Posts Tagged ‘purpose’

Meaning and Purpose Hit Prime Time at the ANA

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

At least four people so far have asked me if we somehow infiltrated the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) meeting last week. In case you don’t know, the ANA hosts an annual get-together for some of the largest marketers in the world.  The mic is taken by CMOs and CEOs who direct billions of dollars in annual advertising spending. And this year the consistent topic was Brand Purpose and Marketing with Meaning.

A record-breaking 1,600 attendees saw industry leaders such as P&G’s Marc Pritchard, Dell’s Erin Nelson, and Coca-Cola’s Joe Tripodi talk about how they are transforming their organizations. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to attend this meeting, but I could not be happier to see the message we have been spreading for years finally take root with these industry giants. It was consistent with The Burning Question seminar that Jim Stengel and I hosted in Cannes this June, when another group of seven CMOs shared their stories, struggles, and early successes in shifting the marketing paradigm.

While the big corporate keynotes were great, my favorite speaker from the event was Cindy Gallop, founder of IfWeRanTheWorld, who summarized this new marketing paradigm pretty succinctly: “Make Stuff.”  Take a peek here.

IfWeRanTheWorld is a fascinating concept of crowd-sourcing solutions to major problems. Its simple idea is to break down big cause problems and opportunities into smaller, doable chunks. And the lesson here for big brands is that it doesn’t take millions of dollars and expensive agencies to start experimenting with meaningful marketing. It really just requires marketers to recognize the need for change, and the courage to fulfill their brand purpose through advertising itself.

A few folks remarked that the recent amount of press behind brand purpose and meaningful marketing will lead to this being considered just a passing fad. Well, I think we’re still far behind on the level of press that should be focused here. And how could we get tired of hearing about how brands are trying to do something positive, aside from just making better products or services?  I am encouraged by the progress toward our goal and proof of success in events such as the ANA meeting, and I do believe that this new marketing paradigm is within our grasp.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Concept | No Comments »

Why Write a Book? For This Guy

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

open letter

This week I had lunch with an old friend who had not yet heard that I recently wrote a book. His first question was: “Why did you write a book?” It’s actually a question that I get a lot. It’s not that people believe that writing a book is a dumb idea. Rather, most people understand that it is a huge investment in time and energy on top of a day job, so they wonder what motivation drove me to make it happen. There are many answers that I give to this question. I usually talk about how I grew up with a father who wrote several books and his experiences struck a chord with me. I mention that it is a chance to help grow the profile of our business and serve as a point of pride for our agency, Bridge Worldwide. But at the end of the day, the reason I wrote the book was for people like Jason Sokol, who last week wrote “An Open Letter to Bob Gilbreath.”

In a post on his blog (please read it above or at this link), Jason shares the story of working at a large company and working to make changes in how the business does its marketing and sales. He writes about how the book was an inspiration, and he used it to craft a manifesto email for his senior leadership. The ideas in the book gave Jason “the leverage [he has] needed to make a difference.”

For me, this story represents the absolute height of personal satisfaction. When I got up at 6 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday for months to write the book, I was always thinking about people like Jason. I remembered being in his shoes, struggling to make changes in a big company that had been doing the same (broken) things for so long, and drawing on the words and suggestions of authors such as Seth Godin. I wanted to write a book that brought great ideas, along with tips on how to convince an organization to go along with them. My goal was not to sell a bunch of books, or even to have lots of people talk about it. I knew that I would fail if the book was unable to actually effect change in how companies work.

Ironically, last week Seth Godin wrote a post titled “Why write a book?” In this post he writes about the many reasons to write a book, and mentions that articles, blogs, and even tweets can all have some power to benefit others. But books can do something more:

“The goal isn’t always to spread an idea. Sometimes the goal is to make change happen…. If you want to change people, you must create enough leverage to encourage the change to happen.”

Godin’s point is that books are powerful tools that give great leverage to ideas. A book takes time to read and absorb; it is a journey into the mind of the author. The publishing process helps ensure that only a relative handful of the best ideas make it to the shelves. This power of a book is that it gives ideas more leverage to impact people’s lives and make change happen. Jason takes the idea of “leverage” further, by showing how a book can serve as the leverage he needs to make change.

