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How will the lessons of Q1 prepare us for Q2? As the first quarter of 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look back at the lessons we’ve learned. How can these lessons inform Q2 marketing plans?
Marketing with Purpose
Since January, we have been updating you on the business impact and importance of a strong purpose. We addressed communicating this purpose internally and externally, and highlighted examples of B2B businesses using marketing to promote the greater good.
In Q2, it’s time to apply these findings in your marketing. If your business doesn’t yet have a clear statement of purpose, it’s time to create one.
When crafting your Q2 marketing plan, be sure to address the following questions:
- How does this marketing tactic support our business purpose?
- How can we reach the people who care most about our purpose?
- How can we convey our company’s passion for our purpose?
- Are there aspects of our marketing plan that conflict with our purpose? What must we change to avoid this conflict?
- Can we form marketing partnerships that support or publicize our purpose?
Q2 2015 – Next Steps for Purpose-Driven Marketing
In the upcoming quarter, we predict an ongoing strengthening of the relationship between marketing and business purpose.
Consider the advertisements that have gone viral in recent years. Many B2C companies have learned that content with a strong sense of purpose engages an audience. For example, the #LikeAGirl campaign from Always drew admiring attention for its focus on girls’ self-confidence online long before its appearance in the Super Bowl. The central commercial of the campaign has been viewed more than 85 million times.
This quarter, B2B companies should fully embrace purpose-driven marketing as well. We know that emotion drives B2B sales just as it does B2C. We look forward to seeing more B2B companies using their marketing to support a worthy cause. The best campaigns will also showcase the concrete steps each company is taking to operate according to its values and to contribute to the causes they believe in.
How will your brand build purpose into its marketing this quarter and from now on?
Photo Credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg via Flickr Creative Commons
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With the end of March comes the end of the first quarter of 2015. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been focusing on the essentials we need to move ahead into the future with purpose and focus. As we wrap up Q1, let’s take a look back on the topics we’ve been buzzing about for the last three months.
The Transition to 4E
Since we first wrote about the new marketing value chain in late 2014, we’ve focused on centering our work on data and insights. This isn’t an easy switch to make–as we said in our whitepaper, the “rules and tools” value chain is hard to escape–but we’ve spent Q1 making the case that a data-driven approach is the way to go. By delivering a “know-why” strategy instead of the traditional “know-how” other agencies provide, we’ve been able to deliver more efficient, optimized solutions for our clients, and many are already seeing the bottom-line results of this change.
A Focus on Purpose
This quarter, we’ve discussed how purpose-driven business can both increase profits and cut costs. As we’ve said, customers want to patronize organizations that share their values and employees want to work where they can contribute to meaningful outcomes. These trends are especially marked among millennials. As that generation becomes an ever-larger share of the workforce and controls more purchasing power, purpose is becoming an increasingly more powerful marketing tool for savvy businesses.
What’s Next?
As we continue our work into Q2, we’ll take the lessons of Q1 and apply them to discussions on ROI and marketing outcomes. What’s next for us is a look into how to further operationalize purpose, data, and insights to produce a strong return on investment and boost the influence of marketing.
Let us know: what are you looking forward to in Q2 and the rest of 2015?
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Like we talked about last week, data and analytics are essential for marketers who want to make purpose central to their message. Carefully developed measurement processes can help you figure out not only how successful your marketing is, but also how closely it aligns with your purpose.
The Relationship Between Purpose and Accountability
What really is accountability? It’s the ability to monitor, measure and report the commitment a person or group has to delivering a specific outcome or result. You’re probably already aware that your marketing leaders need to be accountable to the overarching strategy that guides your business and the bottom-line results it produces, but as we’ve talked about already on the blog, this isn’t enough. In order to maximize profits, productivity and employee satisfaction, it’s necessary to hold your marketing accountable to your purpose as well.
So How Can You Make Sure Your Marketing Delivers on Your Purpose?
Marketing is responsible for making people aware of your purpose and getting them excited about being a part of it. One of the best ways to measure whether this is happening is via stakeholder surveys conducted at regular intervals. As soon as you can, circulate a survey to employees, customers, community members and other stakeholders with key questions like “which of these statements do you feel best describes the reason we exist…?” and “how would you describe the purpose behind our company?” Then, once a quarter, or at least once a year, conduct the same survey and see how responses have shifted. Are your stakeholders becoming more aware of your purpose? Are they gaining a better, more accurate understanding of why you do what you do? If so, it’s fair to assume that your purpose-driven marketing is working.
