The Brand Purpose Narrative: Is Strategic Public Relations the Missing Link?

The world brands inhabit is changing rapidly, yet they depend entirely on it for valuable resources such as employees, investors, future talent, customers, innovation, infrastructure and regulations to ensure they operate and remain relevant and indispensable. Experts believe that the major driver of this rapid change is the increasing appetite and desire by stakeholders for the Brand Purpose.

Pundits view the quest to achieve brand purpose as a practice that can have a positive impact on individuals or society. The concept gained prominence after Simon Oliver Sinek’s famous Ted Talk about his book, Start with Why. Simon’s main idea is that brands and enterprises with a Brand Purpose understand ‘why they do what they do’.

Brand purpose defines the reason for the existence of an organisation beyond making money. It provides a strong foundation for decisive and sound ethical decision-making incorporated into an organisation’s corporate strategy. A brand's great purpose should be evident in everything it does, from product creation to customer experience, to a brand’s recruitment, community relations and sustainability policies as well as its operations and marketing strategies. Howard Bowen argued that corporations and businesses of all kinds should be given the chance to solve social problems that most governments have failed to solve. He viewed a business as having resources and therefore can solve the social problems inherent in society, hence promoting its purpose.

According to experts, the brand purpose proposition focuses on recognising and expanding the linkages between a company's financial prowess and society's social and economic growth. As such, it has become a significant criterion in measuring and evaluating a brand's performance. Accordingly, successful brands are now shifting focus from short-term profits to addressing problems in society with the conviction that it will lead to profitability and sustainability.

Yet, today’s business environment is sophisticated. Both big and small brands alike are not only grappling with how to incorporate brand purpose into their overall business strategy but also how to communicate those intentions to their stakeholders clearly and genuinely. Recent research on consumer behaviour reveals that unlike before, stakeholders these days care and put much emphasis on the entire value chain of a product/service. They no longer interact with a brand passively. Rather, they are concerned with how a product is produced, how it gets to the marketplace and its overall impact on the environment and the society.

For a long time, brands have placed a greater emphasis on raising awareness and visibility through strong persuasive messages focused on convincing customers to purchase a particular product or service, regardless of their overall environmental and societal impact. However, with the emerging trends, brands can no longer rely exclusively on such approaches to establish brand fidelity. Customers and consumers have become increasingly enlightened thanks to the proliferation of information technology. They no longer buy a product or service just because they saw a television commercial or infomercial talking about it.

A study conducted in 2018 by CSR Specialist firm Cone puts this into perspective by examining the changing stakeholder perceptions toward brand purpose. According to the study, 78 percent of Americans believe that businesses must do more than just make money; they must also have a positive impact on society. 77 percent have a stronger emotional connection to purpose-driven companies than traditional companies, and 66 percent would switch from a product they currently buy to a new product from a purpose-driven company.

The Truths, Myths, and Nuances Behind Purpose, a new study by Razorfish in collaboration with the VICE Media Group agrees with Cone’s findings. The study aimed to learn how consumers and customers perceive brand purpose and how the concept influences purchasing decisions and brand allegiance. It discovered that consumers expect brands to have a good impact on society. According to the findings, 82% of customers buy with a purpose in mind, 76% believe the brands they buy make the world a better place, and 67% believe the brands they buy make them a better person.

It is increasingly clear that brands that fulfil the triple bottom line and are produced ethically and sustainably are proving to not only sell but also being capable of generating, cultivating and fostering trust; trust breeds customer devotion and consistency. On this account, brands can no longer afford to remain conservative in how they promote themselves. Instead, they must become strategic, innovative and deliberate on how they create and disseminate messages that portray them as safe, credible, ethical and sustainable.

This is where strategic public relations comes in. According to gurus, public relations presents a more credible tool to not only market and make a brand sell but also enable the brand to renew and enhance its social license to operate. In these days of highly enlightened yet fragmented and segmented audiences, targeting, reaching and converting audiences with key messages about a brand has become difficult. Strategic public relations seem to be the magic bullet brands can deploy to lessen the burden.

Research has demonstrated that strategic public relations can enable a brand to achieve homeostasis. Through it, a brand can create and/or enhance awareness, create and instil in the target audience positive perceptions and impressions, give the stakeholders no alternatives but the brand and successfully persuade stakeholders to go for the brand.

A review of the existing literature asserts that, unlike advertising, public relations focuses on the entire image and reputation of a company more than the specific advantages of the product. It links a brand to certain personal and cultural values that are meaningful to customers. Through public relations research, a brand can understand and appreciate the nature and composition of its target audiences such as their demographics, psychographics, purchasing power and most importantly, what they watch, buy and value. This is deemed important, especially in this era where media fragmentation, platform proliferation and dramatic behavioural shifts in media consumption patterns have created a new concept called ‘masses’ of the media. Brands are now finding it difficult to wade through the many media platforms and cut through the noise to get the attention of their target audiences.

