Bigger Than This
Page 3
Think of ways brands in other verticals are winning consumers’ hearts through unique stories; then see if there is room for similar stories in your niche. Coming up with such a story for your brand may involve daunting tasks such as changing operational processes, staffing, the way you source product or the location where you work or deliver what you sell. If the change supports or even builds a bigger brand story, your short-term loss will be rewarded in the long term.
Make your unique story the backbone of your brand’s positioning, and keep talking the talk, followed by sincerely walking the walk.
If you have a good story, weave it into everything you say and everything you do. It’s not an annoyance to your audience. It’s your brand glue that holds it all together. Let the world form an opinion based on your repeat actions supporting your honest story, and your audience will turn into brand adopters and advocates. This is different from shouting what you want them to buy into from a soapbox, which will turn them off and ultimately bore them.
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BELIEF
When values are
bigger than the product
The financial crisis of 2008 led to uncertainty and unemployment, which led to people losing trust not only in big banks but in other large corporations, too. Not coincidentally, people went frugal and started crafting and cooking again, preferring local eateries and buying artisanal products. Many small brands were born out of consumers’ desire to associate with those they could trust. New tribes formed based on a desire for honest products crafted by honest people – people they can trust.
We are still feeling the repercussions of this shift. Today, we are seeing the biggest of brands distancing themselves openly from politicians whose values don’t align with those of their brand. “While companies are naturally designed to be moneymaking enterprises, they are adapting to meet new social and political expectations in sometimes startling ways,” David Gelles states in The New York Times.vi Even Fortune 500 companies understand they have to stay true to their tribe and the values supporters bought into. Today, it is a bigger risk not to speak up. One of the biggest brand rules of all time is “Do not talk politics.” This all went out the window, sparked by a divided America in the 2016 elections and the resulting controversial leadership of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Brexit took place the same year in Great Britain. The largest consumer brands from Nike, Star-bucks, Airbnb, Apple and Amazon to Uber and Microsoft all spoke out against Trump’s immigration reform. Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus pulled Ivanka Trump’s fashion line. Coca-Cola, Airbnb and even Budweiser aired commercials supporting diversity in obvious opposition to POTUS’ ideologies. REI’s CEO, Jerry Stritzke, spoke out publicly against immigration reform as well as the plan to review 100,000 acres of public lands and urged people to write Secretary Ryan Zinke to keep the protections in place.
These brands are
vocal because
it is expected of
them by today’s
consumers.
Their message: We are in this together. We share the same beliefs.
A day after Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees, the Twitter hashtag #BoycottStarbucks was trending. Despite any lost sales, Starbucks’ decision was a risk well worth taking. The brand had to take a stand in support of the values it shares with the core demographic it serves.
Any brand can stand for something meaningful, but to do that, it has to define and embody its values. Ideally, these values will align with the values of not only its customers and clients, but also the community and the brand’s contributions to it. You and the company have to intentionally “live the story that embodies the brand’s values,” local business advocate DW Ferrell, CEO and co-founder of Localism!, told me in an interview I conducted for Forbes.com. To do that, Ferrell suggests asking yourself, “How will you align profit and purpose? How will your model support your mission?” Part of this entails creating your own vernacular and defining your terms. When you do this and share it publicly with your community, members who share your views will celebrate your values; others may go elsewhere. This forces you to hold yourself accountable. You are saying, “This is our ideal, our identity. Does it resonate with you? Great.
We now need
to be true to
you,
because
you
are behind us.
Aspiration, a financial services firm in Marina del Rey, California, is a brand built on empathy that not only expresses its values but also is using its belief to try to disrupt an industry. Its tagline is “A financial firm you can fall in love with. Banking and investing that puts you and your conscience first.” Aspiration donates a dime of every dollar earned to charities that bring economic opportunity to struggling Americans. It does this with a spin that connects deeply with today’s Zeitgeist by focusing on being “the financial firm for all” that invests only in “good.” It also uses the “Pay What Is Fair” model (see more on page 152). Customers get to be part of all of that while being able to use any ATM in the world free of charge. Too good to be true? That remains to be seen, but given the mindset of the next generation (as well as my own, Generation X), this is a belief well worth nurturing.
Two very different values – nurture and nourishment – are at the heart of Australia’s “first rescued food supermarket,” OzHarvest Market, a nonprofit venture. It puts food that is past its expiration date and would otherwise go to waste onto its shelves and lets customers pay as much or as little as they wish. Some conceivably may leave the OzHarvest Market with a full bag of groceries with a hug instead of any financial transaction. There’s no innovation here, just the removal of sales and “2-for-1” signs, fueled by a strong belief that food should not go to waste but instead go to people who need it the most. It is a belief so strong that anyone can buy into it, literally. Most for-profit brands can’t afford to give away what they sell, but we can all learn from OzHarvest Market’s consistent devotion to its values.
