A good purpose statement isn’t just something painted on your office wall that sounds nice when you read it.  It’s a critical element in the big picture of running a company that attracts dedicated clients and talented employees.  Creating consensus among a leadership team on what exactly their purpose is can be challenging, but it’s absolutely critical if they wish to gain the advantages that purpose-centered companies enjoy.  

Fortunately, there are clear criteria that purpose statements can be measured on.  As you and your team work to craft your purpose statement, use these criteria to rate the statement drafts that the team creates.  Rate the drafts 1-5 points for each criteria.  Combine the best elements from top scoring drafts to form your final purpose statement.  

Keep in mind, the goal is not to make everyone 100% happy.  Disagreement is a sign that you have a valuable diversity of thought in your leadership team.  The goal is to reach the highest level of consensus.  This scoring rubric helps to reduce the subjectivity of the process and provides a basis for reaching an outcome that everyone can agree on.  

Once you have your statement completed, ask each leader to speak to what it means to them personally and what actions they can take with their teams to help the company achieve its purpose.  

Value-Based

Speaks to the WHY – what we value and believe in.

Instructional

Can be used as a north star to guide thought and action.

Appealing

Well crafted and sounds good.

Aspirational

Relates to a desirable future state.

Unique

Points to what we are uniquely great at.

Achievable

Measurable and within the bounds of what the organization can accomplish.

Inspiring

Creates an emotional impact.

Shared

Reflects the common vision of the leadership team.

Financial

Promotes Profitability.  Guides investment.

Brand Power

Embodies our competitiveness & staying power.

People

Inspires our staff.  Attracts best talent.

Innovation

Leads the pack.  Embraces creativity.

Stakeholders

Builds loyalty with vendors, customers, investors, staff.

Positive Impact

Supports social & environmental well-being.

Governance

Guides management decisions & priorities.

Purpose Statement Scorting Matrix

With time and focus, any individual, any business, can significantly level up their creativity, a critical capability for success in the 2020s.

We’ve posted dozens of tips and tricks on how to do that (check out scrappyafsolutions.com/strategies-for-building-creativity/), but this post is about identifying which of the 9 intelligences are your strengths and which are weaknesses.

Knowing this can help you hone in on your underdeveloped areas in order to round out your creative capacities. The more areas of your brain you strengthen, the more capable your brain becomes in making new connections – the key to exceptional levels of creativity.

Take an honest assessment of yourself and stay tuned for exercises to help you with your specific problem areas.

We get the word brand from the ancient North Germanic language Ole Norse.  Originally, brand referred to a piece of burning wood. Then late Middle English, brought a new definition: “to mark permanently with a hot iron.” It wasn’t until the 1600s that brand evolved again to mean a mark of ownership made by branding – think Dutch East India Trading Company. 

Putting a unique mark or logo on a business’ property serves many practical purposes, but these days branding has evolved into so much more. You may have nailed your logo and slogan, but depending on the industry you are in, you may have dozens of additional modalities for expressing your brand, capturing market attention and outflanking your competition.  Check out our list of brand elements along with some winning examples of each to help you get ideas on how you can take your brand to the next level.  

Visual

• Shape: Coke – Even seen in silhouette, the Coca-Cola bottle is instantly recognizable.  Other iconic product shape examples include Toblarone, Volkswagen (beetle), and Pringles
• Symbol: Nike – In every country around the world both young and old alike know that the swoosh belongs to Nike.  Other examples of symbols that are deeply embedded in our brains include Apple, Twitter, and McDonalds.
• Pattern: Louis Vuitton – Featured on handbags, purses, luggage, backpacks, and even furniture this pattern has become a recognized symbol for luxury.  Other examples of brands that have well known patterns include Burberry, Vans, and Gucci.
• Logo: Amazon – Amazon is one of only a handful of brands that has managed to turn our own doorsteps into an advertising channel.  Other examples of brands whose logos seem hard to escape include Goolge, Facebook, and Microsoft.
• Photo/image style: American Apparel – Terry Richardson deserves the credit for establishing American Apparel’s breakout styling for their catalog and advertising photos.  Other examples of recognizable photo styles include Giorgio Armani, Marlborough, and Carl’s Junior.
• Packaging: Tiffany – Even without the logo, a teal box under the Christmas tree is a dead giveaway that someone spent the big bucks this year.  Other examples of iconic packaging include KFC, Chanel, and Laduree. 
• Color: UPS – In the early 2000s, “What can brown do for you” was even used as the company’s slogan.  Other brands that have made deep chroma-commitments include Dell, Mastercard and Lyft.
• Font: Absolut Vodka – Based on Futura Black Condensed, but with some tiny serifs added onto each character to make it unique to the brand, Absolut Vodka has cemented their font as a diehard brand element.  Other famously fonted logos include ESPN, FedEx and New York Times.  

