[00:00:00] Becky Willan: So much of the work done on purpose and sustainability happens behind the scenes. You know, deep within huge companies. They're complex organizational structures and an even more complicated supply chain. But today's shoppers want to know that the products they buy come from good companies that haven't screwed people or the planet in the process.
So all that hard work behind the scenes really matters. So it's no wonder that marketers can get really excited about a company's purpose efforts. In fact, at Cannes this, year in June, where the world's advertising community got together to celebrate the year's best work. 28 out of 32 Grand Prix awarded touched on purpose inclusion or sustainability in one way or another.
Some people who were worried about the rise of purpose wash argue that purpose is too important for marketing. Some people think that marketing because they sit at the intersection of production and consumption, is actually the only one that can drive the change that's needed. But others say they should stop trying to save the world and just get back to selling stuff.
So this obviously raises some big questions and this episode tries to cut through all of that. It's about how you make a business purpose real and relevant through your brands and products, whether that's across different markets, different categories, and different audiences. And crucially, it's about how you do all this in a way that delivers both substance and business results.
From the given, this is Purposing, the podcast that lifts the lid on how to run a truly purpose-driven business. I'm Becky Willan, and with the help of leaders from some of the world's most recognized brands, I'll be demystifying this often misunderstood topic into clear, actionable advice you can use in your own business.
This week I'm joined by David Croft, global director of sustainability for Reckitt, the global health and hygiene business behind household names like Nurofen, Lemsip, and Vanish. David's career in sustainability goes way back and over the years he's held senior roles, at Diageo, Cadbury, Waitrose, and the Co-op.
Through this conversation, you'll learn how to figure out what role purpose should play for your brands. Make sure your marketing teams have got the right tools for the job and get purpose right and avoid purpose wash. Before I speak with David, let's take a quick look back at his career to learn how a degree in environmental sciences took him all the way to leading sustainability for some of the world's biggest brands.
David's career began in local government in the northwest of England working in environmental health.
[00:02:31] David Croft: That brought me into contact with different people every day. Day-to-day problems, everything from block drains, to food poisoning, to noise complaints. And I guess what it led me to was wanting to do roles where you made a difference, where you impacted people's lives, and you made a positive difference.
[00:02:47] Becky Willan: It might sound like a leap from block drains to household brands, but David focused on food manufacturing standards, which took him to the Co-op.
[00:02:55] David Croft: I ended up running all of the Co-op brand range, understanding the technical elements, the value chain behind them, the sourcing, the product development, but also what Co-op brands stood for.
The values of consumers were critical to making that brand work. And I think that's really where I started to see how you would bring purpose to life.
[00:03:18] Becky Willan: At the Co-op, his focus was on responsible retailing, but David wanted to improve sustainability across the whole value chain, and that was one of the reasons for moving to Cadbury.
David remembers one moment in particular from this time. He had taken a craft leadership team to West Africa to meet cocoa farmers, in a remote farming village in Ghana.
[00:03:39] David Croft: We met village elders, the community, the farmers, the women, the kids. You shake hands with the village elders and you meet everybody in quite a formal way. And we sat under a tree.
[00:03:50] Becky Willan: They began to talk about the impact that cocoa farming was having on the community.
[00:03:53] David Croft: And the lady stood up and the fact there's a lady stood up in front of the elders in front of this group of western businessmen, it was critically important because normally women didn't have a voice, but because of the program we'd done, they had a voice and she stood up and said, Thank you for coming.
You don't need to come and visit us anymore. Our children are going to school. Our farms are stronger. And the fact that she had the strength to stand in front of the elders and these visitors, who she'd never met before, and say what she said, I felt incredibly humbled to be part of enabling something like that to happen.
That's the sort of change that you can make when you bring purpose to life in those value chains.
[00:04:40] Becky Willan: So David, welcome to the show.
[00:04:41] David Croft: Thank you, Becky. Nice to be here.
[00:04:43] Becky Willan: Now I know you've slightly lost your voice, so hopefully you can bear with us while we talk to some really big questions. But first off, it would be great if you could tell us a bit about Reckitt. So what is Reckitt's purpose? You know, what categories are in? What sort of different brands and products do you make? And, what markets do you sell them in?
[00:05:00] David Croft: Well, people might not know Reckitt, but I'm sure they know our brands. Reckitt works in over 180 countries around the world. We manufacture in 40 or 50, and we have global brands that reach 20 million households every day.
