If you’re an equipment hire business, why do you need ‘brand purpose’?

In today’s digital age, you could be forgiven for thinking that efficiency and convenience are everything.

 After all, Amazon has taught us that we can get practically anything delivered to our front door after a few swift taps and swipes on our phones. It has become our expectation to click, collect and complete transactions in double-quick time before moving on to whatever’s next – particularly if the pressure is on to hit a deadline.

 In this context, it is highly unlikely that you are paying much – if any - attention to the values or mission statements of the companies you’re interacting with. These concepts are probably something that feel slightly detached from the solid, real-world reality of product and price. And they probably are. So, does it make any difference if a company or brand does things with purpose?

 At Edge, we think it does. Don’t worry, we’re not going to force you to sit through a 65-slide PowerPoint presentation that explains our brand strategy, but we do think it’s important that behind the scenes we give proper thought to what we offer our customers, how we can ensure they keep coming back, and why new prospects should give us a try.

 We know efficiency and convenience are increasingly important (as discussed above), but we also think those qualities should be complemented by experience, expertise and independence. For us, it’s not just about delivering a competitive service and quality products, it’s about offering additional layers of genuine added value – the extra Edge – that can help answer the demands of today’s world.

 Purpose is a big part of that. Firstly, it ensures we’re thinking about what our customers need. It focuses our minds on understanding their journey and the practical, everyday challenges that cause bumps along the road. The more empathy we have for their situation and the deeper our understanding of their challenges, the better we can shape our offering to fit. The more proactive we can be in suggesting solutions, helping them overcome difficulties and achieve good outcomes.

 Purpose also forces us to think about how we want to conduct ourselves as a business. It guides our principles and decision-making. For example, we want to be a company where our people are well trained; we want our branch managers to have a level of autonomy so they can get things done; we want technology to enhance our operations and complement the way we interact with our customers - being processed is not the same as being served.

 Purpose also connects us to our wider responsibilities. The word sustainability works on two levels here, as we want to build a sustainable long-term business and we also want to operate in a way that’s sustainable for the environment, continually investing in equipment that’s energy efficient and doing what we can to keep our carbon footprint down.

 Although the invite for the PowerPoint slideshow remains open, we’re aware that much of this thinking around purpose is best kept behind closed doors. What really matters is that we make the theory real for our customers and that they see the difference it makes through everything we do on a day-to-day basis.

 It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it, goes the classic song, and at Edge we tend to agree.