The Importance of Purpose Accountability
As we’ve discussed on this blog and as Bob wrote in his MarketingProfs article, marketers need to prove the ROI of their work to earn their seat at the C-Suite table. Due to a poor past record of accountability and, until recently, a lack of tools for tracking marketing results, marketers have struggled to gain the influence they deserve among their executive peers. It’s time to change that. Holding marketing accountable to not just business strategy and profit but also to purpose should be part of this effort.
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What do data and analytics have to do with purpose? Data-based operations allow marketers to discover purpose-driven messaging that they can tailor to their target audience’s interests and needs. Here are a few ways to do just that.
Check website traffic trends to assess what your stakeholders care about
Taking a look at your organic site traffic can tell you a lot about what your stakeholders value and how you’re viewed online. Do keywords associated with your purpose lead visitors to your site? Or are they only searching for obvious terms related to your products or services? Consider how you can both tailor your purpose to the things your web visitors are interested in, and how you can improve your search ranking for terms related to your purpose.
Match purpose to demographics
Use existing data or conduct new research to learn more about the demographic breakdown of your audience and their likelihood that key stakeholders will support you in pursuing your purpose. Redouble your efforts to reach the stakeholders most interested in purpose with messaging that explains why you do what you do. Additionally, consider new ways to engage those who don’t respond to your current purpose-driven marketing messages by communicating your purpose in new ways.
Analyze content conversions and social engagement
Choose analytics tools that track how visitors move through your brand’s website and engage with the content they find within. Assess how various types of purpose-driven content drive different patterns of engagement on the site. When you understand what types of purpose-focused communication make visitors want to learn more, sign up for a newsletter or download a whitepaper, you can continue to create more content that gets results.
A good handle on the data about your stakeholders and how they interact with your marketing messages can help you communicate your purpose in the most relevant, impactful way. What other techniques do you use to refine your brand’s purpose and marketing messages?
Photo credit: NYC Media Lab via Flickr Creative Commons
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Now that we know the history of marketing purpose, it’s time to talk about the future. As marketing purpose continues to evolve, we can expect a refinement of business purpose and how it is communicated. Let’s take a look at a few recent campaigns and explore the trends they reflect.
Patagonia’s outdoor clothing and gear is pricey, but responsibly sourced and durable. Their “Worn Wear” campaign solicits customer letters about Patagonia gear that has lasted for years of adventures and even been passed down from parent to child. It also offers advice on how customers can fix their own worn gear, and a short documentary about the people who have patched up their Patagonia clothes over the years.
Prediction: Focus on the Story
Patagonia needs to sell new clothes to stay in business, but their campaign focuses on the value of old clothes. Why does this work? The Worn Wear campaign shows consumers that Patagonia does more than preach when it comes to sustainability: the company makes clothes that are meant to last. A Patagonia purchase is a valuable long-term investment.
More businesses need to show how they follow through on their missions. Telling stories about the full lifecycle of a product is a great way to do this. In the future, B2B companies will learn from this growing B2C practice and tell more stories about how their products and services continue to benefit the businesses that use them.
DSM, a B2B firm selling specialty ingredients to food companies, works with a variety of programs to improve nutrition around the world. They also know the importance of sharing the details of their work. For DSM’s Sight and Life nutrition program, the company has released extensive information on their research and actions, including details like how many children their micronutrient programs reach.
Prediction: Clients Want to See Specifics
DSM has a particularly large social good arm, but all purpose-driven businesses can learn from their approach. More and more, people want to see specifics to back up companies’ claims of social responsibility. As corporate social good initiatives continue to grow, your business needs to show that its purpose is a key part of the company, not just a gimmick to attract customers.
In February, a dress that appeared white and gold to some people but blue and black to others went viral. Social media sites were swamped by debates about its color while journalists and bloggers wrote about the science behind the optical illusion that made the blue dress appear white to so many people.
A week later, the Salvation Army in South Africa ran a Twitter PSA depicting a bruised woman wearing the white and gold dress with the caption “Why is it so hard to see black and blue?” and the hashtag “#StopAbuseAgainstWomen.” The piece directs those who “need help or are able to help” to call a Salvation Army number.
Prediction: “Newsjacking” will become more thoughtful
“Newsjacking,” or the practice of inserting a brand into a trending media story, has often been poorly considered. Brands have tried to generate attention and sell products by piggybacking on tragic events, or joining serious social media discussions with no relevance to their field. These mistakes offend people and generate bad publicity.
