Rethinking brand purpose drives business change

An alignment of brand purpose can provide immense benefit to an organisation, an area that often needs rethinking by businesses.

Kate Phillips, VP global marketing at Criteria Corp, is currently undergoing a process of consolidating three operational brands into one, a process that required a new approach to the business’ brand purpose.

“[Consolidating the businesses] has given us the opportunity to really look at our brand purpose, and to be able to bring that together in such a way that it's taking the best of the best of the three brands,” Phillips says.

“The way we articulate that is through our brand narrative, the way we describe ourselves as an organisation, and how we go about communicating.”

When articulating a brand purpose, Phillips believes it is crucial to consider its relevance to all stakeholders in order to successfully align different parties to the company’s mission, galvanising these groups around a message that is specific and compelling.

“For me brand purpose has to live and breathe throughout the organisation and has to be what people understand and recognise you for,” she says.

“Each of your interactions needs to relay that, whether that's your marketing messages, whether that's your customer journeys, whether that's people's experience with your product or service, right down to their experience as an employee each day in your organisation.”

Stephen Becsi, CEO of aged care provider Apollo Care also recently defined his business’ core purpose. He described the alignment between several aspects of the business being key to deploying this strategy.

“There's real unity between purpose, behaviours, and the summation of behaviours, which is your culture and the business KPIs. You can't separate them they're actually one big marriage,” he says.

“If your advertising or marketing is not in alignment with what your purpose is, people begin to doubt. I think consumers are going to see through it if you haven't got that purpose correct, and advertising against what the real purpose is, people begin to question and you eventually get caught out.”

Brand purpose can guide the corporate culture and translate into key behaviours for employees through outlining what is acceptable and encouraged in the business.

“The brand purpose needs to mirror the organisational values and what's important to the organisation.”

“If those two things are in harmony, it enables people to have a framework of what is acceptable and encouraged behaviour and way of working right through to the way products are designed or the way sales activities occur. Any of those activities should support the brand, the purpose and the values of the organisation and vice versa.”

The video was produced by Josh Lundberg, Matthew Ryan and Tejas Bhat.