"We want our brand to be like Warby Parker!"

Heard this one recently???

It used to be, “We want our brand to be like Apple!” (then Patagonia, Tesla and Toms…), now Warby Parker are in the mix. 

It's easy to scoff at this - particularly if you're working with a long standing, firmly for-profit business with no social mission baked into their business model. But here's a thought.  Every brand CAN be like Warby Parker.

Instead of dismissing comments like these, we should be helping clients understand how.

Before you start to tell me that this is the worst advice - that brands that try to create some sort of brand purpose that is inauthentic with their business practices are brands of the very WORST kind…

I get it.

I agree!

But there’s a different way to look at this. 

If we strip out all the terminology around brand purpose and social mission and we just look at what Warby Parker say about their brand, then we have a model that ANY brand...

I almost didn’t write this blog.  What hasn’t been said about brand purpose over the past decade?

But then I started reading that advice. And realised you might just want something clearer and simpler.

So here’s 4 takeaways that cut through a decade of musings on ‘purpose’, to help you understand what it means for the brand you are building.

1. Having a purpose benefits your business in a multitude of ways, so you do need one.

Defining a clear and compelling purpose has been linked in research to:

• 3x faster business growth than competitors
• Increased customer preference and loyalty
• Greater employee satisfaction and retention AND
• Improvement of business innovation and transformation efforts.  

It's an investment that packs a punch. 

Purpose is also critical as a means of connecting all of your marketing efforts.

Purpose is the great uniter. If your marketing efforts aren’t being developed with the overall purpose of the...