With Purpose 🩻🔎🦄 EBH

You need to define your purpose to have a strong brand

The core of any employer brand is the company’s purpose. Or maybe defining and describing a company’s purpose is the pinnacle of what a good employer brand should be trying to do. Either way, you can’t have a strong employer brand until you are standing with both feet squarely on your purpose.

Except that none of that is even remotely true.

First off, let’s get real. The purpose of a business is to make money. The secondary purpose of a business is to sustain itself (so that it can make more money). The tertiary purpose of a business is to create customers (again, to ensure the flow of money).

That’s not me talking, that’s straight up Milton Friedman, who said that the reason a business exists is to create profit, an idea held and repeated by WSJ, HBR, The Economist, and any number of CEOs and business leaders.

We are bombarded by the idea that our employer brand is built on the foundation of purpose, but very rarely do I see employer branding based on “we’re making money!”

So let’s get clear about the concept (and value) of purpose.

Realness?

Purpose in brand only makes sense if it is something worth sacrificing something for. The only reason we think of a company like REI in terms of brand purpose isn’t because it said it wanted its people to spend time outside, but because it was willing to “give up” its black Friday sales in the process. The purpose came with a real cost. Sure, it more than made up for it in free publicity and later sales, but because the choice came with a price tag, that purpose has some value.

For every REI giving up holiday sales, I can show you a hundred companies who boast how much they care about women in March but don’t offer more than the legal minimum of family leave year-round. Saying they care about women cost them nothing, so it’s a purpose claim whose value is exactly the same.

What does it mean?

Purpose only has value if it has meaning and relevance to the audience. Say you care about helping people reach their potential. Great. But… what does that mean? What have you invested into this idea? How does it manifest itself for anyone in the company? What is the company willing to do to live up to that purpose?

Rarely is purpose couched in terms of anything specific. It is usually a grandiose idea that may not (or even can not) be achieved. You’re here to give people the best possible place to work, but what does that look like to me? You offer a focus on customers, but how does that serve me?

Differentiation?

Every single pharma company talks about its purpose. Turns out, they are all exactly the same: save lives/make lives better. That’s fine, but when all companies have the same purpose, what value does it have? Does one company allow me to save more lives? Of course not (and saying as much is a fast path to getting sued).

So if your purpose isn’t any different, what good is it doing you?

It’s opposite?

Here’s the real problem I have with purpose: there’s no arguing against it.

When I was in college I had an amazing public speaking class (Hey Mr Fowler!) where we had to finish the course by giving a persuasive presentation. He had one rule: you weren’t allowed to use abortion or drunk driving as a topic. Why? His thinking was that no one will ever change their mind about abortion (agree), and there is no opposition to a drunk driving argument: no one is in favor of drunk driving.

Your purpose is the environment? Great. Even oil companies say that. Your purpose is to elevate your employees? Who’s disagreeing with that? You care about making the world a better place? Who’s against that?

Leaning on purpose is a cheat. A hedge. A way to say something vaguely positive without saying anything.

Instead? Get specific. What do you offer employees? What do you reward? How are you different? To whom is that difference valuable?

That will serve you far better than a purpose.

Culture is like a shadow.
You cannot change it, but it changes all the time.
Culture is read-only.
- Niels Pflaeging

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***Made with no hormones, artificial sweeteners or ChatGPT***

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