Building a successful brand requires more than just a strong product or service. It demands a compelling brand purpose that resonates with both the company's and its consumers' values. Brand purpose refers to the core reason a brand exists beyond just making a profit. It is the consumer reason why you turn on your lights in the morning. Once you have uncovered your Strategic Consumer Target Insight, integrating both consumer and brand centricity into your brand purpose is essential for creating a consumer focused value proposition and a sustainable brand strategy. Here's why embracing both elements are crucial for your brand's success. Let’s first discuss the difference between Consumer Centricity and Brand Centricity.
Consumer centricity is a strategic approach that places the consumer at the heart of business operations. It is a business approach prioritizing the needs, preferences, and experiences of consumers at every stage of the product or service lifecycle. It focuses on creating value by understanding and addressing consumer desires or needs. By deeply understanding and addressing consumer needs and preferences, businesses can enhance satisfaction, loyalty, and competitive advantage. Implementing consumer centricity requires a cultural shift, investment in technology, and a commitment to continuous improvement based on consumer experience feedback and insights.
Brand centricity is a strategic approach that places the brand at the heart of business operations. It is a business approach that prioritizes the brand's identity, values, and positioning in the market. It focuses on building and maintaining a strong, recognizable brand that stands out from competitors and resonates with its target audience. By deeply understanding the Brand’s organizational and technological capabilities as well as vision and mission, businesses can enhance brand market penetration through improved awareness and differentiation. Implementing Brand centricity requires an investment in marketing spending delivering consistent messaging and desire to innovate to enhance depth of capabilities.
It is the balance between Consumer and Brand Centricity that creates a compelling Brand Purpose that delivers more robust holistic growth by driving consumer experience, brand awareness and reputation, and high value product/ service differentiation.
As mentioned earlier, a strong Brand Purpose delivers consumer value that is driven by organizational values and capabilities. Developing a brand based on individual consumer values is basically not possible. Therefore, we look at leveraging a Fundamental Human Value; a core belief or principle that is deeply ingrained in individuals and societies, influencing attitudes, behaviors, and decisions. There are many Fundamental Human Values and several vary by societal culture. However, there are five that have been shown, when leveraged properly, help brands substantially outperform their peers.
Jim Stengel, former Chief Marketing Officer for Procter & Gamble, in his book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit, identified five Fundamental Human Values that helped 50 purpose driven companies that exceeded S&P growth rates by as much as three fold. In research performed by Millward-Brown (leading Global Research Company, Brands that built their organizations to drive one of these Five Fundamental Human Values:
Eliciting Joy - Joy is a universal emotion that drives individuals to seek happiness and fulfillment in their lives. For consumers, products and experiences that elicit joy often resonate on an emotional level. Whether it's a whimsical product design, a delightful customer service experience, or a heartwarming brand story, joyous interactions leave a lasting impression and cultivate positive brand associations
Enabling Connections - Human connection is fundamental to our social fabric, and brands that facilitate meaningful connections among consumers hold significant value. Whether through shared experiences, community-building initiatives, or digital platforms that foster interaction, brands can serve as catalysts for bringing people together. By enabling connections, brands not only enhance customer loyalty but also contribute to a sense of belonging and collective purpose.
Evoking Pride - Pride stems from a sense of accomplishment, belonging, or admiration. Brands that evoke pride often align with consumers' personal achievements or values. This could range from supporting causes consumers are passionate about to celebrating cultural identities or milestones. By fostering a sense of pride, brands forge deeper connections with their audience and become a source of inspiration and affirmation.
Impacting Society - Consumers increasingly seek brands that go beyond profitability to make a positive impact on society. This can encompass ethical sourcing practices, environmental stewardship, support for marginalized communities, or initiatives that address pressing social issues. Brands that prioritize societal impact demonstrate corporate responsibility and resonate with socially conscious consumers who prioritize making a difference through their purchasing decisions.
Inspiring Exploration - Exploration embodies curiosity, growth, and discovery. Brands that inspire exploration encourage consumers to step outside their comfort zones, embrace new experiences, and expand their horizons. Whether through innovative products, educational content, or immersive brand experiences, these brands empower consumers to pursue personal and intellectual growth, fostering a sense of adventure and discovery.
Understanding and embracing one of the Five Fundamental Human Values such as joy, pride, connection, societal impact, and exploration are essential for brands looking to forge meaningful relationships with consumers. Incorporating these values in the Brand Purpose influences the brand value proposition and therefore the consumer experience. This in turn will drive Marketing and Operations strategies to create communications and processes that transcend simple functional engagements and ladder up to experiential and emotional connections.
But wait, there’s more.
In 2108, Neuropsychologist Dr. Constantinos Pantidos released his years of research in the book, Living Brands, How Biology& Neuroscience Shape Consumer Behavior & Brand Desirability. Dr. Constantinos Pantidos, in his work on brand marketing and human psychology, identifies Twelve Fundamental Human Motives that drive behavior. These motives are used to help understand consumer behavior and how brands can connect with their audiences. The twelve motives identified by Dr. Pantidos are:
Safety - feeling safe, moments of joy through emotional and physical comfort
Seek – exploration by transcending boundaries
Play - moments of joy through light-hearted, cheeky, innocent even silly engagement
Transform - impacting one’s environment to create a new reality, harmony, existence
Defiance - elicit joy through rebellion
Creation - evoking pride by expressing our identity
Grow - evoking pride through achievement/attainment
Control - impacting society through controlling our surrounding
Connect - enabling connections to create a sense of belonging to an abstract majority
Desire - evoking pride by feeling desirable so we can accept ourselves for who we are.
Care - evoking pride through selfless acts of giving gives sense of belonging
Balance – the need for knowledge, learning, and comprehension inside & around us.
These motives are foundational in understanding how individuals make choices and how brands can align their messaging to resonate with these deep-seated human drives.
Similar to what Jim Stengel and Millward-Brown observed, Dr. Pantidos concluded that Brands increased their likelihood of influencing consumer choice by leveraging one of the twelve fundamental human motives.
Therefore, pulling it all together, when I work with Brands, I have them leverage principles of Brand Centricity and Consumer Centricity and then include a Fundamental Human Value and a Fundamental Human Motive to create their Brand Purpose. The idea is to create a comprehensive Brand Purpose that the Strategic Target consumer will appreciate and be encouraged to act with a brand with similar values to them.
I know this is a lot. I have been doing this for many years across dozens of brands. I would be happy to discuss Brand Purpose development with you.
About GDJBrands
GDJBrands helps visionary founders and business leaders get the most out of their brands by taking a holistic, tailored, ground-up approach to brand-building. Its founder, Gary De Jesus, excels in Brand Development and Marketing, uniquely incorporating principles of Biological and Cognitive Sciences, and Psychology to build strong brands and fulfill founders' visions. His goal is to make dreams come true.