8.

Purposeful

Creating a Deeper Connection to the Brand beyond the Product

Creating contextual experiences at the highest level depends on getting clear on your brand’s reason for being. Purposeful, the fifth and final element in the context framework, helps you achieve that clarity by shifting the focus of your brand experience beyond the product or service itself to a larger connection with your customer. Where authenticity is how well you are able to deliver against an expectation, purpose is the storyline behind the execution, the guiding force, the overarching theme. It is the heart of marketing.

Once you’ve articulated your brand’s higher purpose, it becomes much easier to find natural ways to share that purpose with audiences at any moment, within any experience. What’s more, you’ll be able to build experiences that far exceed the limitations of what you sell. That’s important, because there are only so many moments where your product belongs in a person’s day, week, or month. You’ll have to operate on a higher ground if you hope to become a greater part of your customers’ lives.

Of course, those reasons for centering your brand around a higher purpose aren’t radically new. Brands have been aligning with purposeful efforts for decades. Patagonia was one of the first to do so on a large scale, beginning in the 1970s. So while most marketers would agree that identifying with a purpose is a powerful differentiator, why don’t more companies do it? Because it isn’t easy to identify a purpose, much less to reach agreement on how to articulate it—and that leaves many brands struggling.

In 2017, Salesforce researched this very topic and found three main reasons brands had not begun any purposeful efforts:1

  1. We don’t want to risk putting out a message that polarizes our audience.
  2. We are unsure how to connect our purpose to our marketing strategy.
  3. We have insufficient executive buy-in on the articulation of our purpose.

I believe the reason behind the first issue is that businesses and their marketing teams mistake purpose for “social purpose.” If the number-one reason is fear of polarizing their audience, then it makes sense that brands are looking mainly at social issues, which can be controversial.

But a brand’s purpose can best be found within its own environment. All it takes is enlarging the view of what your brand’s larger function in the world is and committing to your role in supporting it. Such commitment is key—purpose can’t be faked or merely given lip service. But here’s the best part: even putting marketing aside for a moment, when your company identifies and commits to a higher purpose, this action has an enormously positive effect on your people and your internal culture. As most everyone knows, branding starts internally.

Consider today’s companies that have clearly articulated their purpose in alignment with their brand:

Each of those companies elevated its thinking beyond the product or service itself to a shared connection with its market—the “market” being all stakeholders including partners, the community, and customers. Tesla isn’t trying to make the best car; rather, it seeks a higher plateau of sustainability. Always isn’t focused on feminine hygiene—it’s focused on women’s deeper emotions. The focus of those brands extends the company and its role beyond just being a producer to becoming a valued community member. That allows them more access to their market and deeper connections with their customers, creating a stronger brand. Being clear on your purpose is relatively simple; living it is the tricky part. How your brand executes against your purpose is the key to reaching a higher level of context in all of your brand engagements, from mass campaigns to highly personal, human-to-human interactions.

Like most of the other elements of context, purposeful lies on a continuum from less to more contextual.

The Purposeful Continuum

All levels of the continuum presented in the web graphic are equally purposeful and good, but not all achieve the same results (see figure 8-1). Brands must realize the differences in various types of purpose, their limitations, and effects.

At the lowest point of the purposeful line sits corporate social responsibility (CSR). Brands like TOMS footwear and Patagonia use CSR as a brand-defining quality that generally works as a backdrop to all of their efforts. At the more contextual end, brands like Sambazon, a natural food and beverage company, invite their audiences to cocreate a brand experience—all in the name of a specific purpose shared between the company and customers.

FIGURE 8-1

The context framework (purposeful)

Corporate Social Responsibility

CSR is a body of communication that showcases a company’s or brand’s social consciousness. The CSR movement traces its roots back to 1953, with Howard R. Bowen’s book Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, which defined CSR as follows: “… the obligation of businesses to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of society.”2 Bowen and his many followers in the decades thereafter provided the theoretical grounds for companies to act more in line with the values of society, beyond just the value of profit.

Today brands express CSR in a variety of ways. They create reports to shareholders proving the company’s commitment to lowering its carbon footprint. They donate a percentage of their profits to charities, or they publish blogs about staff volunteer days with causes like Habitat for Humanity. CSR has become increasingly common over the past decade, to the point that it is something consumers expect from companies large and small.

Using altruistic acts as a way to break through the noise is a good start, but it’s limited in the context it can create, for a few reasons. First, these efforts fit squarely within the dynamics of the limited era, in which messages ruled the day and flowed in one direction. If you wanted to impress your audience, all you had to say was “Hey, we are donating 10% of every purchase you make to save the [insert your cause].” But as discussed earlier in this book, simply telling your audience something isn’t effective anymore. They’re not listening. Even if we’re now messaging about something other than our products, we’re still broadcasting. Second, most CSR causes fall low on the context spectrum because they’re only tangentially related to the product or service. So while CSR is obviously a good thing for organizations to engage in, it won’t be contextual—or effective—unless marketers find ways to interact with the brand’s target consumers on the issue.