These are brands like Dettol, and Lysol, which millions, billions of people probably have seen over the course of the last two years during the pandemic. Household health and nutrition brands that include Durex, Finish, and Enfamil, in terms of infant formula. Brands that make a difference in people's day-to-day lives as we frame it in our business strategy, tackle the world's biggest problems that come from the impact of climate change and health, The emerging challenges of hygiene, the fact that we've got greater organization.
We have challenges around sexual health and well-being. We have an aging population where nutrition at both ends of that age spectrum is gonna become increasingly important. The quality of life and I'm very fortunate to work day to day with those brands all over the world and help bring not only our corporate purpose to life but also individual brand purposes to life through fantastic brand directors all over the world.
And that corporate purpose to protect, heal, and nurture, and the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthy world is something that binds all of those individual brand connections together. But it's a corporate purpose that very much drives core activity and drives it into the business strategy for growth.
And it helps us deliver impact for the business, but also impact through the business.
And those two things for me are very important. If we can harness the whole strength of that organization, both in economic terms, and in the impact, we create into the wider world, the people we serve, day in, day out, those 20 million households, and our impact on every type of stakeholder, investors, shareholders, the communities we serve, the people who use our products, governments in terms of the public health agenda, becomes really, really powerful.
And that drives core business and that drives our business strategy for growth. That helps us deliver something we call our fight. The fight to make access to the best quality health, hygiene, and nourishment is right, not a privilege, because we see, looking forward the sense that inequality prevents communities from thriving, creating better access for everybody to health, hygiene, and nutrition.
Then we're tackling inequality, but we're also growing the markets that we serve. And in the end, that's what Reckitt was founded upon. 200 years ago, James Reckitt, one of the philanthropists of his age, understood that running an effective business means thinking about the impact you have on the communities that you are part of that helps you thrive and prosper.
And we have the same ethos today. If we deliver on our corporate purpose and then individually on different brand purposes, then we make that dual impact.
[00:08:13] Becky Willan: Great. Thank you. And I think you've set out a really bold and inspiring vision for the role that Reckitt plays in the world, and I think that's clearly grounded in a lot of history and heritage.
But at the same time, there's a big difference between being a business that has a bold vision and being a true purpose, a purpose-driven business where every decision that's made is really driven by that idea. So where would you say that Reckitt was on that journey? How embedded is that vision, that purpose in the business as a whole?
How much does it really drive decisions day to day?
[00:08:49] David Croft: It's definitely uniting purpose, and it is increasingly embedded in everything that we do, in terms of how we innovate new brands, innovate new products, how we design supply chains. Let me give you some examples. We have a sustainable innovation calculator.
It's a tool that we apply to every new product innovation, and the goal is that every new innovation is more sustainable than its predecessor. And so we measure the carbon footprint, the water footprint, the packaging footprint, the ingredients footprint, the chemical footprint within that, and we're trying to improve it.
And if we improve it by at least 10 percentage points, then it counts towards a published KPI about net revenue for more sustainable products.
Last year it was 25%. We need to improve it because we have a goal that by 2030, 50% of net revenue will be for more sustainable products measured through that calculator.
But it's not just about the process. What we've also done is we've created performance incentives around it. So every leader in the business has a proportion of their incentive associated with that KPI, and that means that we're consistently thinking about: Are we designing more sustainable products? Are we retailing them well?
Are we connecting to customers well? Are we connecting them to our consumers well? And are we helping take those consumers on a journey? Because we know more people want more sustainable products.
And so with a brand like Finish where we've designed the product, so it doesn't need to use as much water, it doesn't need as much energy when you put it in the dishwasher, we have to connect with those people using that product day in, day out and persuade them, Don't pre-rinse, you don't need to. Your dishes will come out just as clean, and you'll save water and you'll save energy, and at the same time, it probably also means you're saving money as well.
So these are the things that we're trying to connect through to bring that overarching purpose to life through a brand-light finish and its own purpose about water and sustainable ways of living in people's homes. But this isn't about altruism. This is about good business. These are products that will be more resilient in the future, but also that we know consumers want because they keep telling us they want more sustainable products.
[00:11:16] Becky Willan: I think that's a really interesting point. Because I think there are a lot of people of sort of vocal minority, let's say, of people in advertising at the moment who are saying, actually do all that stuff that you need to do from a business perspective, from a corporate perspective, like make your products better.
But marketers should stop trying to save the world and get back to what they do best, which is selling stuff. So how do you sort of make the case for why doing this through the brands is the right approach for Reckitt and not just looking at this from a corporate perspective?
