The one-sentence summary

Authentic marketing and communications wins in the purposeful age.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • Purpose as a business philosophy has resulted in organizations struggling to make sense of what they need to do, and purpose washing is commonplace. Most businesses don’t know how to clearly execute this, leaving the PR and marketing functions struggling disproportionately. But proper purpose in an authentic culture can build significant brand reputation and positive customer engagement.
  • The book starts with a number of assertions:
    1. Growth is good, but consumption is bad.
    2. Information is ubiquitous, but cynicism is rife.
    3. Quality counts, but issues matter.
    4. Technology binds us, but technology separates us.
  • We have entered an age described as VUCA 2.0. Volatility is the speed at which things change. Uncertainty is the way in which things are harder to predict. Complexity is how much harder it is to analyze and understand. Ambiguity is the lack of clarity to allow us to interpret things.
  • To understand context, it helps to look at society (what is it currently concerned about?), marketplace (what trends are we seeing in rivals, suppliers and customers?), and business (what trends are we seeing in employees, leadership and culture?)
  • Truth means many things, including human truths and moments of truth. Truth is strongly linked to trust and transparency. These feed into purpose truth, practice truth, and product truth to create the overall truth effect of a company.
  • The authors’ definition of purpose is why something exists, is created or done. They are also keen to point out what it isn’t. It isn’t a PR campaign, an employee tool, a strapline, a retrofit, or a charitable cause.
  • Their definition of corporate culture is a combination of beliefs and ideas (what the people involved in the business generally think – this is a collective sense, the values and ethics on which they are based), and the way (how it does business, how the leaders serve the business through their strategy and how its employees behave internally and externally).

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • They outline a series of principles that should guide any company and ethical marketer:
  • Embody ethical purpose within your own role and business that goes beyond just making money and allows you to focus on people and the societal implications of your work.
  • Ensure your business has a set of ethics-based values which help guide decision making, particularly when client demands may seem ambiguous.
  • Consider a trusted coach, advisor or friend with whom you can share a dilemma and see how they react to any ambiguous proposals.
  • Nurture an organizational culture that puts integrity at its core and celebrates such behaviour, even if it loses you work.
  • Build your own reputation as an honest, trusted ethical leader in your field. Why wouldn’t you? Build this not by what you say, but how you behave.
  • Marketing is essentially a conversation. When sticking to the truth and communicating, bear in mind to acknowledge objections, think emotionally, and speak candidly. This will prevent many forms of purpose washing and greenwashing.
  • Customers want to know how companies are going to make things better. This should be a conversation and the acronym SHOULD can be used as a guide:

State your truthful purpose

Honour commitments

Own the process toward progress

Understand changes in context

Listen to questions and challenges

Differentiate as a true partner with your audience

  • If this conversation is to be effective, communicators should be listening for validation, relevance, tone, issues, opinion, boundaries and resonance.
  • When it comes to inspiring purpose in employees, think human (because it’s personal), think purpose, forget hierarchy, and equip and empower them to get on with representing the company faithfully.
  • “Leaders are like teabags; you only know how strong they are when they find themselves in hot water.”

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • Not much. This is a robust guide to making sure that a company does and says the right thing.