A Brand’s Purpose

This topic is inspired from a recent post by Pratyush Kukreja . And I have taken some liberty to use his post into this one.

Brand’s Purpose addresses the eternal question “WHY” and the reason why it exists in first place. The reason it exists what it essentially stands for.

The “Why“ is addressed to their Customers it serves and the Niche it expects to address.

Essentially the goal for having a brand purpose is to satisfy the following:

• Influence people’s association and feelings towards the brand
• Build Loyalty and
• Create a long lasting and distinct identity

A brand vision describes a future state where you envision how it will be perceived by people and all the stake holders. It's lies in the horizon which you are able to see and interpret. It's what you're expected to be working towards a long-term vision of a distant reality that you want to bring to fruition. While your motivation will drive the purpose, the vision is it’s final destination.        

So how does one measure brand purpose?

Through Social Listening.

The key requirement towards navigating a competitive environment during these times is to ensure that you build a value-based, natural purpose to ensure an emotional engagement between the brand and its consumers. Social listening is one of the best way to measure if the brand is working towards its purpose.

Brand purpose at its core shows your customers that you’re not just your advertising campaign, services and products. You also have a purpose—and it’s much bigger than just turning your business into a profit.        

What’s a brand purpose vs. your Brand vision, mission, and values: The basic differences

Did you know that in 1980s, Disney got an offer to cobrand with a mutual fund designed to help parents save for their kids' college education?

If you were the brand manager, prima facie it would look like an easy decision to take. After all, most of us can recall a childhood memory of watching an enchanting Disney animation, being the lucky recipient of a plush toy or branded lunchbox, or wishing upon a star to go to one of the company’s theme parks.

Around the same time, Disney did a brand equity exercise.

Below were some findings:

• The Disney characters were on so many products and marketed in so many ways that it was difficult to understand how these decisions were made or even why.
• The exercise indicated that consumers lumped all the brand endorsements together. Disney was Disney, regardless of whether they saw the characters in films or on lunchboxes or on socks.
• There were cases where characters involved children in a purchase decision where otherwise they probably would have ignored or they added little value. This led to resentment association with Disney.

Consequently, Disney setup a brand equity team to better manage these decisions. The mandate was simple:

• Keep the messaging consistent across branding deals
• Strike a balance in signing up franchise and licensing deals.

 30 years later, branding and content decisions have gotten exponentially complex. But the principles remain the same.

Oh and yes, Disney declined the cobranding association with the mutual fund since they realised that a financial decision was inconsistent with other aspects of the brand image.

Here’s how you can define your brands purpose:

Finally, if you are passionate about creating something and you have identified the gaps in the market and the difference, keep working onto it. It may not be the best, keep going ahead… until you have the alignment to your answers.

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