BCLC Presents ‘Marketing on Purpose’: What It Takes to Activate Social Purpose in Your Marketing Strategy

Buying based on belief is the new norm and consumers are seeking stronger connections with brands than ever before. In this era of change, social purpose companies like BCLC must rapidly transform the way we practice marketing. Rather than selling a product or service, marketers must become storytellers that shift communications from monologue to dialogue, from benevolence to reciprocity.

But how do social purpose companies lean into our collective purpose – that is, to create a better world – by building upon a movement versus just creating an ad campaign?

To look closer at the important role of activating and engaging our customers in our social purpose, BCLC – which has started its journey to create win-wins for the greater good – commissioned Forrester Consulting Ltd. to study how other social purpose organizations are translating their purpose into their marketing strategy and practices. We wanted to know: How do we ensure that our approach to marketing reflects our purpose from the inside out? What provokes a sincere and earnest marketing voice for a social purpose company? What sustains it?

Forrester’s final report, Marketing on Purpose: What Marketing Looks Like in the Purpose-Driven Enterprise, provides BCLC and other companies with a roadmap for embedding social purpose into their marketing process. It reminds us that effective social purpose marketing is a long-term promise; it requires a consistent strategy and a clear implementation framework. The paper offers eight recommendations that can help marketing teams get there.

As I considered them in the context of those questions for our organization, a few recommendations stood out to me:

Marketing’s job is to influence behaviour, not values. When we enter into dialogue with our stakeholders, it’s not up to us to try and change their values. Values are very personal. Instead, we have to get to know our stakeholders and find common ground. Through conversation, we need to determine where we agree or have shared goals. Once we have that information, we are better equipped to connect with them on an emotional level and offer an opportunity to participate in our movement.

Embed deep listening into marketing teams. Engagement must be intentional. It’s critical that we provide opportunities to our stakeholders to have those reciprocal conversations, whether it’s through meetings, surveys, community events, focus groups, townhalls, or other activities. Further to this, deep listening must come with humility. Feedback from our stakeholders might include things we don’t want to hear, but we’ve got to listen and reflect on their input.

Be consistent in words and actions. Credibility is built through consistency. People begin to see brands as a genuine, trusted voice only over time, after the brand has been able to prove itself to stakeholders through their actions. On the other hand, if messaging is out of alignment, people can tell – and they’ll say so. Brands must keep checking themselves against their purpose to maintain consistency.

Marketing on Purpose provides other valuable direction beyond these lessons. While we work to focus all areas of our business on generating win-wins, we now know what has helped other companies to bring their social purpose to life through their marketing. But we’re not just keeping these learnings for ourselves. We’re intentionally sharing them with our broader network, including peer companies who are walking the same social purpose path.

Disseminating this knowledge can help us all enhance the way we collectively tell our stories and reach our audiences. It has the potential to advance the social purpose community and encourage new companies to consider the same transformation. When that happens, we can work in tandem toward addressing society’s challenges of today – toward the greater good.

To read more insights and recommendations from Marketing on Purpose: What Marketing Looks Like in the Purpose-Driven Enterprise, go here: https://corporate.bclc.com