Unlike many of these ill-considered newsjackings, the Salvation Army used a lighthearted popular news topic to call attention to a serious issue, not the other way around. While for-profit businesses will need to be very careful in the ways they choose to address the causes they support, we expect to see more campaigns from both nonprofits and for-profits that tie into current news in thoughtful ways.
Pharmaceuticals and healthcare products company Abbott Laboratories created a program designed to globally promote the laboratory medicine profession. This program, called Labs Are Vital, was developed in an effort to bring labs “from the back room to the boardroom” and show the impact of lab medicine professionals on patient outcomes. Movéo was retained to develop a new mission for this program that would keep it “vital” in the years ahead.
Through a campaign website, video featuring a panel of thought leaders discussing the mission, an online campaign and collateral, new life was breathed into an old program, and a market survey conducted in eight countries validated that Labs Are Vital’s mission resonated with audiences on a global scale.
Prediction: Purpose and resonance are the future
Labs Are Vital shows that even in B2B marketing, purpose drives engagement and conversion for consumers and employees. By engaging customers on multiple platforms, Abbott was able to ensure that the purpose of Labs Are Vital was holistically and completely presented to stakeholders and customers. Moreover, the interactive website and content ensure that the program would stay “vital” for years to come.
These tactics, like all marketing tactics, are going to become increasingly data-driven as well. Data makes marketing purpose measurable and keeps marketers accountable. Read our upcoming blogs to learn more about how data can support your purpose-driven marketing.
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Today, let’s take a step back in time and revisit the days of martini lunches, beehive hairdos, and Lucky Strikes. Picture yourself at an ad agency in 1965, strutting down the hall in a double-breasted, pinstriped suit, going to a meeting with a client. The meeting goes well, but at the end the client leans toward you and asks, “How are you going to show my purpose in your advertising?”
Chances are that you, the modern marketer, would answer this question very differently than Don Draper would have back in 1965. In this post, we’re going to take a quick look back into the history of purpose-driven marketing, checking out some some purpose-driven advertisements from the days of Mad Men to today.
1960s
In 1963, David Ogilvy’s “Confessions of an Advertising Man” glamorized and publicized the advertising industry. Television brought forth new opportunities for advertisers to promote products and reach a greater audience than ever before. Meanwhile, idealistic young people protested against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights while condemning their parents for their materialism. Advertisers were criticized for exaggerated and deceitful practices, and they were portrayed as materialistic, shallow and wasteful.
In turn, advertisers used their clients’ purposes as a way to combat criticism. By taking cues from pop art, music, and popular programs, innovative campaigns like Pepsi’s “Think Young” and “Pepsi Generation” embraced the counterculture and aligned itself with their mission. Eschewing elitism and materialism, advertising focused on truth, humor, and irony to endear consumers to their products.
1970s
As advertising matured, mistrust in advertising began to grow–mainly because purpose was clouded beneath deceitful and offensive ads. Minority groups criticized sexist and racist ad campaigns like National Airlines’ “fly me” campaign, which required stewardesses to wear buttons bearing the slogan. Reflecting the impact of feminism was Revlon’s ad for Charlie perfume, which featured a confident, assertive and openly feminist model.
One notable development in the 1970s was government-mandated corrective advertising. For example, Warner-Lambert was forced to spend $10 million to correct a claim that Listerine prevented colds and sore throats. However, this practice waned in the later part of the decade as government deregulation loosened ties on the ad industry.
1980s
The general financial and political stability of the 1980s changed the tone of purpose-driven advertising from commenting on social issues to focusing on specific brand values like quality, luxury, and comfort. Instead of trying to make products seem cutting-edge, advertisers focused more on showing that products were reliable and wholesome. In order to combat the inroads foreign companies were making in the US market, automotive and clothing industries connected American-made products with quality in campaign slogans like “GM puts quality on the road” and “at Ford, quality is job one.” This feel-good, positive purpose was even seen in political ads, like Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” re-election campaign ads.
1990s
The technological innovations of the 1990s decentralized and refocused advertising. Instead of focusing solely on reaching a wide audience with their ads through traditional media like TV and print, agencies took advantage of the internet to create targeted, data-driven advertisements that could be customized for different audiences and targeted better than the communications of the past. Integrated marketing communications became the norm: advertising, marketing, and communications all began to work together fluidly, or at least attempted to. Small, creative boutique agencies grew in influence to meet the demand for smaller ad campaigns–including the newly founded Movéo.
