As the media heated up before the Masters golf tournament, a Wall Street Journal piece noted that the PGA Tour is a non-profit organization “that turns over its excess cash to charity.” Last year, this amounted to $130 million, which is big money for any philanthropy. For comparison, total prize money for the 2013 PGA Tour season is $298 million.

I re-read the “excess cash” sentence about four times. The sport of rich white men, awash in corporate sponsorships, is giving big chunks of the money to those less fortunate. Who knew? Not me, or any of my friends who are deep into golf. I bet a lot of people who read that story had the same reaction.

As I sat there, I realized that I’ve been having this reaction more often lately. The deeper you go into sustainability, the more good news you find – but mostly you have to find it yourself. Except for a handful of brands, companies are whispering about their good works, if they are saying anything at all.

This has to change. How are we going to harness the spending power of this planet to save it if we don’t know which companies should get our business?

Even people who should know about this stuff often don’t know.

A woman I know works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in West Africa, helping people become more self-sufficient in farming and agricultural production. So she knows from aid agencies. Last weekend, we were talking about Malian music, and I happened to mention that UPS had flown a free airlift into the country last year for UNICEF.

They also made a couple of relief flights into Mauritania. Something like 289 tons of food and educational kits for children at risk of famine due to a perfect storm in the Sahel: Armed conflict was wracking a region with a broken system of supply and demand — during a seasonably vulnerable period of the annual food production cycle. As a result, refugees from the fighting were flooding into poor countries, and the kids were not getting enough to eat.

Of course my acquaintance knew all this firsthand. But she had no idea about the donated relief flights. She was also amazed that it came from a corporation. Her response was a single word, uttered with more or less complete disbelief: “UPS?!”

Those of us in the corporate world, even only partly, must start talking about the good stuff more loudly. We have got to start demanding that the people in the white hats stand up and be counted. We have to tell the good stories far more often, and far more effectively.

A good example has already played out in the wine business, starting about ten years ago. A few of us began writing about organic wine-growing. But we soon learned that the wineries that are doing the most for the environment didn’t want us to talk about it. And you want to know why? Because they were afraid people would think their wine was dirty and scruffy and crunchy granola, not smooth and powerful and worth good money.

So I started writing about their silence. Long story short, today wineries are proud to talk about clean, green viticulture, and there are organizations that certify them so we can shop with confidence.

Every industry needs to do this. And it’s not like they have to hunt hard for the money. They are already spending it, big-time, on advertising, public relations, sustainability reporting, and employee communications.

They need to tune up the message and get one thing clear: Corporations can move the sustainability needle faster than any other type of organization on earth, and we can help them do it by voting with our dollars.

Given a choice, wouldn’t you support a company that left the world better than it found it?

Photo credit.

Comments (0) #brand #Cause Marketing #purpose beyond profit #strategy #sustainability

If you want to run a successful business with a purpose beyond profit, you had better be good at profit.

You have to know your business well enough to shred carbon out of it and inject humanity into it without blowing up the bottom line. Your company also has to be a star in whatever supply chain it’s in, because if you don’t impress your closest peers, customers and suppliers, then your sustainability programs probably don’t amount to much.

In short, if your company is succeeding with sustainability, it’s almost certainly well managed.

This seems so obvious, I started to wonder why we never hear it. Wall Street hammers companies that show evidence of bad management, and grants lofty premiums to the market value of well-managed companies. So why aren’t sustainable businesses taking advantage of this?

The reason is that it’s easy to say, but hard to communicate. We can easily deduce that sustainable companies are well managed, but companies can’t turn around and say that to customers and society and expect a warm hug.

Why? Because it sounds like bragging, or a con. If I say you should trust me, your BS-detectors go on full alert. If I tell you I’m good-looking, you immediately think there’s something wrong with my appearance, or that I need to get over myself.

This goes double in sustainability, because of the green-washing and double-speak corporations have wallowed in ever since Rachel Carson warned the world about pesticides. When British Petroleum changed its name to “BP” and hinted that the letters stood for “Beyond Petroleum,” snickers were heard around the world. Then came the horrifically bad management that cost the company billions from refinery explosions and oil spill disasters. The snickers would have become outright laughter, except that so many innocent people had to die for BP profits.

So there’s some skepticism at this point, even among those of us who believe that corporations are going save the planet in order to save their profits, while the government sector stands by wringing its hands.

