In a piece from April 2022, Google’s Giusy Bounfantino reports on the Harris Poll research that Google Cloud commissioned: approximately 1000 individuals were surveyed and the results showed that 82% of respondents had their purchasing decisions guided by brand value alignment. The data also shows that almost 40% of respondents would be willing to part with their favourite brand over diverging values, with 28% talking about this with friends and family and an additional 15% of respondents creating social media content about their decision.
For almost 40% of people, brand value alignment is a deal-breaker.
Now, the significance of this is that consumers are interested in purpose and value, more than ever before, which means that organisations need to be able to define, communicate and defend their purpose ever more effectively. Beckwith (2020) argues that “purpose is non-negotiable” and our experience in the industry shows that this is also true not just of organisations, but down to each individual event: people are more selective about the events they will attend and they need to know that it will be worth their while. This means that event purpose also needs to be convincingly defined and communicated.
This was explored at our event in December 2022, REIMAGINE: The Future of Event Marketing, where panellists discussed the importance of authenticity. This spoke directly to why our strategy workshops are so powerful: we support teams in deciding purpose, mission and vision, so that each subsequent decision can be made through these lenses. This alignment ensures that each event is authentic and true to the organisation’s values, so that the attendees are satisfied with the purpose behind the event. This process also significantly helps to avoid costly roadblocks further down the line, which is further evidence for the valuable ROI of purpose.
Carol Cone, who has written extensively about purpose, argues that as purpose isn’t an optional extra anymore, the question, instead, is how will each organisation define and communicate its purpose and so connect with clients and prospective clients (2022). Beckwith believes that purpose-driven organisations are “more resilient” (2020) and we would add that purpose-driven strategy is also infinitely more robust and able to be both proactive and reactive.