Why brands without passion and purpose are hard to love.

Passion and purpose, the two key ingredients to great relationships… and brands.

No relationship starts without a healthy dose of passion, right? Being passionate about something or someone is an emotional driving force, not necessarily a rational one. When you have a passion for someone there’s almost nothing you won’t do to make sure that they are happy, looked after and nurtured. Passion is a wonderful thing.

Being passionate about your job/brand/product/service is in many ways the same. If you have a passion for what you’re doing, then you’re more than likely going to put more effort in. It’s natural to embrace something that you actually WANT to do, or be a part of. You wouldn’t for one minute try and sabotage something that you felt passionate about.

Believing in what you’re doing, and just as importantly, why you’re doing it is the key to loving your brand… and that leads me on to purpose. Passion alone won’t build a lasting relationship, but passion (emotional) driven by purpose (rational) is a powerful combination.

That’s why brands that mean business are borne out of a passionate purpose. It’s this purpose driven passion that can unlock a brands potential whilst also uniting its people. It’s impossible to get excited about a bland purpose, right? Having something to really stand for, get behind and feel passionate about makes your job so much more interesting and rewarding.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

One of the things that I love about branding is getting under the skin of the business first before anything else. Defining a passionate purpose is the foundation from which a strong brand grows. It articulates why they exist as a business, who they’re here to serve and create value for.

We recently rebranded bOnline, a digital native business that supply’s VoIP systems. During the initial strategy sessions, it became very apparent that they were the only service provider of its kind that were solely looking to target small businesses.

By discovering the emotional drivers, as well as commercial, for bOnline’s existence meant that we could give them a passionate purpose that empowered everyone within bOnline to feel part of something bigger than just ‘VoIP phones’.

“We’re the VoIP people championing the VIPs behind the small business economy”

Having the above purpose helped galvanise bOnline internally allowing stakeholders, and the wider team, to feel proud that they are looking out for the ‘small guys’, the unsung heroes of the economy, the small business heroes who have been neglected by big telcos for decades.

Having that clarity of purpose makes it easier to love the brand you’re working for. The relationship between a brand and its own people is just as important as its relationship with the customer. How does an organisation expect its people to be enthusiastic about a brand it cares nothing about?

This is especially important with B2B organisations. Business to business can be perceived as being dull and corporate, but that simply does not need to be the case. I believe that B2B brands need passion and purpose just as much, if not more so than B2C brands. Business IS business and so your people need to have that belief in the brand they’re working for and feel passionate about it.

Think about the brands that you ‘love’… it’s not the logo that you’ve fallen in love with (even if it is gorgeous), it’s what they stand for, their purpose. The reason they resonate with you is a combination of things, their logo, colours, imagery, TOV. etc but none of that can be created coherently without a healthy dose of passion and purpose.

Successful brand design is created based on solid strategic foundations, without that you’re literally throwing pixels in the wind and hoping that the visual identity or tone of voice might hit the right audience.

Brands need love and attention, just like the rest of us.

Yolk Creative London Ltd 's insights piece entitled ‘How to make your brand mean business’ explores five building blocks for B2B branding success, passionate purpose being one of those fundamental blocks.

Find out how injecting some passion and purpose into your brand will help your audience fall in love with you: https://thisisyolk.co.uk/how-to-make-a-brand-mean-business