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How Brands Can Leverage Purpose Marketing In a New Era of Consumer Activism
According to the 2019 “Meaningful Brands” study, being meaningful is good for business:
- 77% of consumers prefer to buy from companies who share their values
- 55% of consumers believe companies have a more important role than government today in creating a better future
- Value-driven brands outperform the market by 134%
Yonder CMO, Lisa Roberts, joined Barbara Shipley, SVP, Brand Integration at AARP; Leela Srinivasan, CMO of SurveyMonkey; and Laurel Mintz, CEO of Elevate My Brand for a conversation hosted by Reuters Events about purpose-driven marketing, and why its paramount today. Below is the recording and highlights from the conversation.
Does it feel like consumers are demanding brands to live with purpose today, more than ever before? Why?
Activism isn’t new but social media has reinvigorated it with frequency, visibility, and accessibility, giving consumers more influence than ever. Most of them believe social platforms play a critical role in social change — in fact ~70% of Gen Z and Millennials believe this. These are generations of digital natives, driven to advocate for their values, and they know how to use the mechanics of today’s internet to do it. Brands will do well to know them — really know them.
A global pandemic, racial justice movement, and an important election has put new pressure on brands to know where they stand. Factions are using social media to influence buyer decision-making and every aspect of a brand is fair play — store policies, where they source products, employees and culture, the executive team and the causes they support…
Brands are learning that marketing is no longer just about catchy campaigns to sell more. Our marketing platforms have become platforms for activism. There is a lot of opportunity and risk in this for sure.
Knowing which values and beliefs are keeping your consumers connected to your brand can help you identify advocates, and build campaigns to engage them in really powerful ways. Brands out of touch with consumers will miss out on opportunities to build cultural allies, or worse, come across as tone deaf and be at risk of being cancelled.
How can consumer influence impact your brand? We wrote this handbook to help brands stay on top of highly-influential conversations online that are affecting buyer decision-making.
How can brands leverage purpose marketing in today’s environment?
“It became very clear that the older population was much more vulnerable to COVID-19,” said Barbara Shipley, SVP, Brand Integration at AARP. “Marketing has become about listening to what our customers need, and to giving them to the best information about how they can get what they need from us.”
Indeed, consumers have turned to brands as a source of truth. In fact, according to Edelman, 84% of people globally said they want brands to play the role of information source.
This has forced companies to reevaluate the role they need to play in customers’ lives,” said Lisa Roberts, Chief Marketing Officer at Yonder. “Listening is a great start, but you have to make sure you’re understanding. Words that are trending online do not provide the context in which those words are expressed.”
The truth is consumers’ dials and B.S. meters are more fine-tuned than ever. We live in a world where any brand action (or inaction) can turn into a social or political issue on a dime. We’ve seen this play out as cancel culture. “It feels mean-spirited and immature in some ways, but really it’s just people exercising their voice and their right to speak up when they see something that just doesn’t sit right with them,” said Leela Srinivasan, CMO of SurveyMonkey
Brands need to know that in the current environment, you are likely walking into a minefield every time you make a statement or take action. You don’t have to please everyone, but it’s your responsibility to know where those landmines are. Know who is going to stand with you, who is not going to like what you have to say… don’t walk blindly into that minefield.
“If you have already been living a purpose around things like racial justice or any other issue playing out in society… stay the course. Maybe even get louder,” said Roberts. “Otherwise, go back and figure out what are the dots people are going to connect about your brand, and come with a purpose-driven plan that reflects your understanding of your allies and adversaries in the market.
Find influential groups online driving narratives that impact public opinion. Learn who supports (or opposes) your brand values so you can build allies or avoid getting sideswiped.