Personality/Tone

• Mascot: Budweiser – Though only seen in their commercials during winter months, Budweiser has trained us to think of the King of Beers whenever we spot a Clydesdale horse.  Other famous brand mascots include Geiko’s gecko, Bell’s laughing cow and Aflac’s duck.  
• Personification: Koolaid – While a massive pitcher of sugar water playing wrecking ball with your living room wall may not appeal to everyone, it certainly has become a cultural meme thanks to Koolaid.  Other personified brands include Planter’s Mr. Peanut, B&G’s Jolly Green Giant, and Kellog’s Tony the Tiger.
• Attitude: Harley Davidson – “Screw it, let’s ride” as Harley’s slogan kinda says it all.  Harley has established itself as the American brand of the rebellious spirit.  Other brands that wear their attitude on their sleeve include Ben & Jerry’s, Pink, and Hot Topic.
• Tag Line: Wendy’s – While more of a dis on their competition, “where’s the beef?” has held up as a tag line tied to the Wendy’s brand since their 1984 commercial campaign.  Other tag lines that have withstood the test of time include “Just do it,” “Think different,” and “A diamond is forever.” 
• Product Naming: Apple – The use of “i” in front of apple products goes back to the first iMac released in 1998.  Since then, iBook, iPhone, iTunes, iPad and iPod continued the convention. Other brands with product naming conventions include Ben & Jerry’s, McDonalds, Infinity

Experience

• Scent: Abercrombie – A smell so tenacious, you can wash an Abercrombie sweater three times and it will still smell like the store.  Other olfactory titilators include Aveda, Cinnabon, and Hyatt.

• Taste: RedBull – Love it or hate it, Redbull has an immediately recognizable flavor that has even been emulated in dozens of (unlicensed) vape products.  Other brands with famous flavors include Sriricha, Mountain Dew, and Skittles.
• Lighting: Virgin Airlines – Pink and purple lighting make the interior of Virgin Airlines immediately distinguishable from any other airline.  Based on our research Virgin may be the category owner here, at least for national brands.  
• Sound/Jingle: Chili’s – When you jingle makes it into multiple Hollywood films, you know you’ve got a winner, even if Fat Bastard isn’t the most desirable spokesperson to have for your brand. Other time tested jingles include “Give me a break,” “Like a good neighbor,” and “K-A-R-S cars for kids” (our apologies for resparking that earworm in your brain)
• Music: Harry Potter – It takes most folks just 2 or 3 notes to spot John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme,” originally played on the solo celesta, a small instrument that’s played like a piano but has a light, bell-like sound.  Other brands with musical monograms include Disney, DeBeers, and Star Wars.

Ethos

• Customer policies: Costco – Though certainly some people have abused it, Costco has maintained an unlimited return policy on general merchandise since its founding.  Other companies that have emphasized attractive customer policies include Nordstrom, 
• Employee policies: In-n-Out Burger – In a hugely impressive showing for a casual dining company, In-N-Out came #4 on Glassdoor’s 2018 list of the Best Places to Work. In the whole country. Other companies offering great employee benefits include Trader Joe’s, Wistia and  Publix
• Political/Activism: Chick Fil-A – Though it earned them years of boycotts and protests, the chicken slinger made no secret of it’s support of anti-LGBTQ charities.  Nike, Levi’s, and Patagonia have all taken stands on charged political issues. 
• Mission/purpose: Patagonia – This outdoor clothier has made the preservation of nature central to its stated mission. Other mission-centric brands include TED, Tesla, The Body Shop
• Legacy: Chanel – The history and prestige associated with the Chanel brand is hard to overstate.  Rolls Royce, Rolex, Le Creuset are other examples of legacy brands. 
• Cultural Heritage: Kikkoman – Kikkoman has carried on a rich Japanese tradition that dates back to the time of the Yamato Imperial Court era (250 AD -710 AD).  Other culturally-rich brands include Fiji Airlines, Ford, and Lindt.
• Social Responsibility: Toms – The ultimate BOGO, for every pair of TOMS shoes purchased, a pair of new shoes is given to a child in need in partnership with humanitarian organizations.  Other brands known for social responsibility include Warby Parker, Figs, and BLQK Coffee.

Bonus points:
Landscaping – In N Out Burger
Retail space design  Apple
Culture – Zappos
Copy-writing – Uber

Reposts are welcome with reference back to this original version produced by a collaboration between HeartBrew and ScrappyAFsolutions

Follow these 10 tools and tactics to take your creativity to the next level. 

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Would you pay your marcom team to play a game?  How about if it boosted their creativity and made them a more collaborative team.  