Of course the status quo for many people in business is that profit and sustainability do not even belong in the same conversation. They believe that a company directing management attention to the environment or human rights, beyond the strict legal minimum, must be full of loose screws.

So if you want to communicate that your business has a purpose beyond profit – including being good at the profit part – how do you communicate it?

Emotively.

Logic and cleverness won’t work. You have to create a fusion of intellectual and emotional communication that links your values and aspirations to those of the people you’re talking to. Even die-hard fans of Milton Friedman (“The only business of business is profit”) do not desert Berkshire Hathaway when Warren Buffett goes all gooey on sustainability. They have bonded with Berkshire’s brand of patient profit-making so deeply that they willingly suspend their own logic when he talks about the need for corporations to protect the environment.

This is the power of emotive branding at work. It’s a wonderful thing, because it means that ideas about sustainability can infect non-believers like a virus and, eventually, kill the belief that purpose beyond profit is a mistake.

Maybe it’s not possible to become as influential as Berkshire Hathaway. But it’s possible to communicate authentically that your purpose beyond profit is proof of good management – using investor capital wisely, planning for the future, and demanding technologies and public policies that make the economy more sustainable.

As Dizzy Dean, a famous baseball pitcher, put it in 1934, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.” Today we might say, “It ain’t bragging if you have an emotive brand.”

Image: Designspiration.net

Comments (0) #brand #business #Communications #CSR #purpose beyond profit #strategy

Some brands are built around products or ideas that are inherently emotional.

But true emotional resonance happens when these brands recognize that their competitors own the same emotional space.

Brands seeking to rise above the fray dig deeper into the well of positive emotions that bond brands and people.

They build upon, complement, and extend that innate emotional “kick” they deliver with a set of ancillary feelings chosen to support the brand’s purpose beyond profit.

A unique purpose and emotional aura distance emotionally meaningful brands from their competitors. They draw – and keep – the best customers and employees by deeply bonding with people in highly unique, personally relevant and emotionally important ways.

Comments (0) #brand #Brand Strategy #differentiation #emotion #emotional #emotions #emotive #feelings #leadership #mattering #meaning #meaningful #meaningful presence #presence #purpose #purpose beyond profit #relevance #strategy #vision

I wish I had $100 for every time a client told me “We could never say that.”

This is often the response when I recommend that a company get more transparent or be more accountable in a particular area. I always wait until the timing is good and the chances for public approval are high. But for some reason, the person across the table has the same reflexive answer almost every time: “We could never say that.”

It doesn’t matter if the recommendation is about something that’s technically public knowledge anyway, like most OSHA statistics, or something more scary and electable, such as the number of on-job fatalities last year. The response is the same, often accompanied by exclamations of horror. “We’ve never revealed that! I would lose my job!”

The strange thing is that when I escalate the recommendation, it is almost always approved – but by someone in or near the C-suite. “Of course we’ll disclose that,” they say. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Excellent question.

Why do the people at the top of the house feel comfortable getting more transparent and accountable, but people on the middle floors don’t know it? Why is the inherent conservatism of corporations more entrenched lower down than it is higher up?

I believe it’s not the fault of the managers and directors I work with most often. They fully believe they are doing what their senior executives want, by protecting the company’s reputation.

The problem is, those senior executives have turned a corner about transparency and accountability. They’ve seen the light of sustainability, usually because they looked around and saw their peers, competitors and best customers becoming more progressive. They understand that their brand can suffer if its reputation is protected in the wrong way.

Some years back I was writing the sustainability report for a U.S.-based industrial conglomerate that owned a contract security division. One year that division killed a few people during a hot pursuit. I put the data about that episode into the text alongside standard disclosures about workplace fatalities.

My client said, “We could never say this. I would lose my job.”

I argued that human lives are material to any business. We finally agreed that I would take any consequences for the disclosure as it made its way up the review ladder, so I kept escalating it until it came time for the CEO to review it. His direct reports recommended that he delete it, but he didn’t. Instead he ordered them to sell the security division.

He knew that if something about his company was so repugnant that his people wanted to cover it up, it was better to get rid of it than lie about it. That’s leadership.

The problem is that many leaders are not communicating their evolving perspective to their own people.

If you’ve ever been in the position of saying “We could never do that” only to be overruled by someone higher up, ask that person what else you should know.

