Lip service is the kiss of death for your brand purpose

Discovering your brand purpose can be an incredibly energizing experience for your organization. People naturally get charged up. Because a brand purpose helps everyone see the real meaning that their work has. That makes it easy for everyone to get excited about what they're doing every day.

When it comes to your brand purpose, lip service blows

As valuable as a brand purpose is, it can actually hurt an organization if there is no action behind it. Like I said, it gets people charged up. Imagine doing that and then showing your team members nothing that says that you're serious about the brand purpose. To say you'll have a bunch of jaded people is an understatement.

Imagine if your customers and prospects were exposed to a brand purpose with nothing to back it up. It can make them feel a little like they've been betrayed.

Walk the walk

Your brand purpose is potent. That's good news – when you do something with it. I wrote about this recently:

Share it with your team. Introduce it to your customers. And preach it to your prospects. When you do, good things happen. Internally, productivity jumps. Externally, engagement increases. Suspects become prospects. Prospects become customers. And customers become evangelists.

It's not just about being sincere about your brand purpose. It's not just about being consistent (acting like you mean it.) It's about unlocking a power that very few things in the business world can bring to an organization.

But it's going to take more than lip service.