This really represents the Purpose of my life: I want to figure out how the world works, and give as many people as possible ideas and tools to make positive change. I know that more than 10,000 people have purchased and read the book so far, which is great sales-wise for a marketing book after only a few months. But now I know that at least one person has been able to use my book to make positive change. That alone is worth everything that I put into it. My thanks to Jason for sharing his story—and I hope many more readers write their own meaningful marketing stories in the years to come.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Agency Marketing, Organizational Behavior, book, purpose | 2 Comments »

Southwest Airlines Profits from Free Bags

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

southwest bags

My friend Matt Carcieri is one of the key leaders at P&G charged with helping the company move to “Purpose-Based Branding.” If you haven’t read about this before, the central idea is that brands must turn their equities and marketing toward the pursuit of higher-level goals. In his book on the topic, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, Roy Spence writes that brands must challenge themselves to wholeheartedly focus on this purpose for existence. At P&G, people such as Matt Carcieri and Jim Stengel helped Pampers, for example, shift toward a Purpose of improving babies’ development. Over the holidays, Matt shared a story of how Southwest Airlines—one of the central case studies in Spence’s book—is continuing to profit from its purpose.

In his book, Spence tells the story of how Southwest Airlines rose to leadership in the late 1970s and 1980s on the heels of the government’s deregulation of the airline industry. As the skies opened up to new competitors, Southwest took an underdog mentality up against the big, entrenched, oligopolistic players such as American, Pan Am, and TWA. The company’s entire employee base embraced the underdog label, and rallied around their Purpose:  to democratize air travel. This mentality drove the company to embrace shorter, point-to-point flights, enabled it to expand without unionization, and even showed in the high-quality, high-fun flight attendants and pilots. Southwest was not just another airline; it was a company on a mission to make flying more affordable and accessible. Today, Southwest is just behind Delta in total market capitalization, and did it without major mergers or dips into bankruptcy. The company was profitable again in 2008, while Delta felt a 40% net loss.

Based on Southwest’s purpose, it is no surprise that the company decided not to go along with the rest of the industry crowd and add baggage fees to the price of a ticket. According to its CEO, Gary Kelly, Southwest was giving up $300 million in revenue by not simply joining its competitors in charging a fee that fliers hate, but can do little about. But the underdog, democratic blood still pumps through Southwest’s veins, and it bucked the trend and risked angering shareholders by just saying “no.”

What’s more, Southwest saw the opportunity to promote the hell out of its commitment to “Bags Fly Free.” Baggage fees can add up to $100 per flight per person, so Southwest’s television commercials and print ads tout their fundamental competitive difference. The ads feature smiling Southwest employees talking about how much they love bags—itself an example of a strong, purpose-driven culture.

The results? Well, Southwest claims that it has captured an additional 1% of the market because of its lack of baggage fees so far. That translates to $800 million to $900 million in additional revenue. Yep, as much as three times more revenue than baggage fees would generate. And please don’t forget how this meaningful marketing choice adds to the brand equity and loyalty of travelers. We all feel a great deal of anger for airlines that use their market power to gouge us on fare prices and continually pull back on service quality. But with Southwest, we have a hero in an otherwise villainous business. This very visible issue around baggage fees further cements the good and evil brands in the business, and translates into more sales for Southwest over time.

Thanks to its strong, guiding brand purpose, and its ability to make meaningful marketing decisions, Southwest continues to be the bright spot of success in an industry that continues to look at its customers as cattle. My only problem with Southwest is that it still hasn’t come to free Cincinnati from the oppressive shackles of Delta!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in airlines, purpose | 5 Comments »

Book Review: ‘It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For’

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Last week I trekked down to Austin, Texas, to spend some time with a fellow leader in the campaign to elevate the role of advertising, Roy Spence. I first wrote about Roy in a blog post a few months back. Our initial phone conversation then led to this trip to continue the dialogue about how we might partner up. We were able to spend some great time with Roy, his Chief Purposologist and co-author Haley Rushing, and a few other quality folks from their agency, GSD&M Idea City. We met the day after it was announced that Roy was handing his CEO role over to Duff Stewart, and he seemed extremely charged up to focus on the new Purpose Institute.

