Building with Purpose
Belonging is everything. In a world where each of our lives is an attempt to discover our own “why,” nothing is more powerful than occupying common ground with – and putting a dent in the universe alongside – a community of people that shares our interests, passions, and convictions. From Pinterest to Peloton, from Honda to Harley, and from Dunkin’ to Disney, the brands that matter most in our lives are the ones whose clear sense of purpose and raison d'etre is abundantly clear, relentlessly relevant, and wildly resonant.
But it’s not about gravitating to brands just because they have a purpose – it’s about being engaged in communities, as a customer, an employee, or both – where that sense of purpose is shared, celebrated, and amplified. The great brand leaders I know have had outsize impact at the times of their careers when their organization’s purpose dovetailed naturally and beautifully with their own “why.” In today’s newsletter, I toast a few purpose-driven leaders and brands, and share their stories with you.. Enjoy!
A Thought
“Our brand is not just about renting a product. It’s about making a woman’s life more efficient, making them feel empowered, and recognizing that they are trailblazers and entrepreneurs that are constantly hacking the system and staying one step ahead of the game.”
A Conversation
I have a deep admiration for the way that Atlassian CMO Robert Chatwani has blended bravery, creativity, and empathy to create impact by building inspiring, important things for the world. He and I talked on the Breakthrough Builders podcast about how his experiences with friends, family, and teams led him to discover his purpose, and about how he was willing to say “no” at a particular point in his career because there was a stronger “yes” calling to him. He also talks about the future of Marketing, the marketing organization, and how the role of the CMO will change over the next 5-10 years.
Check out the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the web.
A Reflection
By my mid-20s, I had a sense that the only constant was change, and that I was going to have to either embrace and thrive on it or be encumbered and weakened by it. So I gave notice at my job and headed west. While I felt like I was saying goodbye to the life I knew, I felt I was learning to live, because life is change and change is life. It was time to do more to discover and understand my purpose.
Full essay here.
A Collection
I sat down recently with Steve Pappas to share my view on building brands with purpose on his Science of CX Podcast. I spoke about how to build and grow a brand based on an authentic purpose, the importance of emotional connections, and why employees are actually the most important stakeholders in purpose-based brand building. 🎤
This piece from Prophet leaders Colette Lelchuck and Marisa Mulvihill is an optimistic perspective on thinking big with respect to brand purpose. “At Prophet,” the authors write, “we believe brands need, at their core, the shared human values that many global societies are striving toward in the 21st century: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility.” Very powerful and important. 🤟🏾🤟🏾
In this episode from Season Three of Qualtrics’ Master Sessions, I shared stories of companies like Starbucks, Nike, and Maxar Technologies who’ve successfully defined and lived by their brand purpose - and I laid out a roadmap for how all business leaders and brand builders can create and articulate their own. 🗺️
A new analysis from comms agency Porter Novelli indicates the primordial importance of communicating brand purpose. Subjects in this study turned out to judge brands based on Danny Kahneman’s “system one” thinking - automatic, intuitive, and unconscious - rather than the more analytical “system two” thinking. 🧠
The pandemic taught or reminded many of us that there’s a better way to work, and that we should depend only on our jobs to discover and create what we value. I interpreted this recent opinion piece in the New York Times from Jonathan Malesic as a suggestion that brands are not here to impart us with purpose - they are here to serve us, sell to us, employ us, and be part of our lives, to the extent that their purpose resonates with our own. 🙏🏾🙏🏾