POV: The Inextricable Link Between Purpose + Sustainability…
… and how it impacts your business
Pop quiz: What does your brand stand for— and can you prove it? If it takes you more than ten seconds to answer this, dear reader, we must talk.
In today’s market, your brand is every action your organization takes — from how you treat your employees to how you interact with consumers, other stakeholders, and the world. And we increasingly see that winning brands — we call them whole brands — are those that operate as a unified whole, driven by a core belief that’s fueled with purpose.
Purpose is not an isolated idea or a marketing tactic. It is an everything tool, an ideology that can and should guide and inspire everything your brand does — from your organization’s culture to its sustainability initiatives.
Wait, what’s that you say? Purpose drives sustainability?
Yes, and this is how we frame it: If purpose is your brand’s why, sustainability is your how. It’s balancing the profitability of your organization with its impact. Your purpose powers your sustainability commitments, which are brought to life in your organization’s routines and traditions, product teams, and customer experience.
And both matter more than ever to consumers and employees alike.
Each year, we research modern consumer sentiment around various issues, including purpose and sustainability. What we see cemented in this year’s data, is that despite tighter corporate purse strings, purpose and sustainability matter to consumers and to employees, as worker expectations for well-being are also on the rise.
Today’s consumers aren’t just looking at your advertising to make their purchasing decisions — they’re highly connected, with info at their fingertips. They want proof that you put action behind your words and evidence of your impact. They quickly see how others talk about you in your social channels, ratings, and reviews. They know if you’re a good corporate citizen or a bad employer. And they’re using all of this information in their decision-making process.
So, what’s a well-intentioned brand to do?
Shift your focus from why sustainability is important to how you make it a reality. This shift begins with identifying and assessing the environmental, social, and governance topics that could impact your organization and your stakeholders — commonly referred to as materiality.
At Barkley, we approach materiality with this four-step process:
1. Identify your most important topics: Define relevant issues for your organization and industry by reviewing environment, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks and benchmarking indices found in the Appendix.
2. Listen inside and outside your organization: Survey both internal and external stakeholders to assess their opinions on issues that impact your business. Think clients or customers, investors and shareholders, suppliers, government agencies, and the wider community.
3. Prioritize what matters: Plot external and internal views to define priorities and cross-tabulate the results of both surveys in a matrix to create a priority list of issues to focus on.
4. Build a strategy worth sharing: Define goals and objectives against priority issues and your brand’s purpose.
The results of this process are powerful: they can help you manage resources and identify your brand’s risks and opportunities, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. It’s a broader frame of analysis that can guide you to be a better business. And it can align and connect your organization with consumers in powerful ways — because the more your purpose powers your commitments to people, planet, and community, the more inspired your brand culture is to deliver profit and continuous impact.
Want more guidance on how to bring your brand’s sustainability initiatives to life?
Check out our field guide here— it’s a step-by-step workbook that can jumpstart your thinking.
Need more data to prove to your colleagues that sustainability matters?
Take a look at our State of Purpose 2023 | Research and Insights, and use our infographics in your next presentation.
June 13, 2023
