There is an often overlooked power of brand that is lost on many people in business today. No one is at fault here – business owners, leaders, managers and employees are often too distracted by business goals, targets, KPIs, ‘fighting fires’, politics, protocol, serving customers, finding customers or thinking about that growing pile of admin or invoices to notice what is sometimes right in front of us. A wise man once told me this phenomenon – being unable to see something right in front of you – actually has a name. It’s called… ‘scotoma‘ and it comes from the Greek work meaning ‘blind spot’. We can easily lose sight of the original business goal as ‘life’ gets in the way. In business it’s also a case of ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’, which can leave many businesses adrift and disconnected from the original brand vision.
Harnessing your power of purpose and its relevancy to your brand success cannot be underestimated.
In order to create an effective brand, it must…
resonate, inspire and endure in the hearts and minds of your ideal customers and everyone involved in the entire business – from bottom to top and top to bottom, otherwise your brand will not be sustainable. It will simply fail to engage with your people and your market.
To ensure commercial success, there needs to be an overriding reason to invest – emotionally and logically – in your brand. It’s vital to give your desired customers a powerful reason (or reasons) to take notice and buy – metaphorically and literally – into your brand.
Your brand purpose must be harnessed to encapsulate and reflect the positive difference your brand can make in people’s lives. Yes, its big picture thinking which the hard-nosed cynics among you will dismiss, but think of it like your ‘war-cry’ that compels your people, customers and staff alike, to take action.
Purpose acts as a motivational tool for you, your employees, customers, stakeholders, in fact everyone associated with your brand. Like a laser-beam, purpose can focus energies, intent and mindset to achieve specific business goals. Think of it more as a strategic communication tool that ensures everybody who embodies the brand is on the same wavelength – on the same page and acting accordingly – aligned.
Once defined, your purpose gives your brand the power, focus and direction to create tangible consistent brand experiences and assets that reinforce the meaning and value that you want your brand to convey to your customers. The result is the the domino effect – customers trust is first earned, then there’s the creation of a community of like-minded people followed by increased sales and business performance. Customers then talk, communicate and amplify the experience and the value until ultimately increased market share and growth is experienced. To use a more natural analogy, the brand ‘seed’ you may have planted several months ago (or likely years in many cases) in your customers heads’ then germinates and flowers – with a strong purpose at the heart of the seed.
Without a purpose, however, your business will have no integrity, no relevance, no connectivity, and no meaning to your customers or yourself. You also have no powerful and compelling reason to get out of bed on those cold mornings!
Purpose becomes the connective tissue, glue or net-like structure that bonds and binds members of your tribe together.
Brands with a power of purpose reflect not only a higher quality and intent, they also perform better in the marketplace.
The moral of the tale? Brands with purpose have been proven to deliver meaning, value, preference and profit. That’s a recipe for business and brand success, but only if you have the right ingredients and only if you combine them in the right way.
Be purposeful.
Be profitable.
Be your brand.
—————————————————————————————————————————
We hope you learned something new, insightful or useful from this blog.
At The Brand Experts, we believe that perception is everything. Why people recommend you, why people know, like and trust you and why people buy you. This drives us to help professional business services build a ‘brand DNA’ for business growth. We do this through a series of brand workshops designed to help professionals realise what drives their ‘Why?’, identify their true identity, and what matters to them and their customers most. The ultimate reason? To make their difference in the world. Successful brands in the future care about customers, not branding. We believe that future is now. I’m passionate about creating brand stories & design assets that help businesses.
