A lot has been said about purpose-driven branding the past several years, and for good reason. Roy Spence’s book “It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For” said it best, “Without a purpose that improves peoples’ lives…organizations will struggle.”
Companies like Southwest Airlines and Motorola Solutions have thrived by identifying a purpose— the difference it makes in the world— and using that purpose at the heart of its communications.
Everyone has a purpose, but the key is to unlock what that purpose is all about. And when it comes to strategically creating and distributing content that helps your brand, purposeful content needs to be top of mind.
We’ve helped organizations, both big and small, develop their company’s purpose (or at the least their purpose for developing and sharing content) with tremendous success. Here are a few examples of how companies can start thinking about purpose and how it can impact and benefit their brands.
Improving Healthcare with Coding
For home healthcare coding startup, Daymarck, the initial messaging was all about helping with the mundane task of coding medical procedures. But as we dug in, we discovered a higher purpose for this company – they were passionate about improving healthcare in this country – one code at a time. With better coding, you have better home healthcare. With better home healthcare, pressure on our massive hospital systems and costs decline. Now that’s quite a purpose. And great content flowed.
Helping Independent Truckers Make a Living
When a division of trucking giant C.R. England spun off a division that helped independent truckers with accounting, no one had a higher-level purpose in mind. But through collaborative sessions with its marketing and leadership teams, it was clear what this division’s purpose was all about – to make the life of an independent trucker more fulfilling. Once that was firmly established, brand communications and content development became easy and more fulfilling for us too!
Coworking and Achieving Work-Life Balance
When a new suburban office sharing concept space opened up north of Chicago, CoWorkers, the messaging could have easily been focused on shared, cheap office space. But at the root of the establishment of this business was that every person should be more fulfilled with their work-life balance. Therein lies the purpose of creating another place to work to improve your balance – whatever that balance may be. And the core of the brand was established and content is created and shared to communicate that purpose.
Senior Living Empowerment
Making a decision to move to a senior living community, or being part of the decision-making process, can be difficult. When a national senior living organization rebranded, they did so with the purpose to be the place where any employee would recommend their mother live. From a content marketing perspective, we turned that thinking into developing and sharing content that empowers decision makers to make confident decisions. Whether you are moving a loved one into a community, or doing research for yourself, the content shared is information the recipient will find valuable and empowering in order to take the next step.
Gift Cards with a Purpose
When the leading distributor of branded gift cards starting talking about amping up its branding efforts, a purpose was easy to find. What are gift cards used for? To say thank you, a job well done, we appreciate you. We started communicating how gift cards and programs help drive positive behaviors through rewards that really matter in recipients’ lives. And that purpose was infinitely more impactful than “we sell gift cards.”
Purpose doesn’t just make you feel good, it’s good for business too. Companies driven by purpose and values outperform the general market 15-to-1 and outperform comparison companies 6-to-1. (Built to Last)
It’s all about the purpose. What is yours?
For other purpose-driven branding examples, visit tellyourstoryinc.com or contact me at grafeedie@tellyourstoryinc.com or 847.921.3925.
