An Invitation to Purpose-Driven Marketing

At the New Communications Forum, I overhead someone from Edelman during one of the first day's sessions whisper to their neighbor something to the effect: But what about the brand promise? It goes unsaid but the most popular concept of a brand is that it is a promise.

Although if you ask the FedEx Kinko's designer he'd have another take. He was aghast that I needed a rush job and didn't have time for anything but black & white business cards. He painstakingly tried to convince me that it was of vital importance to my brand that the look and feel precisely match my website and other marketing collateral. Another popular myth is that the brand is an image.

During the Branding and Blogging Panel, Stowe Boyd speaks up from the audience reiterating his stance, "A brand isn't a promise, it's an invitation."

The brand is a promise and the brand is an invitation debate rear its head again. This past Sunday I'm asked to help out with my church's marketing campaign, and earlier that weekend had coincidentally picked up Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld by James Twichell at the library.

Whether God exists or not, the concept is very real indeed among atheists and believers alike. So if we accept that God is a concept and that organized religion is the official marketing body, is God delivering on the brand promise? Or do we need a repositioning strategy for the new millenium? - Debate on Brandchannel.com Forum, September 2001, in Branded Nation, James Twitchell

Whoa, that's a whole other subject but if anywhere the brand is an invitation, and not a promise it's most certainly in this realm. A brand manager muses if God delivers on the brand promise, while a thriving church's pastor (to be revealed later) has this to say about "selling" God:

[I]f the fruit is ripe, you don't have to yank it. An overextended invitation is counterproductive. It hardens hearts rather than softening them.... Would you keep going to a grocery store if every time you went there to buy milk, the clerks pressured you to buy steak? Imagine a clerk saying, "Today is the day of steak! Now is the time for steak! You must buy steak today because you might not have steak tomorrow!"

My church is moving to a new community about 15 miles away. It's the perfect opportunity for reinvention. But most of the time reinvention is whittled down to simply repositioning. Will we use this perfect opportunity to find out more about what the community surrounding the church perceives as its needs? Will we hone in on  precisely what we are inviting them to?

Douglas Atkin religiously (pun intended) studied and researched the cults of the world, including large institutions such as the Mormon Church to pen his new book, The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers. It's based on the premise that people want to fundamentally belong to something greater than themselves (I can buy that), even if it's manufactured meaning (this is where I part ways with Atkin).

Marketers and corporate communicators alike are inquiring into this 'belonging' need. Andy Lark's insightful keynote (in my opinion, it was hands down the best session in four days of business blog conferencing, BBS and NCF inclusive; slides here) contemplates the disruptively massive changes in media and communications and asks us if something deeper is going on. "People are wanting to be part of a community, wanting to belong, wanting to join." In many ways. he says, Fast Company's founding premise was prescient, "We are declaring: 'I want to be part of something more meaningful.'" And there is a world of difference in communicating to an audience (transmit) and a community (engage and participate).

After I agreed to help out, my reverend recommended that I read The Purpose Driven Church for its marketing prowess. I was skeptical, but it's been a fascinating read. The author, Rick Warren, is more popularly known for his successful mega-bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life. "Purpose Driven" is trademarked and is a well-known brand in its own right. An obviously persuasive marketeer, Warren recently garnered the #1 slot in Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.

I thought I was going out on a limb with this post (not that that's stopped me before), but in my research I realize I'm actually not treading 100% uncharted terrain. I'm in fairly good company.

...I give you the best book on entrepreneurship, business and investment, I've read in some time. It's not new and it's not a business book. I was written in 1995 and comes from the field of religion. It's titled The Purpose-Driven Church and was penned by Rick Warren...

Were it a business, Saddleback would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks. - Forbes article, by publisher, Richard Karlgaard, February 16 2004 (this is a must-read article and I'll reference it again in future posts)

Yes, I know many of you might be rolling your eyes - that is if you've even read this far past the words God, Mormon Church or evangelical. You don't have to be a reborn Southern Baptist to learn from Rick Warren's marketing genius.

Don't focus on the product if that's a stumbling block - I'll share with you in a series of future posts why his 'evangelism' methods resonate so deeply with my own thinking. And nope, you don't need to be baptized in holy water to get it, but it certainly helps if you're willing to forgo the "the brand is a promise" as your marketing bible.

P.S. If you're wondering about my actual religious beliefs, I'm more of an Advaita Vedantist, but fundamentally anything that speaks wholly of love rather than fear can also be "my church".