If you’re the person who did the overruling, ask yourself: What else do I need to tell the people under me? What other conversations are we having in the C-suite that are not getting transmitted to the people who actually implement our strategy?

Any time a company moves toward a purpose beyond profit – even the most minute, incremental change – it must let its own people know. This is a huge factor in employee engagement with sustainability. People on the front lines need to know they’re part of something bigger. And it’s management’s job to make sure they know.

Thanks for reading.

Image: Sou Fujimoto Architects

Comments (2) #accountable #brand #C-suite #Employee Engagement #purpose beyond profit #Reputation #sustainability #transparent

At Emotive Brand, we’re big on the concept of purpose beyond profit. Apparently, people interpret this phrase in interesting ways.

Some jump to the conclusion that it means “purpose instead of profit.” That’s a valid approach for Benefit Corporations, perhaps, but most companies – including this one – would prefer to make some money.

Some people think the phrase means “profit plus being good to the environment.” We’re okay with that definition, but it’s still too easy for many brands to dismiss for one reason or another.

The deeper definition applies to all brands, if they can make a simple shift in perspective.

There’s a teaching story about perspective used in the field of psychology. A Buddhist psychologist and a Freudian psychologist meet at a conference. The Freudian asks the Buddhist to explain how their approaches could be different. Aren’t the things that make people unhappy the same everywhere, and don’t psychologists have to deal with those things to get people back to normal?

The Buddhist says, “Yes, with one difference. In Buddhist psychology, the goal is not getting people from negative 5 back to zero. The goal is to go beyond zero to plus five, to plus ten, to a hundred.”

The point of this story for psychologists is that they can do much more than undo deficits.

The point of this story for us is that most people in business would say that their goal is the same as the Buddhist. They want to get their profit beyond zero to plus five, or plus ten, or whatever the target might be.

They would be half right, like the Freudian. The shift in perspective for brands is recognizing that the customer is still stuck at zero.

Most of the time, we pay for things and get what we consider equivalent value. We trade money for something else we need, like food or clothing or travel. We take a chance that we’re getting roughly equal value for our money, and if we do, we’re even. Zero-sum game.

In other words, no brand loyalty. Nothing for the brand beyond the profit.

The best brands generate loyalty – and higher profits – by getting us way past zero, so far that we feel like we won a prize.

Think of a brand you identify with, one that beats zero for you personally. (This may take a moment.) When you identify them, there are almost certainly two reasons. First, the brand means something to you because of who you are. Second, that “something” is not about a product or service. It’s the way the company approaches its products or services.

People who love Southwest Airways love it because of how democratic it feels. Actually flying an airplane safely has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy. But it does make customers feel that they are treated equally, by their equals, without a lot of pretense. People who value those qualities feel good about themselves when they fly Southwest.

People who own BMWs used to drive me nuts the way they talked about the cars – until I got stuck with one as a rental. It hit me with physical force that people were not talking about the car. They love driving itself. A company that gets who they are, and makes them feel more alive behind the wheel, gets their love for life. Turns out I am one of those people. After I drove the car, I bought one. I went from sneering at BMW snobs to thinking of them as my brothers and sisters.

Again, you don’t have to love driving to build a car. But to make your customers feel something meaningful beyond the machine, you have to approach that engineering in a particular way.

To take the best-known example of all, look at how Apple relentlessly changed the emphasis in IT from technology to us, the people who use it. We humans don’t love technology, or technology brands per se. We love expressing ourselves, and technology that magically, invisibly makes us more expressive is beyond price.

It’s also beyond profit, even if Apple makes a ton of money. Steve Jobs’ legacy is a company that doesn’t care how hard something is, doesn’t take its cues from what other people are doing, doesn’t let conventional thinking limit what it does or where it goes.

And that’s only partly because he studied Buddhism. It’s also because we all want to be like that at some level.

We all have a best self we know we want to be and express. We want brands to recognize and speak to that best self — not just to the zero-sum consumer who needs to put food on the table and keep a roof overhead.

Purpose beyond profit means reaching into people’s hearts for where their sense of self lives, and lighting it up.

If you have your own examples – brands that take you past zero with what they mean to you – let us know and we’ll share.

Comments (0) #brand #Brand Strategy #ceo #Emotive Brand #purpose beyond profit #Steve Jobs

I recently had the opportunity to interview Gianpiero Petriglieri, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, Europe’s top business school.

Following our fruitful talk, as I rode the train back from Fontainebleau, the home of INSEAD, I reflected on a thought from our interview.

