Chapter 5 of Activating a Purpose Program Playbook

Ensuring the Endurance of Purpose-Led Initiatives

April 13, 2021    

This is the fifth and final chapter in the playbook Activating a Purpose Program, from the ANA Center for Brand Purpose. Download the full playbook for more great insights from today's purpose champions.

People now expect brands to be both transparent and resolute in their beliefs, genuine in their intentions, and reliably consistent in their actions. That's no easy task, which makes it more important than ever to align all strategic decisions across an organization through the lens of purpose.

Virtually every business was founded with a core purpose. Ensuring that it is meaningful today and resonates with contemporary consumers means revisiting a company's underlying DNA and developing it to embrace all stakeholders. A clear purpose is more than an identity; it's an inspiring set of values that explains why an organization exists, what it can offer or solve, and how it interacts with and supports society.

A meaningful, authentic, and customer-centric purpose is differentiated in peoples' minds in a way that's impossible for others to imitate. Companies that lead with purpose and build around it can achieve continued loyalty, consistency, and relevance in the lives of consumers.

While not every organization views purpose as an all-encompassing ideal, those that fail to identify and convey their purpose may survive in the short term but not over time, given today's greater demands on brands and corporations.

However, one critical factor that separates purpose-driven businesses from the rest is longevity. Plainly put: meaningful brands endure and others do not.

 

Timothy Mapes, Delta Air Lines

Our purpose is to connect the world. We are a service business with a service ethos. Our customers, throughout their lifetime of flying, should experience the values and consistency of our brand. We understand that purpose and "doing the right thing" are particularly important to our generation Z customers and employees. Delivering for them means enabling future generations to take the Delta brand to higher places.

Getting 75,000 people in 60 countries to be dedicated to the nobility of service is not an easy task. We are a brand that believes in empathy, humanity, and serving others. We attract people who understand those principles and are motivated by them, which means that our customers experience the sincerity of our employees' dedication and their humanity. We have people who entrust their lives to us, which means we also maintain a conviction about their safety.

Delta is concerned about what matters in the heads and hearts of millions of travelers. While we aim to express warmth, caring, and hospitality, our challenge is doing it at scale, over and over again. We don't monitor the captain or the gate agent to see if they're living up to our values, but we do ask our employees to listen, respond, and listen again when they interact with our customers. Why is this so vital? We express this straightforward concept as Listen to what a customer is really telling us; Respond by addressing their concerns uniquely, while also striving to provide answers that are simple and more convenient; and then Listen again to be sure we got it right.

If your beliefs and values are not reflected in the company you work for, go and work for a different company. You can't be a world-class marketer if you represent a brand that doesn't reflect your values. That's no way to live a life. I've been at Delta for 28 years. Perhaps that says it all.

 

Anthony Farina, CSL Behring

All good outcomes begin with great people. At CSL, a leading global biotechnology company focused on the treatment of rare and serious diseases, we believe people are our greatest assets.

The communications function leads the global brand positioning at CSL, which employs more than 25,000 employees in over 60 countries. Our communications employees are on the front line executing the strategy across the business, despite different cultures and languages. We weave our corporate brand into every communications opportunity and message. It dictates which stories we tell and how we tell them. Our mission is to engage with patient communities in ways that go well beyond providing product. We want to help them in their search for a diagnosis, therapies, or even advocacy. More important, we want to increase not just a share of voice but a far broader and more meaningful share of life with the patients and the families who rely on us.

But you can't transform communications in an organization without the unwavering support of the CEO and entire C-suite, known as the Global Leadership Group at CSL. Senior leaders have been exceptionally supportive of our communications and brand efforts from day one. They understand and support our strategy with regard to developing, launching, and reinforcing the company's global brand positioning: "Driven by Our Promise."

While the communications function owns the company branding work, from the beginning we engaged and collaborated closely with other functions, including commercial development, commercial operations, human resources, and research and development, to understand their business needs. Their feedback and steadfast support absolutely guided the brand positioning, allowing us to secure early and enduring buy-in from colleagues around the world.

We were careful to give senior leaders the right level of support and tools to reinforce CSL's global brand with their people along the journey. We provided leaders with a toolkit of materials they could use to help reinforce the brand within their functions. We learned their communications styles and played to their strengths, encouraging them to identify and publicly appreciate employees who were living out our corporate brand.

While it is challenging to place a specific timeline on developing an industry-leading global brand from the ground up, for us, our three-year build was effective and provided sustainable results. We were honest up front that we were on a journey, not a sprint, and we had something new to show at key points in the timeline.

