Ocean plastic is not going to be your brand lifebuoy, most likely your Achilles Heel.
Most brands didn’t become irrelevant because they forgot their purpose, their WHY, but because they forgot WHO to play a meaningful role for. Think about the majority of reality TV gluing millions to the screen every day. It’s essentially a story of transformation, from Survivor, where it’s about facing your own limitations, to The Biggest Loser, where it’s about overweight contestants battling to lose weight.
When your brand plays a similar part in people’s lives and can own that position, you can potentially charge for the outcomes people achieve, like better health, finance or skills. I call this a WHO void.
How to avoid the #HeroTrap
It pays to use the WHO void as a positioning canvas: look at your competitors’ position, look at your products or services, look at WHO people want to become – and you’ll potentially find your WHO void. And you’ll become a transformative brand.
The idea that somehow a brand has to dominate our world, have a strong opinion or shape our world in its own image, that’s an old view. Life is one long continuous journey towards realising ourselves, and a brand’s one valuable contribution is to show people the way. Our commissioned study comparing purposeful brands with transformative brands showcased that people are on average 29,4% more willing to pay a premium for the transformative brands.
What do you think? Do we need to reframe the way we look at purpose? Is purpose still delivering?
#TheHeroTrap #TheBook #PostPurpose #Branding #Purpose #TransformativeBrands #TheWHOvoid #AlwaysAskWHO