The internet and digital technology changed the face of advertising–sometimes literally. CGI allowed ads to become more fantastical, and computer-generated creations like the Coca-Cola polar bears are still used in ad campaigns today. Purpose often took a backseat as agencies explored the frontiers of new media.
2000s-today
The internet boom that began in the 1990s continued and expanded in the next decade. Digital has become central to nearly all marketing strategies, and mobile marketing has become more than just a trend as smartphones have grown more and more common among consumers. The ability to learn more about consumers has made ads more targeted, relevant, and customizable across channels, and at times, less intrusive.
This access to data means that agencies can more carefully discern what causes people care about. Purpose-driven ads are not only commonplace, but they are effective: from Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” highlighting the deceptive Photoshopping tactics in advertising to Obama for America’s “Yes We Can” political ads, marketing in recent years has leveraged purpose to call consumers to action. Even today, “that ASPCA ad”–the one featuring Sarah McLachlan and abandoned pets staring mournfully into the camera–raises millions of dollars for pet shelters.
What will the future of marketing hold? Come back on Friday for our predictions.
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It’s hard to believe it, but we’re almost done with the first quarter of 2015. It’s incredible how much has changed since the quarter began! From our move to a new office to the great work that our team has done, we’ve been making 2015 the year of bigger and better here at Movéo. Today, we’d like to take a step back and revisit some of our successes so far this quarter.
The Social Employee
If you’ve already read Cheryl Burgess’s The Social Employee, pick it up and turn to the back for the afterword by our own Kevin Randall. If you haven’t checked it out yet, do yourself a favor and add it to your must-read list! In February, we helped Cheryl and IBM promote the book through a Twitter campaign and an online chat. We couldn’t have been prouder to support Kevin and his work in this campaign and take an active role in promoting him! Kevin had a busy Q1: not only was he engaged in The Social Employee activities, but he found time to write for The Economist and get quoted in AdAge and Ogilvy.
Bob becomes a Marketing Prof
We all know that our Managing Partner Bob Murphy could easily teach a class on marketing, but now he’s actually become a professor–a MarketingProf, that is! Since the start of Q1, Bob has had two articles published on MarketingProfs, one on CMOs proving their ROI and the other on the resolutions marketers should stick to in 2015. It’s great to see Movéo thought leadership in such high places.
We got closer to our purpose.
Our blog this year has been focused on exploring the idea that a higher purpose means higher profits for business. This writing has made us evaluate our purpose and redouble our efforts to align our operations and communications around it. This is a constant process for us, and we can’t wait to see how our an even stronger focus on purpose aids in our growth in the upcoming year.
As we pack up the Oakbrook Terrace office, it’s hard not to feel a like we’re finishing up one chapter in the Movéo book and turning to the next. But we’re lucky to have our move so closely coinciding with our fourth evolution. As we change where we work, we’re also changing how we work, putting data and insights at the center of our operations and relying on our purpose to guide strategy and communications.
So how will the move downtown change Movéo? It will allow us to all work from one central location, which will further improve communication and operations within the company. Our downtown location will let us be right in the middle of city life, so that we can more easily interact with what’s going on in Chicago and meet with the leaders of the many businesses based in this great city. Certainly, the nearby sushi and Italian restaurants will make our lunch hours more interesting! But no matter where we are, our goal at Movéo will remain the same: to help our clients quantifiably grow their business.
Without a doubt, we’re going to have an interesting spring. Stay tuned to see what the future has in store for us!
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By this time, if you’ve been diligently reading our blog, you’ve already learned how to construct, operationalize, and communicate your purpose. But unless your purpose statement is under 140 characters, you’ve still got work to do.
Being able to communicate your purpose not only to employees and the outside world but to different audiences on different platforms is a necessity for your business. Depending on whether you’re engaging with employees through your business Facebook page, sending out an e-newsletter or taking part in a Twitter chat, the way you educate and engage people around your purpose will change. Today, we’re sharing some best practices to share your business purpose on different platforms.
E-Newsletters
An e-newsletter is the main way many businesses connect with their clients, customers, and contacts. These people often have already encountered your business purpose, whether through your website or through speaking with employees. For this platform, it’s not as important to define your business purpose again, but rather to show how it’s being used in your operations. Use the newsletter to share a purpose-related accomplishment each month, whether it’s a new client who aligns with your purpose or an employee service outing. Keep your contacts in the loop about your efforts to run your business around your central purpose.