In three years, we delivered a brand purpose that included:

• Building a global communications team and function from the ground up — the right people in the right roles, focusing on the right things
• Establishing the company's first global brand positioning: Driven by Our Promise
• Developing the company's first employer brand, fully aligned with the company's brand
• Visually articulating the global brand with new brand standards
• Introducing a differentiated content strategy that reinforced our leadership in rare diseases

In terms of how we reinforce the corporate brand internally, we don't do it alone. Good brand positioning and messaging travels up and down an organization. It can and should be used by specific businesses, functions, manufacturing sites, and affiliates for local needs.

We routinely engage with employees from all departments as the greatest ambassadors of our company brand, taking their feedback and bringing them on the journey with us.

I am glad to say that our communications function has evolved from order-takers to strategic counselors with the business. The conversations have shifted from "I need a news release" to "What are the business objectives you are trying to achieve? Let's talk about how communications can help you achieve them."

We focus our content on storytelling, demonstrating our patient focus, industry leadership, and culture. We aren't distracted by shiny objects; we're relentlessly focused on delivering meaningful and emotionally compelling content that our stakeholders value.

We've seen how understanding the purpose of our global brand has changed CSL from an organization that was often reactive in our communications to one that is making more meaningful strategic decisions for the long term.

 

Simon Perkins, Orvis Company

At Orvis, we are headed to operating as a purpose-led company. The direction seems to be working: 2018 was our most significant growth year, especially in terms of profits outpacing sales. Some of this process is easy to measure, but other aspects are hard. We're finding that customers are starting to think about Orvis when they want to learn, engage, and buy. However, we know that as a specialty brand we have low aided awareness, and we want to raise that, along with our unaided awareness. Our new marketing initiative is called "The Great Awaits."

As a complex brand, we've focused on different categories: clothes, hunting, dogs, and gifts across brick-and-mortar, online, and wholesale. But yes, we have subtracted. Five years ago, we thought a fly-fishing rod company couldn't be the same company that makes the best dog beds. But now we think we can be. We've just done a bad job of telling that story, because so many people enjoy nature with their dogs.

And now we don't forget our consumers' insights and the social tension of having a more meaningful life. We're hoping The Great Awaits celebrates that anticipation and Orvis can be positioned to share the experience. While these are bold and exciting steps to scale, they are rooted in being purpose-led.

Our equation is passion plus relevance equals purpose-led. For us, that's the definition of true customer focus, which must be genuine and meaningful to the customer. The question we've learned to ask about our business is, "Do the pieces add up to an opportunity to be purpose-led?" If so, you have a big opportunity to leverage that mission in a way that lasts a lifetime, if you can do it in a genuine way.

The truth for us now is just to really listen, so we can make Orvis more relevant to all of our possible customers. And passion should never be underleveraged.

 

Victoria Morrissey, Caterpillar

We looked for the connection among the customers that Caterpillar serves across a wide range of industries, countries, and cultures. We saw them as a community of doers. Our customers go to work every day and make stuff. They do work that matters.

The story behind your product matters. If you buy a ring at Tiffany, you'll pay $7,000 for a diamond that you could have gotten for $1,000 in the diamond district. The $6,000 difference is what you pay for the story — the cost of the iconic blue box, the lighting, the salespeople, the architecture of the store, and the feeling you get from being able to say you bought a ring at Tiffany.

Of course, marketers must consider the metrics behind their campaigns, but the story is what will drive recommendations and brand loyalty.

After launching our purpose-driven brand campaign with the tagline "Let's Do the Work" in late 2018, we found after just 12 weeks that the brand exceeded its goals, including lead generation, by double-digit figures:

• 18 percent increase in brand favorability among Caterpillar customers
• 13 percent increase in brand recommendation
• 10 percent increase in people who said they were proud to own Caterpillar products

As we say in our Let's Do the Work campaign, "Progress lives at the intersection of technology and dirt. This is where you learn the meaning of reliability." Caterpillar is now a brand that absolutely endures purposefully.

 

Andrea Brimmer, Ally Financial

We were born out of purpose when we launched 10 years ago during the financial crisis. The financial services category was ripe for disruption, and we felt there was a better way forward. Purpose never leaves you when it's genuine.

Purpose is only a problem when it's fabricated. If it's authentic and born out of the brand, then you don't have to work for buy-in. You get in trouble when the organization doesn't rally around it, and a lot of brands face that issue.

Purpose underscores the importance of an engaged workforce. If the CFO asks what purpose will do for the company, it's not an easy answer of likes or earned media. It's a force within the company.

Purpose doesn't have to be saving the world. There are wonderful groups that are trying to combat climate change, for example. At Ally, we're just helping people. But brands get hung up on that and that often leads to a disconnect.

If purpose doesn't align with customer interaction, then it becomes a shallow marketing program that doesn't connect back to value exchange. Purpose should always be relevant to the customer.