Brand, Care & Profit

Want More Profit? Add More Care.

When a company is considering making an investment to improve its brand, there is usually an unspoken desire that’s driving that consideration.

What leaders are seeking is a more potent brand that leads to greater revenue and ultimately more profit…but that’s not the whole story.
 
Enter, the virtuous brand cycle.

An evolved brand will more clearly articulate and express the essential value of a company to prospects and customers. This brand, once evolved, will do a more effective job in communicating what the company stands for, why it makes what it makes, how it creates value, and how it serves customers.

By “brand” I’m not referring to the superficial visual update to the logo and image. Instead, I’m speaking about the heart-and-soul of the company writ large. 

Here’s what an evolved brand does for our company:

• We sharpen our understanding of what we stand for.
• We unite around the central cause and purpose at the heart of our company.
• We unite our team into a unified force.
• We compete more effectively in the marketplace.

In distilled business terms this is the fusion between organizational driving beliefs, operationalized values (employee experience, or EX), which defines how we serve customers (customer experience, or CX), which creates our market position and reputation (business experience, or BX).

When fully baked-in to the company and activated, an evolved brand paves the way for attracting more of the right people. When managed properly, this enables more profit. 

The world’s most potent technology.

An evolved brand enables the company to tell its story more effectively. And, storytelling is the most advanced technology there is. 

Great stories harness an emotional response and, in doing so, they transform our reality. Think of the transformative potency of The Odyssey, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Don Quixote, Hamlet, Dracula, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Wizard of Oz. Every story that exists, including the ones in our heads, is shaping our view of the world around us.

Stories transform us because we’re wired for stories and wired for compassion. By our nature, we are both thinking and feeling beings. In the marketplace and elsewhere, we make decisions with our minds and act with our hearts.

We know this because a story told well taps into the pathos (AKA compassion and care) of our human nature. Great stories make us feel something we didn’t before. When someone tells us a story we feel connected to both the story and the storyteller. Stories with care baked-in transform and transport us. We carry stories in our hearts and heads, the two symbiotic decision-makers within each of us. 

All of this brand evolution boils down to this: We want a better brand because we care about what we do and want more profit.

And, to get more profit, we need to infuse care into our service and stories.

Assuming we’re not in the business of swindling customers, more care leads to more profit. Caring for our customers, attracts more customers to care for, which creates more profit. In turn, we can reinvest that profit for greater care. Profit isn’t what’s leftover from our billings; it’s what we protect and can be reinvested into our company.

Profit is what nourishes our company and our care for people. Without profit, companies tend to cut corners in caring.

Once activated, the virtuous cycle begins to accelerate, like a flywheel. Once you get it started, it gets easier and easier to turn faster and faster.

Profit is the non-negotiable growth attribute that allows you to better serve more people.

Profit is the nourishment that allows you to invest in your people.

Profit is sustenance for innovation and caring for customers.

The better you can serve people, the more profit you can make. The more profit you can make the more you can invest in nurturing your relationships and attracting more of the right people. It’s virtuous because it’s centered on care. It’s a cycle because it self-perpetuates.

This virtuous cycle lives at the heart of caring businesses. And it’s free for every business to choose.