The purpose of this post is to convince you to purchase Roy and Haley’s book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For. Overall, it’s a must-read if you are a fan of this Marketing with Meaning concept and wish to drive your organization and yourself to higher-level work.

I believe the act of proclaiming a Brand Purpose is really the best way to start down the path of creating meaningful marketing. When a brand makes the decision of “Why We Exist,” it becomes much simpler to begin thinking about how you can create marketing that people choose to engage with, and marketing that itself improves people’s lives.

What is particularly insightful about It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For is that it provides an inside view of some of the most successful businesses in terms of profit and purpose. The advertising agency Roy founded out of college, GSD&M, has been fortunate enough to attract and help shape great companies such as Walmart, Southwest, Whole Foods, and BMW, all of which have stayed close to a higher-level purpose. For example, the purpose of Southwest is to “democratize air travel,” and BWM exists to “enable people to experience the joy of driving.” I agree that being on the inside of an advertising agency offers the chance to see “lifetimes” worth of the good and bad of many organizations. It’s very easy to understand which companies “get it” and which are hopelessly lost, no matter what print ad or website we create for them.

Roy and Haley weave decades of personal history together with these brands’ most recent activity, and provide a nice step-by-step guide for brands to uncover their own purpose. There are a few specific sections of the book that I underlined heavily:

Life Is Too Short to Work Without Purpose

This is something I first began thinking more about after reading The 4-Hour Workweek. In this book, author Tim Ferriss encourages cubicle dwellers to escape the office, become Internet entrepreneurs, and focus on personal hobbies for the rest of their lives. He almost looks down on for-profit, 40-hour-a-week work. I enjoyed his book in many ways, but believe that a full workweek itself can and should be rewarding and exciting. Roy and Haley remind us that:

Bookstore shelves are now fully stocked with books about finding your personal purpose. But the reality is the vast majority of your time is consumed by your work life… Whether you’re a CEO or a secretary, the majority of your time, energy and talent will be spent in the service of your work. So why not make it worthwhile?”

They go on to suggest that you find the work you love best by paying attention to “the meeting on the calendar that you’re actually excited about going to” and to “notice when your heart speeds up just thinking about an issue.” In other words, finding personal purpose is the first step in moving your company or your career toward brand purpose.

Great Takeaways from Whole Foods

While I enjoyed the deep case studies on Walmart and Southwest Airlines, I especially enjoyed two lessons from Whole Foods. First, there’s the fact that the company continues to commit to donating 5% of its sales on five days a year to nonprofits chosen by each local store. Stock analysts and some investors complain about so much of Whole Foods profits going to charities, but who can argue with a 3,000% increase in stock value over 14 years?

A second interesting observation is that Whole Foods admits that it is never going to be perfect in delivering on its Vision Statement, as seen in its “Declaration of Independence“:

We do not believe [the Vision Statement] always accurately portrays the way things currently are at Whole Foods Market so much as the way we would like things to be. It is our dissatisfaction with the current reality, when compared with what is possible, that spurs us toward excellence and toward creating a better person, company, and world. When Whole Foods Market fails to measure up to its stated Vision, as it inevitably will at times, we should not despair. Rather let us take up the challenge together to bring our reality closer to our vision. The future we will experience tomorrow is created one step at a time today.”

(On a side note, after meeting with the folks at Idea City we headed across the street to the Whole Foods headquarters store. We spent about two hours exploring the amazing selection and had a wonderful lunch in the seafood cafe.)

Conclusion

One of my favorite passages in the book is the challenge for people to be willing and able to communicate their personal+brand purpose into the dinner-party conversation. Imagine the usual first exchange when you meet someone new and he or she asks, “What do you do?” You know you’re onto something when you can proudly proclaim the higher-level drive of your work. For me, the answer is: “I create marketing that improves people’s lives.”