[00:11:52] David Croft: Because what we hear from our consumers, those 20 million households every day, is that they want products tháat do this, that are more sustainable.
We also see it in the sense that externalities are increasingly being factored in. Externalities coming through in terms of attacks on packing. Potentially down the line of packs on attacks on carbon and carbon in products, at least in the manufacture of those products, if not at some point in the future in their use.
It also affects in time how people will use those products. If you're paying more for your electricity but you know, this product can be used with less energy than its competitor. and in time, we will see carbon labeling on the pack, I'm convinced about that. Then designing products that can be used at lower energy gives you an advantage in the marketplace.
We've seen that actually been around for quite some time. If you go to electrical superstores, you see the different white goods being sold with the measurements against the A B C D E, and so on. And increasingly there are fewer and fewer that are D and E. There are more As and Bs because the brands have come to realize that unless you are competitive in that sense, people leave you on the shelf.
So it's a mixture of risk and opportunity and building it into that process gives us confidence in the future. And bear in mind that some of our products don't churn very often. They're regulated products. We have to be absolutely convinced and assured of their efficacy in terms of health protection, their safety because they're medical products in many cases and their stability over potentially quite long shelf lives.
It takes a while to work through all of those. So thinking now about a product that will perhaps come to the market in two, three years' time, but beyond the market for the next five, ten, maybe longer than that, and making certain we build it sustainably now with ingredients that will be resilient, packaging that resilient, and that will deliver on those externalities that will come into place in a few years time is critically important.
And then finally, it's worth thinking about the emerging concept of dual materiality. And this is going to be built into ISSB-style reporting. And so what we're seeing is there is the impact for the most materialist use for a company, but also the most material issues that that company has in terms of society.
And those two things put side by side, you know, simple two-by-two access. So the more you can design your organization to be effective for itself, but for society, the more resilient and the more opportunities you'll create and double materiality, becoming the norm drives you in that direction. And so to your point, marketers should be about how they sell products.
Yes, I agree. But it's about selling products that people want that are resilient, and drive opportunities for growth in those two dimensions. We think that in doing so, we position ourselves incredibly strongly for the future.
[00:15:19] Becky Willan: Are there any brands at Reckitt where you think it's not appropriate for them to actively sort of, hero purpose and sustainability?
Because, you know, Unilever's come under a lot of criticism. I think Terry Smith at the beginning of this year said, well, why does the mayonnaise need a purpose? And I guess they are in a slightly different category from you but are there any brands at Reckitt where you think it's not appropriate for purpose sustainability to be a part of how they build their brand and find that relevance with consumers?
[00:15:49] David Croft: You know, there's a spectrum of how much positive impact they create in that sense. And maybe mayonnaise doesn't need a purpose, but sat behind, even something like that of how you source the ingredients and the ingredients that you choose is still very important because that's where some of that resilience still comes from.
So if I take a brand like Vanish, which its purpose is to give clothes longer lives. At face value that doesn't have a direct sustainability conversation around it. And yet when you start to unpick it, you're talking about fashion that has a high carbon footprint, a high water footprint, has, we know sadly, lots of fashion ending up in landfill sites.
We know the history of the global value chains that sit behind fashion, all of those things. We want to be confident that we're with Vanity's purpose, making certain that we have tackled, but still fundamentally giving people the opportunity to have clothes that last longer, that deliver more, and then quietly, therefore, have lower environmental footprints associated with it.
We won't talk about the carbon footprint opportunities of vanishing, particularly because that's secondary, and so purpose needs to be focused. It needs to be targeted on what matters and what the brand can honestly, credibly, and consistently deliver. There will also be things that sit around that, that is co-benefit.
[00:17:26] Becky Willan: No, and I think that's absolutely right because I think there's a huge difference between setting out a kind of clear, meaningful, active role for your brand to play in the world, which I think is what you are describing versus picking a cause to align behind. And I think often that's when brands are recused of sort of purpose washes when that cause actually is only sort of superficial and can't be addressed through the fundamental sort of product service operating model that the brand is built on.
[00:17:58] David Croft: Yeah, I think that's right and that tone of voice is very important. We don't campaign in that sense, in the way you were just alluding to. We do make certain about efficacy and safety and that's critical, and that is at the heart of what our brands then have to deliver.