Twitter
Keep your Twitter messages short and sweet: you’ve got no choice! What Twitter lacks in characters, it makes up for in audience size, so you need to figure out how to target a certain segment of the Twitter population with a concise message. Let meaningful hashtags help you join conversations around your purpose. Use Twitter chats to connect with like-minded businesses and individuals to more closely target your message. And instead of thinking words, think images: tweets with images get 2x the engagement of those that don’t. Use images to illustrate purpose and add some words to the picture to stretch out the character limit.
Facebook
In many ways, Facebook offers the best of both Twitter and e-newsletter worlds: your character limit is much higher, you can add images and hashtags, and connect with your close business contacts. In order to best leverage this platform, think about how you can use your Facebook profile to humanize your business, tell stories, and share your purpose through your business experiences. Post #ThrowbackThursday pictures of business founders when they just started out and complement them with a story about how they started the business with purpose in mind. Offer a behind-the-scenes look at a business event to show how you and your employees are working with purpose.
Let us know: how do you show your purpose on different platforms?
Photo Credit: University of Salford via Flickr Creative Commons
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We know that purpose can motivate employees, but what about using it to inspire those who don’t yet work for your business? Not only can purpose be used for retention, but it’s also a powerful tool for recruitment. As we’ve talked about, a strong purpose makes people feel connected to your business operation and make them want to buy into your company. When hiring — especially when hiring millennials, now a large portion of our country’s skilled workers — it’s important to leverage that sentiment.
First, though, let’s take a step back and answer a question you may have been thinking about: Why the focus on millennials? We’ve discussed the millennial generation quite a bit recently on our blog, but the answer is simple: they are the future of today’s companies. They’re the ones leading cutting-edge companies, and they’re also the ones who smart businesses are trying to hire. From Kickstarter and Charity Water to Airbnb’s community service weekends, millennial-led businesses are taking innovative approaches to solving consumer needs in a sustainable, socially-conscious way. The rest of the world needs to keep up and integrate both technology and purpose into their operations. The best way to do that is to start hiring members of the millennial generation.
Keeping your business attractive to purpose-minded jobseekers
In order to stay competitive with millennial-run businesses and prove that your company is forward-thinking and innovative, keep purpose front and center in your hiring efforts. Take your cues from Twitter’s career page. This millennial-led business entices potential employees by framing the jobs that their employees do — regardless of function — through their purpose: helping “millions of people connect, express and discover the world on the Twitter platform.”
It’s easy to see how this company is using their purpose to engage potential employees. Working at Twitter is described as working on important problems in a fast-paced environment. They express multiple times how employees work together, whether through team projects or toward the larger purpose of building the company “across the world.”
What lessons can you learn from this example of purpose-driven recruitment?
- Emphasize connectivity. Show that by joining your business, employees become a part of something much bigger than themselves — your purpose. They should feel they play an integral part in ensuring its success.
- Create urgency. By joining your team, workers should feel that they’re doing something important. Whether that’s connecting people around the world or providing expert customer service, employees need to feel that they are needed.
- Demonstrate a commitment to innovation and growth. Millennials won’t be content sitting around and pushing paper all day — they want to see that your company is going somewhere new, and that they can grow in their career along with the business. By showing that your business is committed to always evolving, you will keep them interested and excited to enter the future with you.
Let us know: how are you using your business purpose to drive recruitment?
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Making an impact is essential to the health of your business. As we discussed in Friday’s blog, research has found that employees who feel that their work serves a greater purpose are more engaged, less stressed and report higher job satisfaction. Combine these findings with the recent University of Warwick study that found that happy employees are 12% more productive, and it’s clear that business purpose and impact is not something your company can afford to ignore.
Every job involves stressful situations and at least a few daunting tasks, but a sense of purpose can keep employees motivated through even these less desirable parts of a job. For the aspects of a job that require creative thinking and special dedication, a sense of purpose is invaluable in motivating employees to redouble their efforts and create novel solutions to business challenges.
Millennials are particularly focused on business purpose, according to Deloitte’s 2015 Millennial Survey. In a survey of full-time workers born after January 1983, Deloitte found that “seventy-five percent of Millennials believe businesses are not focused enough on helping to improve society.” Six in ten chose their current place of work in part based on a “sense of purpose.”
In order to attract and retain employees, especially young employees, your business must make positive impact a priority. In addition, you must use marketing as well as internal communications to make your purpose known to current and potential employees, consumers and stakeholders. Read our upcoming blogs to learn more about communicating your purpose and using it to recruit and inspire potential employees.