Brands can also use public relations research to gather intelligence about their competitors and therefore stay ahead of the competition. Media audience research and content analysis when conducted conclusively for editorial, advertising and online/social media provide the best tool for brands to identify and harness opportunities as well as to detect and mitigate risks and threats.

According to scholars and practitioners, public relations initiatives are crafted to encourage favourable coverage through earned media. This provides a cost-effective and credible avenue for brands to create awareness, increase understanding and build brand loyalty. Pundits opine that editorial coverage of a brand and/or its activities is more credible than advertising. For instance, Ries and Ries argue in their book, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of Public Relations, that the public trusts the media significantly more than they trust commercials. This is so because, unlike advertising, where the originator and sender of the message have control over its dissemination, coverage through the editorial segment of the media must meet stringent editorial policies and newsworthiness criteria. This makes the coverage credible since it is a third-party endorsement driven by professionalism.

Stakeholders form opinions and beliefs on the brands with which they interact. These opinions and beliefs constitute a brand’s reputation. Studies have shown that brands rely on their reputation for survival and success. The public relations function ensures that this reputation is positive by establishing and maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship between a brand and its stakeholders. Meaningful public relations activities and programmes such as corporate social responsibility initiatives, cause-related marketing, symmetrical two-way communications, vibrant stakeholder engagements and thoroughly researched topics to aid the stakeholders to understand a brand, are critical in building and maintaining a brand’s good image and reputation.

Research indicates that through public relations, organisations have an avenue to communicate and deliver on their corporate sustainability goals, which is key in maintaining a brand's reputation. According to a 2014 survey by McKinsey & Company, when asked about 13 core sustainability activities, executives said that managing corporate reputation for sustainability is becoming increasingly important to them and that it has the highest value-creation potential for their industries over the next five years. This is not surprising, given that recent research suggests that a company's efforts to communicate and deliver on corporate sustainability goals are a key driver of public trust.

This begs the question, what is the most effective approach to engage stakeholders on sustainability concerns to improve a brand's reputation? It is through a brand telling its story in a persuasive yet ethical manner. Research shows that sharing a company's sustainability journey improves its brand, gives it a competitive advantage and demonstrates its brand purpose.

Public relations prepares and paves the way for a brand to accomplish its objectives and mission by creating awareness and perceptions as well as building brand loyalty. It provides deeper insights that create meaningful relationships, thereby increasing mutual understanding and goodwill between a brand and its stakeholders. Moreover, through public relations, a brand can effectively handle a crisis that could pose a threat to it and its reputation.

Surpassingly, despite its massive capabilities in promoting brand purpose as demonstrated above, public relations is yet to gain full recognition as part of the dominant coalition in most organisations. As a result, it becomes more difficult for the function to play a significant part in an organisation's strategic decision-making process, such as effectively promoting the brand purpose narrative.

However, there is a way out. The Theory of Excellence by Grunig et al provides a prescription for these barriers. The theory recommends empowerment of the public relations function through power and resource distribution. Just like other functions in an organisation, adequate power and resources are critical in enabling the public relations function to achieve its objectives, which must be aligned to the broader organisational objectives. This is significant because organisations tend to place a higher value on functions that contribute to their success, and they tend to reward such efforts accordingly. It is worth emphasizing that public relations is the sole function in an organisation with eyes on all internal and external stakeholders.

East African Breweries Limited is an example of a company that has capitalised on strategic public relations to advance its brand purpose narrative. It has relied on strategic public relations campaigns to successfully narrate to its stakeholders its corporate social responsibility and sustainability programmes. In turn, this has earned it a continued social license to operate. Many other companies in Kenya and beyond have relied on telling compelling stories on how they strive to achieve the brand purpose. Unilever, P&G, Nike, Equity Group, Kenya Commercial Bank and Safaricom are some of the well-known examples of such companies. In exchange, the brands have seen an increase in their bottom lines.

Strategic public relations strongly advocates for research (formative, process and evaluative) and smart objective setting as prerequisites for developing campaigns. This is critical in enabling brands to develop marketing communication campaigns that drive sales and brand allegiance. It is therefore imperative for organisations to recognise and appreciate the role strategic public relations can play in promoting brand purpose, especially in an increasingly complex and dynamic business environment where global connectivity has enabled new communities and networks to form rapidly and flex new muscles on brands on the global stage. Consequently, marketing communications activities such as advertising that mainly speak at consumers with very little room if any for meaningful engagements are likely to cause more harm than good to brands if implemented in isolation.