And then we will look at those co-benefits and make certain that the things that sit proverbially below the waterline are tackled consistently, and credibly. So things like the human rights and modern slavery aspects of global value chains, all of that happen behind the scenes. That's not something you would see in a brand like Vanish dialogue, because that's something that happens at a corporate level, and it's just an expectation.
There might be certain times when we will talk about that. So for example, with Durex, Durex is a people-centric brand. Sort of goes without saying in a way, but sat behind that, is how we think about people in that global value chain. So one of the things we've done with the smallholder farmers in Thailand who give us the latex, the high-quality latex that allows us to make Durex condoms, those farmers now get a fair trade, the fair rub of premium, and that means that's a stronger livelihood for them that.
Investment in their farms as well as in their communities. So we are looking after the people at the heart of that value chain. And the same way we want to look after the people and the health of the people who are using that brand and the consumer end of the market chain and the value chain. And it's consistent with the Reckitt ethos, not just in terms of preventing risk, but dialing up opportunities where we can do so.
[00:19:41] Becky Willan: And I think that dialing up opportunities when you can do so is interesting because as you've touched on, there's stuff that sits above the waterline and then stuff below the waterline and I guess stuff that sits above the waterline, you are finding, looking for opportunities to really drive relevance for consumers in different markets, given that Reckitt operates in so many different markets, how much flexibility do you build into that through your brand? So you know, there might be audiences with different priorities, different expectations. How important is it that you're consistent versus sort of meeting those differences and expectations?
[00:20:20] David Croft: What we tend to think about both in terms of the way the corporate brand operates and those consumer-facing brands is one voice, but local access.
And so there is a consistent framing. There's a consistent brand purpose if we're talking about the consumer brands, but the activation will be relevant at a local level. If you think about a brand like Air Wick that's been talked about that that works hard to bring nature into people's lives. How we activate that needs to be relevant at a local market level, there's no point talking about bringing nature indoors if actually, the example you are sighting is 3000 miles away. And that's why we are doing work with people like WWF in different markets around the world, doing an activation in Northern Ireland about urban green spaces with TESCA, but doing a very different activation in France or Italy to bring it to live there with local connections there. Southern Thailand, again, where we source that latex from, we're measuring the biodiversity impact and then we're starting to build solutions and interventions to strengthen biodiversity, give carbon opportunities, and add more strength economically to the farmers.
You have to make it local.
[00:21:44] Becky Willan: Actually, if you think about where a lot of, I guess, stuff goes wrong or sort of where accusations of purpose wash come in, it's in that brand activation piece. So really there is quite a lot to go wrong. And figuring out the role that a brand can credibly play in relation to a kind of complicated topic, I think is really important.
And when we look at it, we think it's important that you take a really kind of holistic, multidimensional level. So often what we see is that brands think about how they might change things for people at an individual level through, you know, new and improved products or services. It might be more about tackling cultural barriers or you know, raising awareness of an issue or changing behaviors. But at the third level, I think often brands, and this is where I think stuff goes wrong if brands jump to trying to tackle institutional barriers, so getting involved in sort of stuff that looks more like activism, so policy change, lobbying, that kind of thing.
Often when the most powerful opportunities lie where brands are doing all of these, but in a meaningful and kind of credible way, but do you have a framework for how you help your brands figure out, I guess, A, which issues or topics to focus on, and B, how to actually create that meaningful impact around those topics?
[00:23:05] David Croft: We have a framework that helps brands identify their brand purpose and then bring it to life. And fundamentally, it's about what is core to what they deliver for the people they serve, the communities they serve. And that's why Vanish and clothes and giving clothes longer lives is just a really, very obvious example.
The other part of that framework is what we talk about at a corporate level and how you blend Reckitt as a corporate brand together with our individual consumer problems. That's why when we talk, for example, about the importance of climate change and public health, that is a voice of Reckitt, but also is something that cuts across multiple brands.
And that way the brand, the consumer-facing brand is very consistent and the corporate brand is very consistent, but they complement each other well.
[00:24:01] Becky Willan: Getting this kind of marketing right, I think is different from the way that most marketers have been sort of trained in their craft. So what sort of tools and training did marketing teams at Reckitt get and how have you made bringing purpose and sustainability to life part of, I think what you call marketing excellence?
[00:24:22] David Croft: My marketing excellence colleagues over the last three or four years have done a fantastic job building that framework to help brands define the purpose, but also an academy of support to train, to build awareness from a sustainability perspective. Part of my job is to find ways to illustrate that and build some of those external connections as well.