CASE STUDY
GEA
COMMODITY PRODUCT: Shoes
While spending quality time with my folks back in Austria, I came across shoemaker GEA, a beautiful example of how belief can define a brand. The company produces handmade, long-lasting and easy-to-repair traditional footwear onsite in one of Austria’s regions with the highest unemployment. GEA’s social and environmental record is outstanding. So far so great, but now add the underlying layer of belief: the shoe company publishes a political newspaper called Brennstoff (translated: Fuel), in which the charismatic owner, Heini Staudinger, boldly voices his opinions on hot topics such as politics, religion and the economy. He pushes the envelope on a very clear and steady social course, one that many don’t appreciate; one that upsets corporations, investors, banks and the government; and one that appreciators truly love. The for-profit company, which is named after the goddess of earth, condemns consumerism and capitalism (even releasing its own currency called “Waldviertler,” which is accepted by 200 regional businesses), yet it attracts so much money through crowdfunding that its team is looking past its many stores to unconventional ways of expanding its operations, such as founding an academy. Staudinger welcomes the chance to explain his reasons. “I am not very interested in capital. I am very interested in life,” he says in the documentary Das Leben ist keine Generalprobe (Life Is Not a Rehearsal by Nicole Scherg, which I found out was coincidentally produced by my brother’s production firm, NGF).
Being unafraid to exclude the many and to be extremely powerful to the few is what makes a true brand based on shared belief and values truly great. GEA is living proof that going against the grain and staying true to your personal beliefs, even if they are based on extreme political opinions (or religious beliefs), can be a powerful branding tool. It may turn out to be your very own undiluted and uncensored personality that will turn into your brand’s personality, just as it did for Staudinger.
THE
BELIEF
COMMANDMENTS
; Shared values will always have a bigger impact on your tribe than your products alone.
The only way to deeply connect with your tribe through a shared belief is by deeply understanding your members. This takes a lot of monitoring, listening and, most of all, conversing in an open and non-corporate manner on social media channels as well as in person (at events rather than focus groups, in case you were thinking it was that easy).
Passionate beliefs, if voiced in an honest, empathetic and bold manner, can become the driving force of your business. Shared values and the expression of passionate beliefs will also likely play a significant role in sparking sales and increasing the value of shares as an added benefit.
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CAUSE
When the cause is
bigger than the product
Aligning your commodity brand’s existence with a cause can give you strong brand positioning if done truthfully. Will Young, founder and president of Sydney-based Campos Coffee, states his reason for a purpose-and cause-oriented brand in a company video: “If we are not in it for good, then there is no reason to wake up every morning and go to work.” His words would not be as powerful if Campos Coffee had not demonstrated its commitment to ethics and philanthropy in coffee by being a Fair Trade Certified organization that calls itself “Direct Trade” by improving education and living standards of the communities with which it works.
There is a powerful reason his approach works. Over the past five years, it has become somewhat of a staple for startups founded by millennials to identify a social cause that can be activated in an authentic way to manifest that the purpose of a product or service goes deeper than solely generating sales. “Purpose” is ingrained in their thinking. The idea is, “We don’t work for money alone. Money is a necessity but not the reason we are going into the workforce.” Millennials’ emphasis on purpose is probably why there is even a startup, Pledge 1%, to foster startups that seek to commit 1% of their equity, product, profit or time to charity. As Pledge 1% CEO Amy Lesnick told Fast Company, “In 15 years we might not even exist as early-stage philanthropy will be as common as setting aside equity for future employees.”vii
The best way to tap into the cause-related marketing trend is to think unselfishly. If you are an entrepreneur considering selling any product, whether a commodity or not, ask yourself why it matters to bring it into this world at this very point in time (and for the long term) and why your audience will deeply care about an often otherwise labeled “so what?” product.
One brand that has answered this question in a unique way is the Package Free Shop. It started as a commodity store (wait, a store just by itself is seen as a commodity by many today!) that specializes in selling commodities such as toothbrushes, razors, soap, bags, laundry detergent, etc. The Package Free Shop is 100% cause-based, selling re-usable alternatives to single-use disposable commodities while teaching customers how to live a “zero-waste life.”viii
Also ask yourself what your brand will be giving back. Can you identify a social cause that can be activated in an authentic way to manifest that the purpose of the product/service goes deeper than solely generating sales? That is the easiest way.
Research shows how much consumers value brands that support charitable causes. A recent cause marketing survey conducted by research firm Tolunaix showed that 39% of consumers buy into integrated cause strategies such as the “sell one, donate one” model used by TOMS shoes. The majority of
CONSUMERS
ACTIVELY SEEK OUT
BRANDS THAT
DONATE TO
CAUSES AND SAY
THAT THEY WOULD
BE MORE LIKELY TO
MAKE A PURCHASE
OF A BRAND THAT
SUPPORTS A
SHARED CAUSE,
according to the survey. Millennials top that list with 49% seeking out cause brands.
