by Sense Worldwide

Purpose drivenbusiness-to-business brandsCreating them, and aligning an organisation around them

When your brand has a purpose, great things happen.

Purpose-driven branding: why it matters

What is your company’s place in the world? How does it resolve a universal human dilemma? Great brands have an answer to that question.

Old Spice helps young men navigate the seas of masculinity.

Dove helps women to escape the oppression of the beauty industry by finding their own beauty.

Nike believes that if you have a body, you’re an athlete.

Their teams work on more than products and services. They get out of the shower every morning to make a dent in the universe.

When your brand has a purpose, your consumer-facing promise will express that in communications. So will your internal communications. And it will inform every experience design help customers and staff to live the purpose every day. A purpose isn’t a marketing platitude. It’s a reason for showing up. It’s a cause. It’s a rallying cry.

It’s also a turbo-charged way to transform sales. Dove consistently grows 18% YoY. Old Spice’s This is the man campaign contributed to a 107% boost in sales.

From commodity supplier to partner. Purpose changes sales conversations, and client relationships.

Purpose-driven business-to-business brands

Great purpose-driven brands are built on an insight into the tensions and contradictions in its consumers’ lives, and an understanding of how that brand resolves the tension. Women want to look attractive, but are oppressed by unattainable images pedalled by the beauty industry. Dove reconciles this by finding the inner beauty in everybody. Business to business marketing can benefit from this thinking too. Our work lives are as contradictory as our home ones. I want to reduce my company’s carbon footprint, but I don’t want to travel economy. Manufacturers want to source raw materials from non-conflict zones. But they don’t want to pay a premium for that. IBM was a pioneer of purpose-driven B2B marketing with its ‘Smarter Planet’ repositioning. It transformed perceptions of the company from a trusted IT vendor to a consultant selling joined-up thinking, on a mission to ensure that our world becomes more intelligent, and serves us better.

Our own work with business to business clients like DS Smith has convinced us of the power of purpose. It transforms sales conversations from price-based ‘beat up the vendor’ sessions to high-level strategy partner discussions. It turns senior managers into industry thought leaders. Deliotte recently published a survey of fast-tracked millenials in business. These leaders of the future said that the most important role of business was to improve society. To attract that kind of talent, and to escape commodification, more and more B2B clients will be looking for their purpose.

Brands find their purpose in successfully resolving a real tension or conflict in their customers’ lives.

We help brands find their purpose: this is how

Consumertension

Our brandat its best

Brand Purpose

Purpose-driven messaging and experience design for Europe’s largest secondary packaging company.

Case study: DS Smith

DS Smith had never marketed its thinking before, only its products. Sense Worldwide was briefed to help it redefine itself as a strategic partner as opposed to a commodity vendor.

We conducted interviews with customers ranging from junior buyers to the CEO of a major packaged goods company. We also did an in-depth audit of their capabilities. We identified a universal tension among clients. They felt pressure from above to do more: innovate faster, run global operations, raise margins. But they were having to do it with less: less resource, less expertise, less time.

Once this was understood, their literally thousands of products and hundreds of brands were sorted into a single experience map in one workshop by a group of 25 stakeholders. That’s the power of purpose.

Identifying DS Smith’s brand purpose was the springboard for a wholesale redesign of the customer experience, from product and feature hierarchy to service design and messaging.

DS Smith are the

masters of minimalism

ConsumerI need to do more with less

The powerof less

We’re going to take a big leap. Let’s make sure we’re all facing the same way.

Managing multiple stakeholders

A purpose can’t be imposed on a company. From the coalface to the boardroom, it will be rejected if employees don’t recognise themselves in it, or the world view it represents.

A purpose can’t be invented. It has to be co-created.

The best brand purposes come out of extensive, in-depth discussions with key people across a company, and equally rigorous sessions with its customers. Salespeople often have a one-dimensional view of their clients. Every ad agency account person believes their client CMO spends all day worrying about the quality of their advertising. If only they knew the truth.

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Regence was challenged with a market that was changing from B2B to direct-to-consumer. It had a sales-driven culture with little incentive to change ahead of legislation.

Its senior management team decided to become a consumer-focused company. Sense Worldwide conducted co-creation sessions, bringing together senior stakeholders with a wide variety of Americans.

It quickly became apparent that Americans didn’t see health or wellness as a challenge, so much as their whole quality of life. We worked with the management team to produce a new proposition as a Quality of Life Services company - one facet of which would be health and wellbeing.

This led to a name change, an M&A plan, technology platform development and a completely new consumer proposition well ahead of its rivals.

Mark Ganz, CEO of Regence BCBS, presents its new purpose:Quality of Life initiatives. These included buying a chain of gyms and building a successful online wellness programme.

Regence BCBS from price-driven sales to demand-driven consumer champion.

Case Study: Regence BCBS

Regence has the power to

enhance every day of every

American’s life.

I live in the wealthiest nation on Earth, but my quality of life is very poor.

Quality of Life Services Company Services

When worlds collide, transformation happens.

Purpose workshops: how to run one

This is where we collide our understanding of the business environment with our understanding of the customer. Here’s our top tips for running a successful purpose workshop:

•Bring together internal stakeholders from across the organisation•Build empathy. Construct personas for your key customers. •Describe their lives and jobs fully, not simply in the moment where we try to

sell them something. •Next think about their next personal goal, the barriers that stop them from

getting there.•Now think about their ultimate goal. What’s Nirvana?•What stops them from getting there?

Now you have some tensions. Time for lunch.

Next, bring out your findings about what your company does at its best

How does it resolve the tensions?

Don’t refine. Don’t stop at one.

Generate as many tensions, and resolutions as you can.

Step back. Breathe. Discuss. Vote.

Got one? Well done.