That's why with a brand, like Finish, it's not just what the brand does and says with people using it day in, day out. It's also the connections that the brand teams make with different stakeholders. Stakeholders like WWF, with whom we have a fantastic partnership. That is about aquatic ecosystems and catchment area management, where that saved water and the necessity of water and the quality of water is really brought to life.
We've been doing similar things already, looking at, for example, the populations of river dolphins, because that really then shows the benefit as an indicator of how thriving that water ecosystem is. And as we go along, we're doing more and more of that type of impact assessment. A good example is a work we've done in Thailand where we looked end to end at the total value chain, and we thought about the different ways we created an impact, both positive and negative, I have to say, from the farms where the latex was grown, transporting it, manufacturing condoms in Bangkok, and then into the marketplace where people are using them. And we worked with external specialists on this about what would be the different types of benefits and impacts that you had, impacts like perhaps, water pollution from fertilizer on farms, or adverse impact on biodiversity, perhaps in those farms.
Or the manufacturing footprint or the packaging footprint, but against that, we have more positive benefits. Strengthening biodiversity, helping with agronomy, building more sustainable factories, reducing the carbon, putting solar panels on the roof, and we are able to look at those positives and negatives, a sort of simple but emerging multiple capitals model, and think how does that translate through?
And what it told us is that directionally we overall make a positive benefit, but that's not enough. You then have to have a conversation with yourself that says, How do I maximize those positives? Because it's not as simple as saying the positives outweigh the negatives. And avoid, not just minimize, avoid the negatives, and that's why we continue to innovate.
We continue to think, how do we make that packaging more sustainable? How do we reduce the footprint of the factory, how do reduce the footprint of the transport, and so on and so forth? So knowing directionally you're making a positive impact because you prevent huge impacts on people's health. Public health generally in the country is a good place to start.
You can't rest on your laurels. That's why we continue to innovate, to be more sustainable for the future.
[00:27:43] Becky Willan: I'm keen to understand, to get really practical, I guess, about how it actually works at Reckitt. So tell me a bit more about which teams are involved and crucially, how do you ensure really effective collaboration? When, in my experience, the priorities between, say, a sustainability team and a marketing team can be quite different. You know, the language that is spoken can be quite different. So how do you make that work effectively? When does it work well? When is it more challenging?
[00:28:14] David Croft: A whole host of different teams involved in this conversation from the brand teams in terms of ideating new products, the sustainability team in terms of framing our overarching direction and key issues, R&D teams, how we bring it to life in product innovation. Manufacturing teams, how we actually bring it to life in practice, sales teams who are connecting with customers around the world. We need to join all of that conversation up and that's why we've developed academies of training that help drive that activity. Guidance on how you then start to showcase it. What type of claims might you want to make on a product from an R&D perspective? Similar types of approaches and frameworks help people think because of that sustainable innovation calculator, what might be the lower carpet, the lower water footprint ingredients, and the more sustainable packaging solutions.
That all line up against our drive towards plastic packaging reduction, chemical footprint reduction, and scope three carbon reduction, and they're progressively built-in with training and support. And that's where specialist teams in both R&D and the sustainability function, are also there, to help provide guidance to bring the outside in, but also, our procurement teams and the brand teams, and the R&D teams connect with our supply network.
We have a fantastic program with suppliers that builds opportunities for new innovations, and when it rolls up, does the new innovation score better than the sustainability innovation calculator that connects it all together? And that drive, particularly with the incentives pitched around it, Helps to give cohesion.
So it's about creating that framework, finding the metrics that support it, incentivizing around it, but making really importantly, making certain that people have the knowledge and the tools to bring it to life in practice. What we don't want to do is make the elastic with consumers and leave some of them behind, because we are moving perhaps too fast.
It's critical that we take people with us and then we can create a collective impact.
[00:30:45] Becky Willan: So in this new world, I guess, where sustainability isn't just about managing risk, it's about driving growth and about helping to build future-proof resilient, relevant brands, how has the role of the sustainability team or department changed do you think, over the last decade or so. And what are the capabilities that you think are most important in that context?
[00:31:15] David Croft: Sustainability functions in many organizations are changing very, very rapidly. It's important to understand all the different technical issues that the sustainability agenda covers, but what's increasingly important is how you then bring that to life.
How you create change through it, how you engage organizations, how you build more sustainable products, how you connect to millions of people every day who might use your brands if you're in the sort of sector that we're in. If I think about things like climate change, I'm fairly sure that we now know about the science of climate change.
