There are few things worse than looking for inspiration from a rich white bloke who sits on his private island and tells the rest of us how to behave. But, Richard Branson reckons that:
The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.
Now that is, on one level, utter nonsense. The brands that thrive will be the ones who make a profit. That is precisely the mechanic that will ensure their longevity. That’s capitalism. A system that has served Branson pretty well.
But brand purpose, sincerely held, is a huge part of a successful company’s ethos, its unity and its point of difference. The issue becomes whether that ‘purpose’ behind a company drives the profit or is a way of nudging past the guilt of making money hand over fist.
It’s easy to be cynical about brand values and it’s healthy to do so. As a consumer you can peer into a café talking earnestly about its sustainability credentials and then wonder where those smashed avocados were flown in from. You can look at the ‘community initiatives’ from that coffee chain and wonder if we’d need them so much if they paid their taxes in the first place. See those examples of ‘positioning’ and call them out whenever you can. Just don’t harangue the badly-paid baristas - it’s not their fault…
But, let’s assume you are in a position of authority in your organisation, a language school for example. You can make your organisation mean something.
The chances are that you have some things you are passionate about. Things that transcend the profit motive. Yes, you want to make a good living and you want those around you to do the same, but not at the cost of others - you might want to preserve the planet you live on; to give opportunities to those usually blocked from them; to give cats a life of intense luxury. Whatever it is, it should be moved from your sideline (‘we’ll do a cake sale once a year’) to something central (‘this is what we are’).
That centrality is sometimes difficult to pin down. It moves from ‘the boss quite likes Greenpeace’ to ‘sustainability is at the heart of everything we do’. Making that move involves more than just a whimsical choice from the CEO. It needs to be something the whole team buy into and they need to understand the process that gets you there.
While gurus should be treated with as much suspicion as island-dwelling tycoons, the process that Simon Sinek outlined is a useful thread for those brand value conversations. To take the environment as a possible key driver for your company:
Why you exist: It might, for example, be to provide education for overseas students with sustainability at the core of all that you do.
What you aim to achieve: To be the world’s most sustainable language teaching school.
How you deliver it: What measures do you put in place to do that? It might be remote teaching, off-setting student travel or finding innovative ways to deliver teaching materials.
How you explain it: Articulating your brand values and how that impacts on how your organisation behaves.
Make clear the differentiation: How this makes you the company of choice for your consumers.
It’s that last point that opens you up to cynicism. The thought that this is a marketing ploy and getting extra customers/students is the reason why you’re adopting this in the first place. That’s why you need to think this through as a team - make sure that everyone internally buys into it, everyone believes in it and everyone will remain faithful to those values. That’s the only way you’ll prove you mean it to those looking at your organisation for the first time.
The benefit is that those values will make your organisation stand out - and may be the difference that makes the smaller players stand out from the bigger chains. Connecting your work to a higher set of values can make people choose your school over others, especially with young students driven by a number of social issues.
The key to that is honesty.
That means delivering on values that are within your power to do so. Don’t claim you’ll solve the climate crisis (assuming that you can’t) but at least demonstrate how you’ll be carbon neutral (or even positive). Which means measurement, and transparency. A kind of proactive honesty where you demonstrate your commitment without being asked.
It also means being open with your team and how they deliver on the corporate commitments. There’s a limit to what you can expect outside of work hours but a team ethic will mean that employees will want to support the wider ambitions (and those who don’t will drift away).
Sometimes there will be challenges to your values - ‘Can you fly 200 people to Beijing to teach our all-male riot squad how to make threats to pro-democracy protestors in multiple languages?’
If the answer is yes then, whatever the price, you’ve probably just buggered up your brand values - and the respect of your team and your existing customers. You can continue saying ‘but have you seen how much they offered?’ all your way to the exit door.
The real test of brand values is when they have the potential to impact revenues. If you’ve thought it through (with that big team meeting) then profit and values should rarely be in conflict, but the sincerity of your cause can be tested.
Your values are what you do, not what you say. They are also why people choose you.
Further reading
