Stuart Innell is the Director of Business & Strategy at Boomtown. Leading strategic marketing solutions for clients across numerous sectors, he has conducted deep immersion and insight discovery exercises, as well as business and brand strategies for clients across various categories. In doing so, he has collected two Global 100 Rebrand Awards for effective positioning and rebranding, and most recently a craft Pendoring.
‘Branding for good’ or ‘purpose-driven marketing’ is no longer a wallflower in the global advertising sector. Instead, it’s the person in the room that everyone else wants to dance with, fulfilling a vital role in many leading brands’ strategies.
So much so that the prestigious global advertising award competitions include categories for rewarding brands with purpose.
For example, Cannes Lions has the Glass Lion: The Lion for Change, which celebrates culture-shifting creativity. In fact, its 2020/2021 edition included two South African entries on its shortlist.
Cannes Lions also expanded its Culture & Context section with two separate categories for Social Behaviour and Cultural Insight, and also replaced the CSR sector category with Corporate Purpose & Social Responsibility. Further adding impetus to the adoption of purpose-driven marketing is the acceptance that it significantly contributes to a brand’s financial health.
Insights 2020, led by research firm Kantar Millward Brown, found that, for companies and brands which outperformed others, traditional value drivers such as product quality, or packaging, or distribution reach were, of course, important, but no longer provided competitive advantage, because multiple competitors have the capability to provide these to consumers.
What really led to outperformance and rapid business growth were a few critical drivers that are relevant for our markets here at home. And the first of these drivers was being purpose-led. The study found that when companies or brands were clearly linked to a purpose, 80% of them outperformed the market. Only 32% of non-purpose brands managed to perform better than the market. Until recently, few brands in South Africa seemed prepared to as readily invest in purpose-driven marketing but a number of Boomtown’s clients have, over the past two years, extended their brand positioning exercises into purpose-driven expressions. And, we predict this will gain impetus during 2022, especially for small-, medium-sized and home-grown brands as well as local businesses. You can view the case studies of the campaigns Boomtown is proud to have contributed to here.- RAIN
- Woodlands Dairy and www.woodlandsdairy.net.
- The Wilderness Foundation
- Sovereign
- African Health Placement
- Nestlé Ricoffy
- National Glass
- Immersed and on the ground
- Be truthful and authentic
- Helping consumers commit
- Balancing heritage and modern relevance