Branded Actions

More purposeful than CSR are branded actions—efforts to share a core purpose related to the brand, but without focusing on the product itself. Always, which makes feminine hygiene products, provides an outstanding example. For a number of years, Always had articulated its purpose as “giving women confidence,” even using the phrase in its advertising. When it decided to look for new ways to align its purpose with its audience, Always started by conducting market research. This research was not a simple survey asking questions about confidence but deeper academic research found in journals of psychology and other sources—all in an effort to better understand how women’s confidence changes over time.

The research showed that women’s self-confidence drops the most between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four.3 It also showed that girls’ self-esteem drops twice as much as boys’ during puberty. The worst part was that the data showed that women never regain their prepubescent level of self-esteem. If giving women confidence was its purpose, then Always knew it had to address the issues affecting women during those crucial years of their lives. According to the research, the main issue affecting girls’ self-esteem was society’s gender stereotype of associating power and strength with men and boys only. Messages that boys should not do things “like a girl” reinforced the stereotype that being like a girl made them powerless. The associated message, of course, was that girls weren’t powerful or strong.

Company leaders at Always realized that to fulfill its purpose of giving women confidence, Always would need to take action to bust the stereotype and change what “like a girl” means. It decided to conduct an experiment in which young girls (prepubescent) and grown women in separate interviews were asked to do the same task. The resulting three-minute short film conveys a startling message, cutting back and forth between the girls and the grown women. When asked, for example, to “throw like a girl,” the girls—who hadn’t yet absorbed societal stereotypes—did a windup and delivered a pitch just like any professional ballplayer would. But the grown women made an awkward motion as if they’d never thrown a ball before. Similarly, when asked to “run like a girl,” the young girls sprinted like Florence Griffith Joyner. But the grown women had absorbed all too well what was being asked by the instruction to “run like a girl”—they flailed their legs helplessly, acting out the stereotype. The stark contrast between the girls’ perception and the grown women’s perception of what it means to be “like a girl” broke through to huge audiences, which not only created profit for Always but also contributed to an important conversation about this issue.

The video was watched more than ninety million times, and the effort generated more than 177,000 #LikeAGirl tweets in the first three months. Among Always’s target market, intent-to-purchase grew more than 50 percent. Most impressive was a study conducted after the video’s release showing that almost 70 percent of women and 60 percent of men said “the video changed my perception of the phrase ‘like a girl.’”

Even though this purpose-driven video was a mass campaign, the enormous number of shares under the hashtag #LikeAGirl proves that many people encountered Always through a contextual experience on social networks, and the force that produced that context marketing was clearly the brand’s purpose and not its product. Remember that Always is a feminine hygiene product, so the fact that 60 percent of men claimed that the video changed their perception offers more evidence that this campaign worked largely through context, when women showed it to the men in their lives: the fathers of their daughters, their sons, uncles, and grandfathers.

Coaction

It’s important to note that marketing is moving away from large, expensive campaigns like the Always video. Such mass, one-to-many campaigns will continue, but they will need to be connected to related contextual brand experiences. The good news is that there are many other tactics for sharing your purpose with your audience, where you aren’t merely projecting messages but working with consumers in their own context. Perhaps the most effective way is through coaction.

Sambazon, which makes Acai berry–based food and beverages such as smoothies offers an award-winning4 example of how a brand can focus on a shared purpose and cocreate actions with individuals without directly marketing its product. In May 2018, Sambazon asked its audience to help save thirty endangered species in thirty days by taking an individual action: people were asked to dye their hair purple and share a photo of their purple locks on social media with the tag #purplefortheplanet. For each person who did it, Sambazon would buy five acres of rainforest. Research into conservation science reveals that species go extinct largely because of habitat loss, and the majority of species diversification occurs in rainforests. Thus every 538 acres of rainforest preserved would actually save another species. For every one hundred people who participated, the effort could save one species, which, doing the math, means three thousand people would need to make the pledge in order to save thirty species. Plus, Acai berries grow in the rainforest, so Sambazon’s purpose grew naturally out of its brand while also fulfilling a social purpose (a lesson in how your purpose can do both).

The program was a partnership between Sambazon and the Rainforest Trust’s Save-an-Acre Program, which handled the actual purchase and protection of the forest. In addition to the marketing campaign, celebrity influencers like Olympic gold-medal gymnast Jordy Wieber (2012, United States) helped spread the word. The campaign was a huge success, with more than five thousand people taking part on Instagram alone. In the end, Sambazon, the Rainforest Trust, and thousands of individual people ended up saving more than thirty species of life from going extinct on our planet.

So how does saving endangered species help Sambazon? In several ways. First, it was able to work with its audience to accomplish a shared goal. Both the brand and plenty of consumers want to do good things for the planet, and here was one they could do together, strengthening the bond between the brand and its audience. Second, Sambazon leveraged its audience—meaningfully—to reach others outside its network in a highly contextual way.

