Purpose means that the company goes beyond profit and power: Scott Goodson

A big advocate of a brand or company being purpose-driven, the author of Activate Brand Purpose and CEO of StrawberryFrog Scott Goodson, in his special address at the Pitch CMO Summit 2021 said that activating brand purpose helps leaders to move from woke to warriors. However, he identified that the bigger challenge lies in activating that purpose.

"I want to talk about a bigger challenge that exists which is how do you figure out your purpose and what do you do with it. Covid is teaching us that purpose means a lot and companies that are successful in activating their purpose are thriving in this difficult time. We have seen here in the US that companies that had a purpose activated during Covid are actually doing significantly better than the ones that didn't," Goodson said during his special address at the Pitch CMO Summit 2021.

Goodson noted that there has been a lot of talk among organisations about finding purpose because consumers are buying products that have a strong purpose. "We just did a study with 17,500 consumers and 87% of them said they will buy brands that have purpose and 2/3rd of those consumers said that they will not buy brands that don't align with their value," he stated.

The millennials are more aligned with the idea of purpose-driven brands than the Gen-X. However, the idea of purpose has taken root among all age groups.

Covid-19, according to Goodson, has impacted human beings mentally, physically, and financially. Employees, in general, and working mothers, in particular, have borne the brunt of the pandemic. "Purpose will help leaders inspire and galvanise their employees and put them at ease. It will also help them deal with other issues as well,"

As a subject, Goodson discovered purpose way back in the 1990s while working in Sweden as Swedish customers started demanding more from the companies and brands. He understood the true meaning of purpose after reading an article by Jim Collins in Harvard Business Review. "That was the first article that woke me up to what purpose meant. It basically said that we need to find meaning beyond profit and power," he noted.

Purpose, he said, has a higher meaning that this company or brand exists beyond profit and power. There are many layers of purpose like social activism, employee advocacy, community & philanthropy, and product morality. Goodson along with Chip Walker wrote Activate Brand Purpose in the middle of the pandemic on how to harness the power of purpose.

According to Goodson, the toothless purpose is giving a bad name to purpose. "Fast forward five years everyone is talking about purpose but very few people are doing things with it. The purpose is a deep philosophical idea. How do you take a purpose that's a philosophical idea and turn it into a tool to transform your company or how do you use it as a tool to grow your market share. It's not easily done," he contended.

He also bemoaned the fact that a lot of CMOs don't do a good job of training brand managers to take a purpose and use that in order to drive sales. "It's only when you stand back and apply purpose by thinking about the product in relation to your customers that is sort of a bigger interaction between your organisation and the consumer. That is when you start to see the power of what purpose represents," he stated.

Goodson feels that activating purpose has two benefits. It will increase people's willingness to buy a company's products and it will increase the willingness among professionals to work for a company. He also spoke about StrawberryFrog's purpose as an agency. "Strawberry Frog's purpose is creativity for good, to create good work, good impacts for clients and teammates and good in society," he informed.

In order to back up the idea of purpose with empirical data, StrawberryFrog has come up with a research report. "In 2019, we realised that purpose was a bit esoterical and we wanted it to be a bit empirical so we launched the world's first empirical study of purpose brands," he stated.

He also spoke about the work done by StrawberryFrog for Indian business conglomerate Mahindra Group. The company had tapped StrawberryFrog to design brand-fueled Movement Marketing. Talking about the practical challenges faced by brands in activating a purpose, Goodson said, "Mahindra had tried to develop a master brand strategy but the problem is they have got a confederation of companies from agriculture to automotive so it is difficult to bring them all together. But if you focus on an idea that is relevant in culture, an idea that is more meaningful then you can supersede that and unite a strong independent confederation which is what we do with Rise," he elaborated.

Fielding questions from Dr. Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld and exchange4media Group, Goodson said that the pandemic has compelled leaders to look at purpose with a fresh approach. "Covid has changed the way in which business leaders are thinking, behaving, and acting. Those companies that have activation strategies for purpose are going to thrive. I call it purpose economy. We are coming out of covid and we are living in a purpose economy now," he said.

In response to a question about the competition between new-age firms and traditional companies, Goodson noted, "Every time someone comes up with a better idea everyone starts to run faster. This is an evolution of a saga that has been going on for centuries. The new-age companies are disruptive, they have new channels, they are growing very quickly and traditional companies are scratching their heads and saying what are they going to do now. Large companies are acquiring these new-age companies but they also trying to reinvent their existing brands and that's where they spend a majority of their time."