Activating Brand Purpose | Inc.com

In Activate Brand Purpose, Scott Goodson and Chip Walker expose flaws in the prevailing thinking around purpose, and provide a new, deeply researched foundation and approach. It’s essential reading for leaders seeking to boost their ability to drive positive change in their companies and the world. A look at what’s inside: 

Higher purpose is the number one idea on the minds of top C-Suite leaders today, and for good reason. Not only can it ensure all stakeholders are on the same page, and help attract and engage both customers and employees, but it’s also great for the bottom line. For example, a 2018 report from EY found that purposeful companies outperform the market by 42 percent.

But C-Suite leaders are facing a major problem today, one we’ve observed over and over: Companies are good at defining their higher purpose, but terrible at activating it. Far too often purpose is relegated to a plaque above the CEO’s desk, and never goes any further. Or, worse, the “purpose” is transparently used as a marketing ploy, but never acted upon in any real way.

The result? According to a McKinsey study, while 82% of U.S. C-Suite leaders say purpose is important, only 42% say their company’s stated purpose has had a significant impact on their organization.

Our new book, Activate Brand Purpose, is a wake-up call for leaders who want to change employee mindsets and habits, transform company culture, and grow their businesses with more effective marketing.

There are many books out there about either the importance of purpose or how to define your higher purpose. But none focuses on the most challenging part of purpose: how to activate it inside and outside your company, and how to avoid its decay over time. Our book gets to the heart of how you can activate your purpose to change your employees and transform your company. It shows you proven ways to grow your business, your brand, and your market share. And it shows you how to measure and track purpose empirically.

Activate Brand Purpose is rigorously researched, supported by many years of work with companies around the world, and gives leaders seeking to activate purpose a clear path forward. Our deep understanding of how purpose is activated, combined with fascinating in-depth stories of companies that have successfully achieved this, provide solid insight into what purpose can do.  

In the book we examine the many barriers to effectively activating purpose and the many ways it can go wrong. For instance, poor purpose definition, organizational naysayers, and purpose washing are culprits we frequently encounter. We help you understand how to overcome these barriers and activate purpose through Movement Thinking, the antidote to a dormant purpose. 

Movement Thinking and Movement Marketing are inspired by the principles of societal movements. Born of more than 20 years of experience, Movement Thinking has been proven in over 100 cases we achieved at our company StrawberryFrog–the world’s first Movement company, focused on activating purpose. We introduced the marketing world to Movement Thinking more than 20 years ago with the launch of the Smart Car for Mercedes and Swatch. It was a global movement to reinvent the urban environment. We evolved Movement Thinking into an approach for leaders to engage employees with the goal of changing the culture of an organization, as well as employee habits and behaviors, quickly. 

The book looks at how we defined and then activated the purpose of Mahindra, one of the most powerful companies in India, with the Rise Movement, to drive an innovations culture within the organization and among their global employees. And during the height of the global pandemic, the book looks at how Northwell Health, one of the largest health services organizations in the United States, activated its purpose with a movement to engage both employees and people outside Northwell. 

It is easier to activate purpose inside a company with a movement than with a top-down mandate. In the book we look at what we are doing for Walmart, bringing “Live Better” to life by re-thinking employee benefits in an innovative way, by means of a movement.

As the purpose economy gains ever greater momentum coming out of Covid, Activate Brand Purpose shows readers how to transform company/brand purpose into meaningful action by sparking a company-wide cultural movement. It explains how to put purpose at the core of your strategy and activate it to all your stakeholders. It instructs readers on how to galvanize employees inside the company, how to change mindsets and employee habits quickly, and how to activate purpose with consumers to grow sales and attract new customers. It even shows new ways to use purpose to change the way companies are valued. 

By using Movement Thinking, you can galvanize people and they will respond, regardless of whether your purpose is lofty and socially conscious, or all business. This book includes  interviews with some of the world’s most admired business leaders who are employing Movement Thinking, and contains a clearly explained, proven framework that will make this happen.