What’s yours?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Agency Marketing, book, purpose | 1 Comment »

Connecting with Roy Spence

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

One of the really exciting experiences in our mission to spread the concept of Marketing with Meaning is the chance to meet up with brilliant people who have come to the same general conclusion of where the world needs to go next. Thanks to an introduction from our mutual friend Jim Stengel, I was able to spend some time chatting with Roy Spence last week.

Roy is the Chairman and CEO of GSD&M Idea City, one of the best and brightest advertising agencies in the world. He just released a book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, and had a great article in Adweek recently. Overall, Roy has a simple but meaningful message: “Companies that aren’t in the life improvement business are not going to be around for very long.” His firm has helped create memorable work and business success for many leading brands, including two (BMW and Southwest Airlines) that I mention in our upcoming book.

We immediately felt a common bond on the phone during this first conversation. I found Roy to be an incredibly personable and good-natured guy. In terms of our key messages, we share the same overall perspective but come at it in different angles. Roy is focused on convincing brands to focus their existence around a key purpose; Southwest Airlines, for example, is about democratizing air travel. Our Marketing with Meaning comes into play once brands have selected a purpose and need to start doing work that fulfills the purpose. It’s a great synergy and we obviously have a better chance at changing the world by teaming up around our common cause rather than debating definitions and interpretations.

Despite the fact that our companies operate within competing holding companies, Roy immediately suggested some projects that we might work on together, and mentioned several other business leaders and entrepreneurs who share our mindset. We’ll be getting together in person in a few months.

I encourage you to support the overall Marketing with Meaning cause by picking up a copy of Roy’s book today. Let me know what you think!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Agency Marketing, Concept | 3 Comments »

Stengel “Retires” to a Higher Calling

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

On Monday, November 3, a recent legend in the marketing world, P&G Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel, retired from the client side. He is joining the client-service side for the first time in his life, and he’s joining a handful of us who are trying to take marketing to a higher level.

Stengel’s website and a Wall Street Journal article describe his new vocation—to help companies other than P&G succeed through “purpose-based marketing.” Through our work with P&G as a client, we’ve had a chance to see inside Stengel’s model of Brand Purpose. It’s an incredibly powerful new way of looking at brand building, based on P&G’s best brands, as well as best practices from some of the most valuable brands outside the company’s walls.

I cannot share this inside perspective here, but I can point you to a recent speech by Stengel at the University of Cincinnati. In one of his last appearances as a P&G leader, he spoke of his learnings from a lifetime of building purposeful brands, and alluded to the lessons he plans to share. Some of my favorite quotes and examples included:

  • “Our studies show that brands with the most market trust have the highest marketing share.”
  • Tide’s Clean Start program, which provides laundry services for victims of natural disasters, had a “far greater lift” in business impact than traditional advertising, and significantly raised key equity measures.
  • Spend time with consumers, not just asking them how they use your products, but how they spend their lives, and figure out how you can positively impact their lives.
  • “Every employee must live the ideals of the (purpose-driven) brand.”

As I alluded to above, Stengel is not only joining a legion of ex-P&Gers, but he is joining a small group of people and organizations that are trying to define what we choose to call Marketing with Meaning. I’ve actually had the chance to personally share Marketing with Meaning with Jim, and we found a good synergy between the two concepts. Brand Purpose is primarily based on how a brand redefines what it stands for—its driving purpose in society. Marketing with Meaning picks this up by helping Purpose Brands communicate with their customers in a new way—one beyond interruption that helps achieve its purpose. Drew Neisser, of Marketing as Service fame, makes a good point that we all have a common belief in purposeful brands, but that agencies are needed to bring the purpose to life.

Interestingly, in March 2007, just as I was putting together the full Marketing with Meaning concept to share with clients, Stengel spoke at the AAAA conference and said words that struck me:

What we really need is a mind-set shift… that will make us relevant for today’s consumers.  From ‘telling and selling’ to building relationships.”

Jim’s words convinced me that we were onto something with Marketing with Meaning after all: If the largest marketer in the world (and the one who perhaps succeeded more with “telling and selling” than anyone) saw the need for change, the rest would not be far away.

We’ll keep watching and partnering with Stengel as he joins the mission to make marketing more meaningful. It should be a even more successful ride with him onboard.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Concept | No Comments »