We'll continue to learn more, but I think we know what is going on. So for me, what is more important? The science of climate change is actually just the science of change. How do we make change happen, and how do we translate all of those risks and those opportunities into practice in a business that is global, that reaches 20 million households every day, and so sustainability people, yes, they have to have that technical understanding, but if they cannot be agents of change, great communicators, motivators, and bring it to life for the other different functions that they touch and serve within an organization, then my fear would be they don't actually achieve anything. Bringing it to life is critical.
My experience of the last 20 or so years of this type of agenda is if you try and police it to make it happen, it doesn't work. We could all design systems that on paper are perfect, but in the end, people run systems and if you haven't got those people on board, Then that system, frankly, is probably doomed to failure, and I think that's true for sustainability within an organization.
I think it's true in terms of the connection that we make with people who use our brands all over the world. We want to give them reasons to believe and reasons to support it. I want to persuade you to skip their ins on your dishwasher. You are gonna do that later on, I hope. Okay. Because we've designed a product that helps.
[00:33:18] Becky Willan: I've never rinsed!
[00:33:20] David Croft: I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that. , I've been mortified. But it's about how we create that connection. And motivation to do something. Sometimes just a really little bit of difference, like not bothering, convincing. Those things make a lot of difference when you add them all up.
And finding the right framework that allows that to happen is critical. And I think the more we can do that, then the less we see sustainability as a separate function. We see it just as an activity that everybody does. And there's a concept in health and safety, bizarrely called the Bradley Curve.
And this was invented by DuPont, I dunno, probably about 40 years ago now. And it talks about maturity and it talks about when there's no health and safety system, people get hurt. That's not acceptable. And then you introduce a series of rules and if people don't follow the rules, you penalize them, which is helpful.
But if you've had an accident, being penalized doesn't really have that benefit. You know you've had a problem. And what it then tries to get to is people, to internalize health and safety so that they think about doing things in a certain way and internalizing it. And that's what they call the independent phase.
And that's good because that means I remember to put my safety hat on before I go into a factory. But then there's a further phase, and this is interdependent, and this is when you get everybody thinking about how they internalize it, but getting other people to internalize it as well. So I would know more go into the factory without putting a hard hat on than I would let you go into the factory without putting the hard hat on.
And I think that type of maturity approach. If we can find that same machine and we're progressing very rapidly on it, I think on the sustainability agenda, by embedding it in the way people work, by embedding it in building capacity and capabilities and playbooks and incentivizing people, and yes, having certain standards and rules that they must follow but embedding it and motivating people around it is a critical step change in how the sustainability dealings will operate, and we do that better when we understand the needs and the lexicon and the ways of working of other functions, and you do it better together, that drives change faster. Bear in mind it's 40 years since the Bradley Curve was invented.
We don't have 40 years on the sustainability agenda. We don't have 40 years to play with on climate change. We have to act faster. So internalizing it and getting to that interdependent phase where we're all connected around the same agenda, be it how the grand purpose comes to life, how we design products, or how we develop and run supply chains is critical to making those changes happen faster.
And I do think that the businesses that do that will be the ones that thrive. They'll also be the ones who create greater impact and help us combat the world's biggest issues like climate change.
[00:36:27] Becky Willan: David, it's been such a pleasure having you on Purposing. Thank you so much.
[00:36:31] David Croft: Thank you, Becky.
[00:36:34] Becky Willan: Thanks again to David.
Lots of really brilliant insight there. So here are a few things I've taken from the conversation.
Find an authentic and active connection between your brand's purpose and your business purpose. It's gotta be credible in relation to the actual impact of your product or service, relevant to the needs, expectations, and insights you've got about your consumer, and distinctive, because it builds on the unique qualities and capabilities of your brand.
Make purpose about proof points, not just a new brand positioning.
Get your marketing teams to collaborate with your sustainability teams. Marketing brings big ideas for building distinctive brands with real relevance and is an expert in the science of change. While your sustainability team is experts in calling BS, have rigorous tools and processes for measuring impact and can add real substance to creativity.
Get smart about your overall theory of change. Think bigger than campaigns. Figure out what happens at an individual brand level, and at a corporate level. Your brand might be about new and improved products or services or changing behaviors while your corporate activities could be focused on changing the system through collaboration or policy change. The key is to take a big picture and long-term view.
If you'd like more practical advice on building a purpose-driven business with brilliant insights from people like David, download the Insider's Guide to purpose givenagency.com/insidersguide.
Purposing is produced by Fascinate Productions