Why Brand Ideals are More Important than Profits

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the Worlds Greatest Companies. Its the brand. Or, to be more specific, a companys brand ideals: the values the brand stands for, and the basis for the consumer to connect with a brand.

Stengel conducted a study of 50.000 brands all over the world and identified a relationship between strong brand ideals and business growth. If a company is able to present a strong and consistent brand image that is associated with positive values, there is a lot of consumer goodwill to be won, which will eventually translate to business growth, according to the author. In addition to the report, he has published what he calls a manifesto, in which he calls for action: business should no longer focus on cold, hard profits, but on brand ideals. Growth will follow:

Maximum business growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable. To beat the competition and lead your category, you must grasp and act on the fact that doing the right thing in your business is doing the right thing for your business.

Stengel identifies four key properties of succesful businesses:

1. Brand ideals drive the performance of the highest growth businesses.
2. The brand ideals of the highest growth businesses center in one of five areas, or fields, of fundamental human values (Eliciting Joy, Enabling connection, Inspiring Exploration, Evoking Pride, and Impacting Society).
3. The highest growth businesses are run by business artists, leaders whose primary medium is brand ideals.
4. Business artists excel in similar practices that constitute an operating system for generating and sustaining high growth.

While Stengel makes an interesting point, he sometimes gets carried away, especially when agitating against the banking and financial industry (the banks have run afoul of their foolhardy risks, blinded by their self-interested assumptions, precisely because they have not been guided by brand ideals of improving people’s lives). From a Marketing Operations perspective, though, his argument does make sense: if a company is willing to invest in their brand image and take the brand identity as a leading principle throughout the organization, a brand can communicate a very strong and therefore likable image. Extra marks if you are commited to improving the planet. Take a look at Stengels full article here. . .