We were talking about how people identify with leaders, when Professor Petriglieri said:

“Leadership happens when you attract others through your thinking, your beliefs, and your behavior. Or more precisely, when others come to see their best self reflected in your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.”

As the train made its way through the forest that surrounds the Chateau de Fontainebleau, I related Gianpiero’s observation to the idea that drives emotive branding. We talk about transforming the way a business reaches out to people by making the business’s thinking, beliefs and behavior more meaningful to people. Our reasoning is that people can better “identify” with – or a Professor Petriglieri put it, “see their best self reflected in” – the business’s thoughts, believes and actions.

The idea of “best self” points to what I call the quest for meaning. I believe we have both an innate selfishness as well as a natural sense of empathy and compassion. We constantly go between “me” and “we” and seek the best ways to satisfy both.

As I’ve written about in The Age of Meaning, for years marketing exploited the “we” factor. However, the heady days of “the age of opulence” were disrupted by a massive economic reversal, coupled with on-going wars and crippling political logjams. At the same time, the Internet opened the flood gates of information and misinformation. It also lifted the curtain to reveal the ways business was either working for – or against – the common good.

Shell-shocked and disillusioned, many people no longer identified as “consumers”. They instead started looking for ways to create meaning in their lives – to live their “best self” through their beliefs and behavior. They started applying new criteria to the where they wanted to work, what they wanted to buy, and from whom they bought.

And while this awareness may not be top of mind for all people, their needs are awakened when presented by people, ideas or, indeed, business offerings that show them how to forge a better balance between self-interest and the good of their community, society in general, or the planet they occupy.

As such, meaningful businesses not only reflect the desire for greater meaning, they foster the demand by giving people ways to experience their “best selves”.

Read my full interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri here.

Comments (0) #business #ceo #cmo #feelings #human #leadership #mattering #meaning #purpose #purpose beyond profit #relevance #vision

“I believe leaders are most inspiring when their message is deeply personal and yet resonant with the concerns of others.” – Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD

There’s a parallel between what makes a strong leader and what defines a meaningful business.

As my recent interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at INSEAD underscores, a key driver of effective 21st Century business leadership will be mindfulness.

Mindful leaders combine a strong sense of self purpose with a capacity to make that purpose meaningful to others.

The discipline of emotive branding strives to create mindfulness at an organizational level. It looks deep inside a business for the seeds of meaning. From these, it articulates a strong purpose – one that deliberately goes beyond profit – that serves as the bridge to the concerns of others. It then outlines the steps the business needs to take to change the way it speaks and behaves as it reaches out to the people vital to its success (customers, prospects, employees, recruits, partners, suppliers, investors, and so on).

As such, the “organization message” we help businesses create is “deeply personal” in nature (authentic, genuine, true to itself). It also is crafted to resonate with the concerns of others through personal relevance (“this makes sense”; “this matters to me”) and emotional importance (“this feels worthwhile”; “I feel gratified”).

Mindful leaders attract great followers.

Meaningful businesses turn that energy into industry leadership.

Read my full interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri here.

Comments (0) #Brand Strategy #business #ceo #cmo #leadership #mattering #meaning #meaningful #purpose #purpose beyond profit #strategy #vision

Stand naked in front of the mirror and ask, “What makes me so special?”

Be humble. Be just the little speck in the universe we all are. Be without possessions. Be without the mantle of power. Be without the expectation of respect. Be without the right to privilege.

Be essential. Be primal. Be human. Be you.

Comments (0) #business #ceo #emotion #feelings #human #mattering #meaning #purpose #purpose beyond profit #vision

Make efforts to reach out in meaningful ways to others.

Go beyond salaries and bonuses. Go beyond sales and discounts. Go deep inside the hearts and minds of the people who make your business work. Find the small ways in which you can fundamentally change the way these people feel about you.

A small gesture. A thoughtful act. A simple, “thank you”.

Comments (0) #business #ceo #emotion #feelings #human #mattering #meaning #purpose #purpose beyond profit #vision

Stop standing behind business-speak, rhetoric, and statistics.

Speak honestly. Speak freely. Speak in ways your audience (be they your employees or your customers) will understand and appreciate.

Be open. Be candid. Be true. Be real.

Comments (0) #business #ceo #emotion #feelings #human #mattering #meaning #purpose #purpose beyond profit #vision