Pitch Me is a game that’s great for inspiring fresh thinking, creative marketing concepts, and new ways to stretch your marketing dollar.  

The game is quite simple.  There are 4 envelopes, each with a label: Channel, Budget, Target Market and Offering.  Each of these envelopes contains 10-12 cards.  Each team draws one card from each envelope to create a fictitious marcom “client,” a business leader (role-played by one or more judges) looking to take their solution to a specific target market, through a specified channel and with a defined budget.  It’s the team’s job to craft a pitch to present to the “client” in order to win their business.  Teams are given 15-30 minutes to work up their pitch (sketch boards, graphics, jingles, ad copy, dance routines, whatever), then they get 5 minutes to pitch their marketing plan, Shark Tank style.  If you have 7 of fewer folks in your marcom team they should all work as one team.  8 or more and you should break them into teams of 4-7 members each.  

Judges can use whatever criteria they like (funniest, best crafted, most likely to succeed, most comprehensive, etc.). The main goal is to let the creative juices run wind and free for a bit, have some fun and step up collaboration within your marcom department.  I’ve definitely seen this game bring out hidden talents in teams.  Even teams that have been working together for years.  Also, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to many of you, but the most creative ideas I’ve seen in this game always come from teams that drew super low budgets.  

I encourage you to create your own cards for the envelopes, but below are some ideas to get you started. [Thank you to PMG North Bay for the inspiration.] Have fun and please share your ideas for more cards. 

Offerings: 

Electric Scooter

Time Management Consultant

Ramen Restaurant

Handcrafted Gluten Free Paleo Bacon

A 13 Year-Old Who Created a Lawn-mowing Company

A Used Car Dealership

Premium Wine Club

Local Hot Sauce Company

Cat Groomer

Knitting Supplies

Mini Storage

Tiny Homes

Target Markets:

Travel Junkies

Teachers

Wellness Women  

Millennials

20-Something Bros

Golfers

Hipsters

Business Execs

LGBT and Advocates

Football Fans

Over 65

Local Moms

Channels:

Print (Newspaper / Magazines)

TV and Streaming

Billboards (Physical Ad Placements)

Conferences

Radio

Advertisements Before the Movie

Public Relations

Storefront Marketing

Social Media

Sponsorships

Gorilla Marketing

Special Event

Budgets:

$0

$100

$500

$2,500

$10,000

$25,000

$100,000

$250,000

$1M

$5M

Trade

Revenue Split

Thought leadership content has become the new currency of trust in B2B marketing and sales.  Get this right in the 2020s and you’ll dominate your competition.  Download this guide for building out your killer content flywheel. 

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Surf and Sales founder and B2B Sales Podcaster, Scott Leese, hosts Colt Briner for Tequila Tuesday.

Scrappy AF Marketing founder Colt Briner shares his best strategies for prospect engagement in high-dollar, enterprise selling contexts. Corporate gifting, awards, engagement events, dimensional mailers and more.

Businesses that operate from a foundation of purpose attract more customers and more talent than their competition. 

The 2020s will see companies thriving or dying based on how well they operationalize and communicate their purpose.  To be clear, a platitude printed on a coffee mug does not make a business purpose-driven.  Truly operationalized, genuine purpose is what’s really going to separate winners from losers in the coming decade.  Getting your company on the right side of that line starts with having honest conversations about purpose. 

When I am called in to support an organization in becoming purpose driven, the first thing I do is separate and interview the top execs. It’s a bit of an ambush, but it always reveals many valuable insights on where they are aligned, where they are split and where they have collective blind spots.  Here are some of the questions I use: 

• If you had to describe to a child why this company’s work matters, what would you say?
• What core human need(s) do you believe your company meets for its customers?
• What core human need(s) do you believe your customers are able to meet for others because of the work that your company does?
• How is the world made better because of the work that your company does?
• Describe one or more scenarios that would render that work moot.
• What impact would you say your company has had upon the world over the last 12 months?
• Is your company’s mission one that can be accomplished once and for all? What would you do if you succeeded?
• In a world where individuals now have every tool imaginable to start their own companies and be self-sustaining, why should they choose to spend their life energy working here? What is fulfilling about working here?
• What things are you doing that aren’t serving your purpose?

Step one for operationalizing purpose is getting your company’s executive leadership aligned on the responses to the questions above.  It can be challenging and even uncomfortable to push through the conversations needed to gain alignment, but it’s worth it.  Attempting to operationalize a company’s purpose without strong executive alignment is going to do more harm than good and will always land you right back on square one eventually. 

Image from Multivariable Solutions:  

Why is purpose so important in the 2020s?

Two reasons: Customers and Employees.  If either of those two things are important to your business, then operationalizing and communicating a genuine purpose for your business must be a critical area of focus for you in the 2020s. 