Buy-one-give-one marketing is just one of the many ways brands are connecting with a cause. Here are some other creative ways startups are giving back and connecting their cause with a target audience’s consciousness outside of the one-for-one model:
•Supporting artisans by ethically sourcing products in developing countries and providing them with steady work at far-better-than-usual pay, along with social programs, education and skills training.
•Giving back 1% to your (shared) cause.
•Creating an eco-friendly, organic, chemical-free, cruelty-free model (you name it) as long as it supports a shared cause with your audience.
•Equal pay for women, which is sad to have to even mention still today but is unfortunately not available in most companies.
•Form a B Corp, thereby having “to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency” (for more information, see https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps).x
•Hire staff deemed “unemployable” because of stigmatized health conditions, impairments or felony convictions, and provide a second chance.
•Run a co-op, owned by your employees or your customers.
“We entered into a
broken industry
with a devastating
lack of transparency
and innovation, so
integrating practices
inline with the values
of a B Corp was a
challenge that we were
eager to take on. That
challenge has rewarded
us in multiple ways,
including the strong
relationships we foster
with our fishermen,
our employees and our
consumers.
– Ken Plasse, CEO, Fishpeople
Of course, no matter what method you choose, your cause has to create true value for the recipients (both the consumer as well as the less-fortunate beneficiary). It’s also important to think all the way to the production of your products. Bennison, for instance, has “mothers in Peru” craft its “one-for-one” line of children’s wear.
But don’t just jump on the bandwagon until you’ve really considered all of the implications of cause-related marketing. Not everyone believes that utilizing cause in a business as an underlying foundation is a good thing. Kevin O’Leary (of Shark Tank TV fame) is a skeptic. “Modifying the corporate model to solve all of society’s problems is simply un-American,” he ranted in an Inc. interviewxi in March 2016. “We don’t need more companies trying to solve social problems. We need businesses to return more capital to their owners so they can do what they have always done – pass it forward.”
He has a point. There’s also value in turning a profit and simply donating to charity. Applying the simple principle of “buy-one-give-one” (or BOGO) to everything in the kitchen sink gets tiring and has a tendency to feel more like a marketing stunt than a true-to-the-heart foundation of a business if it’s not authentic to your brand. Cinnamon Janzer and Lauren Weinstein put it in even harsher words in an articlexii in Fast Company in 2015: “In reality, companies engaging in buy-to-give efforts are in the business of selling ego boosts disguised as social change, popularized by our ability to craft the appearance of an altruistic persona by placing TOMS shoes on our feet, artisanal jewelry made from disenfranchised women around our necks, and carefully curated images on our social media accounts.” Recognizing that the buy-one-give-one model does not get to the very root of social issues such as poverty, more social enterprises are using “new and improved” models, according to the site responsibuys. “In fact, they are often now categorized into three types: 1.0 companies that treat symptoms, 2.0 companies that treat causes, and 3.0 companies that restore,” states the site.xiii
Sometimes, cause-related marketing misfires when a brand doesn’t consider how its way of expressing support for the cause will affect transactions. When I picked up my energy bar at Starbucks recently, I believed that the baristas had my mobile order confused. I told them I had requested a KIND bar only to learn they did no
t have those, so I looked up my order, and the bar I was actually waiting for was called “This Bar Saves Lives.” How do you say, “Oh, that’s right, I ordered a This Bar Saves Lives Madagascar Vanilla, Almond and Honey bar”? It gets awkward, and it shows how the brand seems to be so much about a cause (saving someone’s life, apparently) that it forgot the consumer’s basic interactions with the very product along the way.
In other cases, startup entrepreneurs solely rely on a cause while offering an inferior product. That was the case with Project 7, a brand that learned the hard way that “the product will always matter more than the cause” by pivoting into great products after launching solely cause-focused but inferior and generic offerings such as bottled water, chewing gum and breath mints, as Entrepreneur magazine reported.xiv
Finally, if you make cause the center of your brand philosophy, watch out for what I call cause-stamping (think of it as a cousin of greenwashing). The TOMS-branded Apple Watch band (advertised with the marketing message “Give Time”) reflects a clear brand misalignment despite TOMS’ provision of a year of solar light to a person in need for every band purchased. Unlike TOMS shoes, Apple Watches are clearly a luxury item, priced beyond the reach of many consumers, making the feelgood brand connection seem awkwardly inauthentic when seen on one and the same product. For Apple, it may just have been a sad attempt to buy into a “still-cool” brand ethos in times when the company lacked product innovation headlines.
Today’s exceptional cause-based startups find a truly unique problem to solve by giving back or by applying the otherwise overplayed BOGO tactic. Take socks company Bombas, for example:
CASE STUDY
BOMBAS
COMMODITY PRODUCT: Socks