Purpose Fractures: The Impact of Lost Integrity and Conviction in Branding
Brand's endure Purpose Fractures, leaving them with no leg to stand on, collage by Asher Jay
When does a brand's purpose fracture? When do they fail to spearhead a meaningful change and either unintentionally or strategically break their promise to people and the planet? Can a brand deliver on its purpose without integrity and conviction?
Fractured Purpose:
In today's dynamic and ever-evolving marketplace, a brand's purpose is the driving force behind its actions, decisions, and impact on society and the environment. However, it is important to raise thought-provoking questions about when a brand's purpose fractures, and to examine how brands fail to spearhead consequential change and when they find it acceptable to break promises to people and the planet. This essay delves into the implications of brand integrity and conviction, exploring how a myopic focus on upholding brand identity and values can lead to a disconnect with external realities and hinder a brand's ability to provide continued meaningful value to society and the planet.
At present, brand integrity is often equated with maintaining a consistent image, values, and messaging across all touch points. While this is crucial for building trust with customers and stakeholders, it falls short of addressing the broader context in which brands operate. Brands need to move beyond a brand-centric view of integrity and embrace a more holistic approach that considers social and ecological implications.
Conviction, as defined by most brands, reflects the deeply held beliefs and values that underpin their mission and purpose. A brand with strong conviction is transparent about its principles and acts in ways that embody an unwavering commitment to core values. Such constancy of brand expression and alignment between words and actions is touted by industry experts as the best approach to fostering trust and loyalty among consumers. However, when brands prioritize preserving their core identity at the expense of adaptability and responsiveness to external changes, they risk becoming stagnant and disconnected from the evolving needs of society and the planet.
The consequence of this static approach is a fractured purpose, where brands fail to deliver on their promises and instead become a worse pain point to society and the planet than the ones they claim to alleviate by providing their inimitable solution. Brands that cling to outdated notions of what defines their brand DNA, limit their capacity to innovate, grow, and provide useful and relevant benefits to their stakeholders. The disconnect between a corporation's internal perception of its brand integrity and external stakeholders' discernment of the brand's integrity occurs because the former anchors how it should behave in its history while the latter moors how a brand should comport itself in the present and future. The dissonance in timing and pertinence consequently results in a loss of trust, reputation, and market share.
To address this gap between how a brand wishes it was received and how it is actually received, brands must redefine integrity in a more dynamic and multidimensional manner. Instead of rigidly adhering to past practices and beliefs, brands should embrace adaptability, resilience, contextual awareness, and collective accountability in their decision-making processes. This calls for a shift from a short-sighted focus on self-preservation to a more inclusive and holistic approach that considers the wider impact of a brand's actions on society and the environment. A brand needs to expand its understanding of "self" to include its entire landscape of expression, and all the stakeholders encapsulated within. By expanding its notion of "self" to stand for all the organisms, individuals, and ecosystems it assimilates, deteriorates, takes from, and gives back to, a brand's self-interest can come to champion the reality of being a part of instead of being apart from local and global social and ecological contexts.
By adopting a broader view of brand integrity, brands can position themselves as agents of positive change, driving meaningful impact and contributing to a sustainable future. This requires questioning existing norms, embracing uncertainty, and collaborating with external stakeholders to co-create solutions that benefit not only the brand but also the broader community and ecosystem. Integrity should be viewed not as toeing the line but as a willingness to be uncomfortable and do what is right and necessary above what feels good and easy, committing to continuous maturation and transformation rather than settling into complacency and stagnancy. In essence, a brand should anchor all its targets, deliverables, goals, aspirations, sustainability initiatives, employee wellness programs, vision, and mission in eudaimonic prosperity instead of hedonic profitability. Transitioning from what has been to what is needed can be monetarily, operationally, structurally, administratively, and ideologically taxing on a brand, but it is the paradigm shift that is needed to attain climate goals, meet sustainability targets, bolster social equity and replenish ecological reserves.
It is common to perceive brands and corporations as faceless entities lacking a moral compass, yet this is far from the truth. Every company is composed of individuals who collectively imbue the brand with a sense of humanity. The company's culture, shaped by employees in leadership roles, gives an otherwise legally incorporated entity a relatable personality, a sense of purpose, core values, unshakeable beliefs, ethical principles, and other defining characteristics. Consequently, a company's consciousness is determined by those at its core. Like a ventriloquist dummy, the brand speaks and acts as directed by its operators. The more mindful and enlightened the puppeteers' minds and hearts are, the more intelligent, inclusive, and dynamic the inanimate dolls (the brand) feel.
Building a brand requires courage of character, accountability, and most critically integrity.