Comments

[jbr]

Evelyn, why apologize for using religion in a business context. Surprisingly, no one has really ever synthesized the bible into a business context. There have been snippets here and there, but nothing on a large scale. Countless stories in the various bibles could be adapted to a business context.

You would think more leaders would use Moses as a great leader example. Imagine how much selling/marketing/branding he had to do in order to move an entire people out of Egypt. Sure, the Jews were slaves, but people have a great fear of the unknown. Even if the known is not so great, it took great skill to convince thousands of people to pack up and set off for a destination that no one even knew. Hard to imagine a CEO of a public company selling Wall St. and the employees that he/she was leading the company into a totally new business model. Especially, if he/she couldn't quite pin down an exact time frame for success.

So, don't worry about using religion in a business context. It really should be done more often. As with many things, it boils down to people investing faith in something and having a willingness to expend effort to achieve what they have faith in. As in the Forbes article, I suspect many people learn more from a biography or historical event. The events from 3,000 years ago can still resonate for most people.

[Wendy]

Everything is an emotional contract, from our daily relationships with friends and family to work to our relationship with God. God needs us to succeed and we need God to succeed. One of my own marketing lessons over the past year has been the individual / group polarity and how to manifest that through communications ... but here is the trick, I had to learn to do it myself. See people searching for purpose are searching for their identity, "I am a ... woman, who enjoys... " and that takes work, but in the end you find your gifts which God expects you to use / maximize - daily! Now, marketers, we go out and sell things to people and say, "Hey buy this and you'll be happy, mimic this and you'll find your identity." But, it's not true. Marketers [and I did it too] also say, to love yourself and therefore be accepted into the group, buy our product - instant identity, instant acceptance, see all these loving people?! ...We broke our emotional contract with our consumers. Our contract, our promise was to enhance their lives, not lie to them, not feed them a bunch of shit. Our emotional contract, our promise was to help them "feel" good and help them go out maximize their gifts...be the fingertips of God, daily.

So, what am I saying? I believe life is an emotional contract. I believe marketing in about relationships and therefore is also about emotional contracts. I believe marketing needs to change to support individual identities. I believe you are getting warm with religion, but it's not religion it is soul marketing, it is people wanting to connect their feelings and their actions. It's more basic...it's human and that is more Christian than a church and all of its rituals.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

JBR, Once in a blue moon I forget and actually care what others may think of me. I'm not sure why it feels so hard to mention anything that smacks of spirit. I think it's my engineering background ;-) Take a look at some of the folks that rank high in "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", (http://amaana.org/prophet/ismailim.html)

Wendy, One needs to read my blog for a while to understand where I'm coming from. This post introduces the method - not the religion or the trappings - of the success of Saddleback Church. And I'm curious how OTHERS are looking at the tie-in between religion and marketing. I think companies need to acknowledge that people value having a sense of purpose, their innate potential and being part of something larger than themselves - I'm not suggesting that is found in a drink, a shoe, or a device. It's important for companies to have a higher purpose driving them than simply cashing out on the next IPO etc. It's totally incorrect to suggest YOUR product is the holy grail or THE path to happiness, peace, love, etc. But that doesn't mean you can't approach your customers with happiness, peace and love. As I've said, I totally disagree with Atkin's view (a popular one).

Here's a few more relevant posts:

My View of "Religion":
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/08/we_each_have_an.html
Deadly Sins of Mixing "Spirituality" and Business:
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/09/two_deadly_sins_3.html
The Role of Brands as Allies:
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/08/companies_brand.html

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Wow, from the trackbacks I see we are back on the brand and branding debate. I think a brand exists like any idea exists; although branding as an activity is futile.

Perhaps another post is in order but in the meantime, I'd like to reiterate that NONE of the above "What is a brand" definitions sits entirely well with me. Perhaps I tried to weave too many themes together; but I wanted to introduce Rick Warren's marketing philosophy (I'm sure we disagree somewhere) as much of it aligns with mine.

Many definitions of brand are particularly static and particularly unilateral. Media over time has moved from story-telling to story-forming to story-dwelling (see below) while branding has remained fixed in story-telling. While I mull about this said post, you can maybe stitch together where I'd take the conversation by reading these two older posts:

http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/08/seth_godin_asks_1.html

http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/11/the_pace_of_the_2.html

[masood]

i am very happy to see this magnificent web site. its really good for the students. i think brand is not just giving a name to a product its somthing beyond this. its about minds and the image of our generic product in the evoke set and its respective priorities.positioning brand is like knowing the secret password of the mind of the consumer.its difficult but not impossible.

[michael jones]

I think to make use of that invitaion! This site is really good and useful for us- students! Thank you for the great post!