Your brand purpose is one of the most powerful means of differentiating your organization.

Wait a minute. Differentiating? That sounds a bit like a position’s job, right? I mean positioning is about carving out that unique place in the minds of prospects. 

Well, nothing does that like a purpose.

But your purpose is not your position (and vice versa). So what are they and how do they relate?

Brand purpose

Your brand purpose is a statement of the difference you will make in the lives of those your hope to serve. It’s emotional. After all, it’s the reason why you do what you do. 

Your purpose is something that is at your very core – in your organization’s DNA. As such, it is not something you invent. It is something you clarify. (For more on this, check out my book Big Audacious Meaning – Unleashing Your Purpose-Driven Story.)

Additionally, note that something this foundational to your organization does not change as the marketplace changes. It is timeless.

Brand position

Your brand position is a tool for helping you understand the space you can occupy in your customer and prospects’ heads. It takes into consideration:

• Those you hope to serve

• Their unmet need

• How your ability to fulfill that need is different from your competitors

• Points to prove your claim

• The benefit of your approach

While your brand purpose is timeless, your position very much adjusts to the state of the market. As the market changes, so should your position adjust.

What’s the connection between the two?

Your purpose sets you off on the right course, keeping you pointed in the right direction. Your position helps you make smaller tactical maneuvers as conditions change along your way. 

Brands clarify their purpose and then turn their attention to their position. As time goes on, they spend more time adjusting their position (as they should) in order to align it with the opportunities that change in the market conditions create.

Over time, as these adjustments to the position are made, the purpose can start to disappear from the position as it continually evolves. This is troublesome. Because your brand position becomes exponentially more powerful when it also incorporates your purpose.

Let me illustrate. Here’s how your position is structured:

For (those we hope to serve)

Who are looking for (their unmet need)

Our product (how we meet this need)

Unlike (competitive alternatives)

Ours is the only product that offers (functional attributes)

That deliver (emotional benefit)

This is a great tool for helping you understand how to deliver a differentiated offering to a relevant prospect that has a meaningful benefit that can turn them into a customer.

But as I stated before, there is the potential to acquire something more valuable than just a customer. That can be accomplished by adding purpose to your position. Here’s how that structure looks:

For (those we hope to serve)

Who are looking for (their unmet need)

Our product (how we meet this need)

Unlike (competitive alternatives)

Ours is the only product that offers (functional attributes)

That deliver (emotional benefit)

That leads to (the difference it makes in a life, a community, or even the world)

This iteration adds an additional line at the end that brings the position back to the purpose that the brand embraces. And that purpose has the power to move prospects from mere customers to brand advocates (and maybe even evangelists).

Okay, let’s move past all the theory and look at a real example. Coca-Cola’s emotional benefit was stated as “it refreshes”. But the brand went a step further to identify how, by sharing that refreshment, we all have the ability to spread a little happiness in the world (it’s purpose). This gave the brand deeper significance. It gained value beyond the transitory moment of refreshment. 

Adding purpose makes your position more valuable. It moves beyond fulfilling the immediate emotional needs.

Without purpose, your position ends by delivering an emotional benefit. With purpose, you deliver the emotional benefit and then go on to help those you hope to serve work toward an aspiration.

Emotional benefits are potent. But helping someone with their aspiration is even more powerful. This is why a position that incorporates purpose is a game changer.

What is the deeper significance that your brand can embrace? What aspiration can you help your prospect work toward? Every brand has the potential to contribute more than just an emotional benefit. Find that for your brand. Clarify it. And then connect it to your position. You’ll create something exponentially more powerful.