Being a Socially Active Brand Begins and Ends With a Commitment to Customer Truth

Knowing how people act, think and feel let’s you take on risky and rewarding positions

It’s becoming increasingly hard to point to a brand today that hasn’t been thrust into the social spotlight. Nike scored with Colin Kaepernick-focused “Just Do It” revival, a campaign that made waves by winning fans, creating enemies and refueling a conversation about the role brands should—or should not—play in tackling societal issues.

Nike certainly isn’t the only company that has thrived by aligning marketing initiatives with purpose-driven activism. But there are still plenty of brands that have struggled to find the right tone and balance for these kinds of efforts. Does anyone remember the backlash Dorito’s suffered for releasing “lady-friendly” chips that crunched less and were smaller in size?

Consumers increasingly expect brands to support a cause, and they reward them with their business. But it goes beyond that. They want brands to prove how their efforts are making an impact and how they achieve results beyond just a profit. In fact, the 10 most empathetic companies in the Global Empathy Index are among the most profitable and fastest growing in the world. Clearly, there’s a connection.

What it takes to make an impact

So, how do you choose the right cause for your brand?

To start, this can’t be done in a whiteboard session. Brands need to be true their core values, and they also need to connect to the values and beliefs of their customers.

The only way to ensure this alignment is by discovering the truth about their customers. Knowing customer truth—why they do what they do, how they act, think and feel—is what separates a successful brand story that connects with customers from a story that falls flat or worse, alienates them.

Getting to customer truth takes work and is an iterative process. However, the brands that do the quantitative and qualitative research required to understand their customer truth can effectively connect with their customers. It’s how brands become a religion. In fact, 63 percent of global consumers prefer to purchase products and services from companies that stand for a purpose that reflects their own values and beliefs, and will avoid companies that don’t, according to the latest Accenture research.

The reward of taking an authentic stance

Understanding how your brand fits into your customer’s life allows your company to freely take more advanced stances and high-value, high-reward risks. The Colin Kaepernick ad, for example, drove over $160 million worth of media exposure for Nike, per Apex Marketing.

Other brands continue to prove that the commitment to customer truth is also deeply ingrained across the business by taking a stance on specific issues. Shoe company TOMS donated $5 million to gun control in response to the Thousand Oaks shooting. Patagonia boasts a 40-plus-year history of supporting grassroots activists working to find solutions to the environmental crisis and earlier this year launched Patagonia Action Works to foster community between like-minded individuals and organizations.

There is an inherent ROI in the action companies like these have capitalized on. Becoming so in sync with customers encourages natural engagement, which ultimately leads to becoming a more valuable brand. Edelman’s 2018 Earned Brand Study backs this theory up, identifying that “belief-driven buyers are deeply connected to these brands and are more willing to buy their products, stay loyal and defend them than the average consumer.”

The commitment to customer truth is a lifelong strategy, one rooted in inquiry and the relentless pursuit of understanding what drives audiences, motivates their behaviors and informs their decisions.

You don’t have to be a purpose-driven, socially active brand to be valuable to your customers. But brands have to be willing to know their customer truth to be able to connect their story to their customers’ story.

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As CMO of FocusVision, Dawn Colossi drives worldwide marketing strategy to build the brand and create demand. She has built an always-on customer-driven marketing model based on big data, including intent signals and digital body language; and small data which allows an understanding and clear perspective of what drives behavior and decisions to increase FocusVision’s revenue and market share.