How did it do it? The more than five thousand posts on Instagram, all mentioning Sambazon, weren’t just posts; they were pictures of people with purple hair—a fairly drastic action to take—shared with thousands of their personal connections. This is social media gold, as dyeing your hair purple is sure to spur a comment or retweet from family and friends, who are more likely than a random viewer to share similar values. When those newly exposed to Sambazon through #purplefortheplanet next encountered the brand—in a store or when shopping online—they would have a positive image and a deeper connection to the brand already built in. This phenomenon is known as “digital word of mouth,” and it is highly contextual. This is also the kind of result traditional mass campaigns spend a small fortune on to achieve. But Sambazon shows us how it’s done in the infinite era: by working directly with individuals to accomplish a purposeful goal (focused on a healthier planet, not Sambazon’s own product), and by exposing its brand to a highly targeted group of likely customers in a very contextual way.

Cotopaxi, the adventure clothing brand, also cocreates actions with individuals based on a shared purpose. The company was cofounded by Stephan Jacob, who wanted to merge his love of travel (particularly in South America—the brand is named after Cotopaxi, an Ecuadorean national park) with a poverty-fighting business model. Each customer’s purchase would help provide a better life to people living in one of the world’s poorest regions. But Jacob went beyond the social purpose of his company to fulfill the purpose of his apparel, which he says “represents the spirit of adventure, optimism, and determination” that he’d experienced during his time in Ecuador. Instead of simply broadcasting that message, Jacob brought that spirit to the cities where Cotopaxi customers and fans live by creating Questival events.

For example, people participating in the Questival 24 Adventure Races complete tasks in different categories, such as fitness, camping, service, and teamwork. One might craft a canoe out of cardboard and float a teammate in it for five seconds, while another person might donate a box of gently used clothing—or donate blood while wearing Dracula teeth. Each task has points associated with it, and at the end, points are tallied and the winners receive prizes. Questival events have become so beloved by Cotopaxi customers and fans that the list of participating cities in 2018 grew to more than fifty in the United States and Canada. People pay to attend, and they all share their adventures on social media using hashtags that expose others to Cotopaxi in a highly contextual way.

That same idea of cocreating actions that fulfill a deeper shared purpose works in all types of businesses, not just consumer goods and retail. At Salesforce, our purpose is to be a “platform for change,” which means not only helping businesses succeed but also being a catalyst for improving the lives of others. To that end, its pioneering 1-1-1 corporate philanthropy model dedicates 1 percent of time, 1 percent of product, and 1 percent of our equity to help nonprofits achieve their missions. As a result, Salesforce employees have logged nearly five million volunteer hours throughout the world, contributed technology to power more than forty-five thousand nonprofit and higher education institutions, and provided more than $300 million in grants.

Salesforce has also translated that purpose to promote professional career growth worldwide through its Trailhead program, the education platform described earlier in this book. The results have been outstanding—for both Salesforce and our users. Trailhead has naturally drawn together its own community of professionals who are intensely focused on career growth and better business outcomes. To date, that Trailhead community has more than 1.8 million learners. Together they’ve completed more than fifteen million badges (certificates of completion for a course), sparking comments like this one from Gaurav Kheterpal, vice president of mobility and tech evangelism at Metacube: “I have a strong career, but more than that, I have become a member of a global tribe. This sense of belonging is something I never would have expected from a technology company.”5

Digging into the data, Salesforce’s customers who have joined Trailhead to improve their skills are more likely to advance their careers. In fact, one-fourth of those using Trailhead found a new job. This engagement with the brand on their shared purpose of crafting more meaningful and successful careers creates a deep loyalty in the audience and stronger bottom lines for both Salesforce and its customers. And the company did that not simply by broadcasting that it “supports career growth” but also by taking specific actions with its audience, using the highest levels of context to create exceptional outcomes.

Now that you understand purposeful, our tour of the elements of the context framework is complete. It is up to you to put it into practice. To do so, I suggest keeping the image of the framework on your table, desk, or conference room wall and look at it as you begin to craft your plans. Take each idea and map it on the framework, then ask yourself, can I do better? To create a better experience, simply move farther out along any one of the five elements. But the framework is also a diagnostic tool. Didn’t receive the results you wanted? Plot the experience, and you’ll see where it can be improved. This is how the framework functions as your guide to greater context in any moment.

Another powerful benefit of the framework is its ability to train your thinking when it comes to experiences. You’ll begin to see experiences as connected moments rather than single events. For example, if the brand experience you created was lacking permission, you’ll now begin to look at preceding moments to see where you can gain that permission, ensuring greater success in the future.

With the framework covered, you should have a solid idea of what makes a contextual experience and how they compound and multiply. But those are only the beginning steps of what it takes to transition to the context marketing model. Next we need to look at how we connect these experiences across an ever-expanding customer journey and leverage them to create motivation—driving the demand we seek.

In part three, we’ll dig into the tactical details of executing the context marketing model—and transform your company into a contextual organization, starting with a look at how to transition your idea of marketing from campaigns to ever-flowing journeys, and all that it entails.