership team is:
Why does our brand exist?
Have a think about this. Have a good hard think. What is your purpose? What are all the people in your business doing? Why are they doing it? Why do they get out of bed every day? What is the point of it all?
Photo by Anastasia Petrova on Unsplash
It’s amazing how many people I meet who cannot clearly answer this question.
What would you say if I forced you to give a response? Be careful now. It’s not easy to answer in a meaningful way. Here are two hard truths:
If you give a financial reason, nobody (apart from you) cares about you making money
If you give a cliché answer, customers do not care if you are trying to be “the best”, “the biggest”, “the go-to” etc.etc.
I’d suggest to have a meaningful answer which your audience cares about you would need one which:
Is human and emotionally connects.
Is real.
Contains a big idea people can rally behind & believe in.
Inspires, excites and delights.
Is simple.
It needs to really send a shiver down the spine and make the hairs on your arm stand up. It needs to inspire. It shouldn't be a goal (and definitely not a financial goal). It needs to be something staff and customers can get behind.
If your answer doesn’t get you all excited - then how will it make your customers? Or your staff? Or the rest of your leadership team?
Also, once you have the answer - if need to be defined and written down, understood and used. Because, I'd suggest, EVERYTHING in your business should ladder into your big idea. Your purpose. Your reason for being. If you can’t articulate it simply, clearly and easily you might need to work on this.
If your leadership team are not aligned around it they will all run off in different directions. They will all have different purposes. Different reasons for being. Different ideas on the direction. Your messaging will be confused. You will not recruit people who believe what you believe.
How to create a brand purpose statement
Wondering where to start? I’d like to introduce to you a tool I’ve found very helpful. It’s called “The Brand Purpose Statement”. It’s a simple framework you can use to help explain why your brand exists beyond making money. Easy to understand. Hard to craft meaningfully.
It goes like this:
Our purpose is to [Contribution]
So that [Impact]
Because [Reason]
Fill in the brackets. Hard to do right? But so powerful when you have it crafted.
If you can’t fill this in then why not run a session with a multi-disciplined team to get a statement which is true, excites and inspires? I’d suggest you gather a meta-team (leaders, customers, key staff) & swarm in on this on a Zoom call. Get everyone to fill in a brand purpose statement on their own - then share, discuss, refine and vote on the best suggestion.
You might be surprised where you end up.
Enjoy!