By Jessica Wilkerson

People Are No Longer Buying Products or Services……they choose a company. With a plethora of product choices, it has become far too difficult and time-consuming to attempt to evaluate each offering. It is much easier now to determine if the company you’re buying from shares your values and is likely to provide a good experience. We’ve known for a long time that a brand is a heuristic for consumers – a short cut to limit the amount of thinking that is required to evaluate and compare products. But the American consumer has matured beyond using only brands as heuristics to using the company behind each brand as the heuristic.  Or perhaps the company brand is just taking a more prominent role, which would lead to the conclusion that the “brand” is not necessarily the brand, but an amalgam of what the brand stands for and what the company stands for.

This perspective on American consumption is evidenced in Millward Browns’ studies showing that brands with the greatest growth are those that are built on purpose and values, not product attributes.

Commonalities across purpose-driven organizations:

1.Have a charismatic leader who lives the purpose through symbolic action and positive reinforcement

2.Are surrounded by people who embody the purpose in their personal and professional lives

3.Have strong stakeholder advocacy by being a servant, protector, and inspiration

4.Use purpose as the prism for growth and decision-making

5.Earn profits in a way that is consistent with the purpose

At (r)evolution, we believe purpose is more fundamental than brand positioning. It is commonly seen and heard in communications, it guides decisions across the entire organization from operations to M&A to customer service to HR to communications. It is NOT the existing corporate strategy, vision or mission. It is NOT something new or the communications strategy du jour. It is an excavation and discovery of something that already exists. It has immediate credibility and power because it is an articulation of something everyone knows implicitly.

Importantly, the brand’s purpose is always a human truth – something that every person knows and understands. It articulates something unique and distinct about a company and brand’s role in the world and its reason for being. It is most evident in times when the organization must take a stand, like J&J did during the Tylenol crisis. Once the purpose is understood, it can be linked to the existing positioning to develop a comprehensive communications strategy/platform both internally and externally. Eventually, it can and should be used to guide the decisions of the entire organization. Understanding what your company’s purpose starts with a fundamental question, “If your company were gone tomorrow, what would the world lose?”

By Michael Hartley

Marketers have longed championed the cause of branding, especially in the B2C space, citing such benefits as product memorability, familiarity, brand loyalty, and lower product marketing costs. But beyond these quantifiable costs, brands are also a reflection of the company’s spirit, goals, and position in the marketplace. One useful tool in understanding a brand is to think of it in the context of a superhero.

The Importance of Origin

Origin stories explain three important elements of a superhero: mission, identity and powers. Consider the origin story of Batman. Eight-year-old Bruce Wayne, walking with his parents in an alley, runs away as muggers approach and subsequently witnesses the murder of his parents. His traumatic story serves as the backdrop for the creation of Batman. Bruce’s mission quickly becomes clear: to avenge his parents’ death. His identity—millionaire and owner of Wayne Enterprises—explains his ability keep his Batman alter-ego secret. And while Batman has no supernatural power, his Batsuit, Batmobile, and Batcave enable his fight against Gotham’s most evil villains.

In a brand, origin stories are just as important as they are for superheroes. They help the consumer understand how the brand came to be (its identity), what it stands for (its mission), and how it will change the world (its powers). Consider Facebook—a brand with an origin story so powerful it became a book and then a movie. Controversies and drama aside, most people know that college student Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook so that Harvard students could share photos. The Facebook identity was, and still is, one of fun, ease, and empowerment. While its mission has grown in scale, in principle it remains the same: to connect people and enable them to share personal information. Finally, Facebook’s power is that empowers users with the ability to expand their network. Users choose to join the network, choose what content they upload, and choose how they share that information. Facebook’s humble origin and simple mission resonate with consumers and have enabled its tremendous growth over the past 5 years.

Understanding your power and its emotional benefits

Superheroes rely on special powers or abilities to carry out their missions. For companies, identifying your power—at the highest level—can help pinpoint the emotional benefits you provide a customer that truly drive brand loyalty. Coca-Cola is one company that has embraced emotional branding and used it to drive preference. Advertisers love to tell the story of how Coca-Cola’s marketing department defined Santa Claus as we know him today: plump, jolly, and wearing a red suit. Thanks to magazine advertising beginning in 1931, Santa Claus became a de facto symbol of Coca-Cola. While not a superhero in the traditional sense, Santa Claus does have a power—a power that lies in his gift giving (a functional benefit) and the happiness that comes with it (emotional benefits). Coca-Cola has long known that their power isn’t making soda or acquiring sub-brands. Rather, Coca-Cola’s most recent marketing campaign has one simple message: open happiness. After 80 years of branding and marketing, the world’s number one came back to the power of its icon, Santa Claus, to drive differentiation.

How to differentiate your brand

Finally, thinking of your brand as a superhero can help you differentiate your company and understand it’s position in the marketplace. Is your company front-and-center, like Superman? Or does it remain behind the scenes until the customer puts up a Bat Symbol? Or maybe your company empowers the customer, like the ring gives power to the Green Lantern.  Understanding the personality of your brand can help you position your company in the marketplace to be differentiated from other brands.