Branding has evolved. Originally used as a marketing and sales tool, brands are now transitioning to be more intentional and conscious.
This new model focuses on a heightened level of brand purpose with value creation and impact development. Conscious branding pivots the marketing mindset from profit to purpose. These brands encapsulate a greater intention that surpasses revenue generation.
Today’s discourse on current events has caused a shifting paradigm in how companies brand themselves. Customer habits and prioritizations have changed, and in turn, companies have reprioritized their goals.
The old model focused on profitability and growth based on enticing offers for services or products.
The new model focuses on a company’s long-term visible impact and its footprint globally and locally. This transition causes business models to change. Products and services now need to provide an added value to connect with a more engaged customer.
The strategic methodology behind conscious branding requires an internal exercise with stakeholders. According to TheDrum.com, companies need to ask the following questions:
- What is wrong with this world?
- What do you care about?
- What is special about your brand?
- What can you do with this specialty? What part of the world can you improve?
With an increase of companies taking more transparent action with ESG disclosures, customers are not only in search of transparent but authentic messaging.
What are a company’s brand pillars? What is their mission? How are they taking action? Communications alone do not check off the box for conscious branding. Proactive and ongoing action is required to continually push the efforts in bringing transparent and trustworthy change. The following non-exhaustive list highlights initiatives to serve as building blocks for your conscious branding efforts.
Local collaboration
Where do you begin? Consider local organizations and initiatives. What obstacles are you seeing and hearing about? Do any of these challenges tie in with your company’s mission? What skills do you have internally to help bring positive change to a specific cause?
This approach can also apply globally. What themes, causes, initiatives can you contribute efforts to? An understanding of the universal obstacles people face can bring to light many initiatives including gender disparity and equal pay.
Collaboration with other organizations such as non-profits or educational institutions will help amplify awareness and efforts. These symbiotic collaborations may also be educational for companies. Nonprofits and NGO’s typically have additional insights into key obstacles and solutions that companies are facing.
Pulse Surveys
Consider the steps you are taking internally to support and advance employee engagement. How are you collecting feedback? What obstacles is your HR department hearing about?
Listen to the needs and feedback of your team. Causes like mental health and family leave may become the focal point of your next brand initiative. Taking a pulse survey, for example, helps an organization gain valuable insights quickly to gather feedback. In lieu of a traditional employee engagement survey, pulse surveys are sent on a weekly or monthly schedule to collect actionable data on company culture.
Brevity is key when collecting these insights!
Diverse hiring
Purposeful business models require conscious branding to demonstrate value, transparency, and accountability.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) provide the foundational building blocks in these efforts. Company cultures must communicate and follow through with demonstrable initiatives including diverse hiring.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are crucial for these efforts. “Of course, CSR must be communicated well, but action should prevail over aspirational talk,” said Baha Hamadi, Crescent Enterprises. Conscious branding helps evolve public perception for current and future employees. As part of this model, governance standards are requiring disclosures on transparent and unbiased hiring to include diverse voices at the table.
Conscious branding requires thoughtful reflection, open communication, and action-based initiatives.
As competition increases among businesses to increase profitability, an evolved brand strategy will be required. Proof points of these efforts will also help build reputational capital. Local collaboration, pulse surveys, and diverse hiring actively promote conscious-forward brands.
Not only will this channel help improve efficiency gains, revenue streams from sustainable products/services, and cost savings but it will also address larger obstacles in conjunction. If your brand is looking to bring impact change conscious branding is your strategic start.