Brand integrity, like other features a brand can express, is an aggregate quality, as a brand can only embody the qualities of the people it represents and on whose behalf it takes action. Since the operators (CEOs and Board) of the dummy (brand) change regularly, each new person in charge imparts new traits to enhance the story, performance, notoriety, and narrative of the puppet (brand.) Furthermore, renowned brands outlast their leaders (board of directors and c-suite), and while every authority figure (puppet operator) strives to maintain the original character of the brand (puppet) to maintain audience familiarity, they inevitably influence its expression with their own characteristics. This influence occurs in two ways: through a God Complex or a quest for immortality, where operators aim to leave a legacy, and through the Pygmalion Effect, where operators shape the brand to reflect their desires and subsequently covet it. Surprisingly, despite being in charge, no operator cares to be held liable. Rationally, ventriloquists are obviously responsible for their puppet's (brand's) poor conduct, inappropriate words, and irreverent gesticulations, however where corporations are concerned, the people in charge are quick to relinquish all responsibility, knowledge, and control of the brand's negative impacts. All of a sudden it is no longer a dummy in a puppeteer's hands, it's the possessed doll Annabelle in need of an exorcism, or M3GAN the autonomous, homicidal, AI bot, a consumer horror story.
When those looking after what has been trusted in their care, abandon their charge and shed all direct accountability, they dilute their puppet's (brand's) capacity to demonstrate the same, resulting in a loss of brand integrity and public trust. When a brand flails or fails, it is because of someone's ignorance, not something inherent, which implies that a brand's demise should not place a toe tag on its framework but rather on the individuals at its helm that flippantly fractured the legs the company grew to stand on.
When you dip your toe in the issue, you get toe-tagged.
A brand amplifies the qualities of the individuals associated with it. It reflects the behaviors, emotions, opinions, biases, and attitudes of those driving its operations. Therefore, the pursuit of self-integrity within each employee is crucial to ensuring brand integrity. Organizations and individuals who have integrity can show up in confrontational contexts confidently and embrace the discomfort these situations provoke as an opportunity to look inward and resolve what is broken within.
Self-integrity, the state of being truly undivided, with minimal discrepancy between one's real self and desired self, is not something you haphazardly stumble upon. Self-integrity requires persistent effort to reconcile one's internal fabric, bridging the gap between the authentic self and the idealized self. Dissonance within and between employees manifests as a lack of cohesion in brand identity, which, cascades as a breach of brand unity.
It takes courage to lean into the unfamiliar; it takes curiosity to confront the unchartered, and it takes wisdom to receive life's unexpected curve balls as the wonderful whetstones they are. After all, unforeseen externalities allow us to sharpen our relevance and shape our purpose against their grit and grain.
Encouraging leaders and employees to seek out their growing edge instead of hiding from it, and emboldening them to prioritize mental health and emotional well-being, strengthens morale, and a sense of purpose. Contemplating repetitive thought loops, behavioral patterns, reactivity thresholds, codependencies, traumas, addictions, triggers, and blind spots, instills objective awareness which promotes healing, integration, and expansion.
Self-integration allows a person to flourish. An integrated character is: more authentic, capable of receiving truths and feedback without getting defensive, able to reframe problems as they arise, keen to view negative circumstances as catalysts for change, and does not fear growth. When employees, particularly those in leadership positions, are motivated to foster connection, vulnerability, empathy, and reciprocity, they inspire respect and trust within and beyond the organization. A brand cannot champion that which its people are not, conversely fortifying honesty, mettle, and integrity within brand employees ensures the brand will exude those essential virtues that prevent harm. The erosion of moral rectitude in myopic, bottom-line-driven executives tends to pilfer the corporations they work at, which then: 1. damages community health and resiliency 2. compromises climate action outcomes, and 3. impedes global conservation agendas.
When people fail to shed constructs that limit their scope of self-integration and falter in surrendering the inner conflicts that keep their experience of wholeness at bay, they end up being miserable. Miserable people perpetuate misery, as spreading suffering validates their predisposition for it. Most people cannot meet the demands of reality as they arise, they lack the bandwidth. Yet to not see the hardships we are assailed by as a chance to do better than we have before, is to miss out on the incredible gift of applying lessons learned toward achieving sustainable, long-term success.
Brands that hire, nurture, and retain such individuals will be able to endure economic, political, ecological, and social pressures with grace, bear their circumstantial burdens with dignity and poise, and embrace the weight of their responsibilities and duties with alacrity. Integrated brands and individuals rise to the occasion without breaking or deforming excessively under scrutiny, stress and pressure.
In conclusion, the fracture of a brand's purpose stems from a lack of integrity and conviction in its employees and leaders, which inhibits its ability to adapt, evolve, and address the evolving needs of society and the planet. Brands must recognize the interconnectedness of their actions and their impact on the world, moving beyond narrow definitions of integrity to embrace a more inclusive and dynamic approach that fosters trust, credibility, and sustainability, by strengthening the same aspects within its workforce. Only then can brands deliver on their promises, spearhead meaningful change, and make a positive difference in the world.