How do we know purpose matters to customers?  These days consumers are more empowered than ever with dozens or even hundreds of product choices just a click away.  There are thousands of examples to point to for how effective purpose is at attracting customers, but here are a few that are very recognizable:

• Always brand’s “Like a Girl” campaign was designed to uplift the self-esteem of young women.
  • 76 million YouTube views (the goal was 2 million),
  • 5 billion global media impressions (the goal was 250 million)
  • 195% increase in Twitter followers, and hundreds of thousands of posts.
• Dove’s “Choose Beautiful” campaign was crafted to encourage women to choose to feel beautiful.
  • Sales increased from $2.5 billion to $4 billion in the first year of the campaign year.
• Nike’s “Dream Crazy” campaign encouraged people to reach to their highest potential.
  • 7 million brand mentions on social media in the first week of the campaign – a 1,400% increase from the prior week.
  • $43 million worth of “earned media” exposure in less than 24 hours (most of that coverage was neutral to positive, according to Apex Marketing Group.)
  • 30 million views on YouTube for Dream Crazy and 250 million for full series of Nike Dream ads. After
  • 31 percent increase in online sales for the first week of the campaign

How does that shake out when we look at businesses in a more generalized way?

Shareholder Return

• Nearly every company with a purpose strongly embedded within the organization has a ten-year total shareholder return above the S&P 500 median. (BCG)

Sales Data

• Nielsen data shows a 14X higher growth rate for products with sustainability/social benefits vs. conventional products (5.8% vs. 0.4%, respectively).

So what about employees?  If you’re paying someone to work, why does purpose matter?

These days people are less and less satisfied with exchanging their life energy simply for a paycheck.  There is a dizzying spectrum of opportunities for individuals to either create or be a part of something that feels aligned with their beliefs and priorities.  Micro-financing, micro-facturing, kickstarter websites, and online goods and services marketplaces make it possible to start a business in nearly any sector within weeks.  And now that retirement has been pushed out of reach for much of the working population, the question of “what is a worthy way to spend my life energy” has become a central factor in where and how people choose to work. 

Employee Attraction & Retention

• Millennials who have a strong connection to the purpose of their organization are 5.3 times more likely to stay (PWC).

Defense From Disruption

• Companies that operate from purpose do a better job of predicting the future, innovating in the present and learning form the past

Employees in purpose-centered companies are:

• 4X more likely to say they are willing to give extra to get the job done
• 8X more likely to say they are proud to share where they work, enhancing their employer’s brand
• 13X more likely to say they want to work there a long time
• 14X more likely to look forward to coming to work
• 20X more likely to say their workplace exhibits traits linked to innovation

(From Great Place to Work’s Research into the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® List)

If you want to learn more about how to win with purpose, check out:

            Purpose-Driven Self Assessment for Business Leaders

            Tying Purpose to Human Needs

Is your company purpose driven?  A self-assessment for business leaders  

These days both customers and employees have every opportunity to spend their money and their time with other companies.  More and more, the element that drives loyalty from both groups is a company’s purpose.  Check out The Value Of Purpose for the hard numbers.  Suffice it to say, purpose is going to be a major factor for business success in the 2020s – think manufacturing robotics in the 1970s or social media in the 2010s. 

But, be careful because purpose is a double edged sword.  Companies that fake it can be seen as disingenuous, insincere and downright dishonest.  When a company’s purpose is just a platitude customers and employees alike become resentful.  In this era of woke-ness the public radar for corporate BS is finely tuned and being the target of cancel culture’s ire can be crippling for a business.  The only way to make purpose work is to work your purpose.  Don’t just paint some pretty words on the break room wall, walk your damned talk.   Operationalize your purpose. 

Below is the self-assessment we provide our clients so that they can quickly gauge how true they are to their purported purpose.  We typically ask 3 to 5 of the top execs to complete the assessment.   If they don’t average more than 75% on a given item we build out a game plan to address it.

0% — 10% — 20% — 30% — 40% — 50% — 60% — 70% — 80% — 90% — 100%
In your dreams                           On a good day                                                  Nailed it

• Our company serves a clear visionary purpose with present-day relevance

  Our employees keenly understand how their work serves that purpose

  Our purpose inspires and motivates our employees

  Our leaders understand the benefits of being purpose driven as a company

  Our customers see their patronage as a means to participate in and support our purpose

  Our business objectives, goals and measures are tied to our purpose

  Our strategic decisions are guided by our purpose

  Our innovation efforts are guided by our purpose

  Our purpose differentiates us from others in the market

  We are achieving our purpose

Is your company purpose driven?  What other statements would you add?
If you need help in transitioning to a purpose driven culture get in touch with us.