A new study by WPP Group’s global research agency Millward Brown and Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer of Procter & Gamble, found that a common theme across the fifty fast-growing brands is their ability to connect to a higher-order purpose. It was reported in an article: Fastest Growing Brands Are Ideal Driven. Higher-order purpose is in turn related to five areas of “fundamental human values”: eliciting joy, enabling connection, inspiring exploration, evoking pride and impacting society (having a broad affect on society, such as challenging the status quo or redefining categories).
The research in ConsumerShift supports the notion that connecting to purpose and values will be increasingly important to brand success in the future. In this case, the particular value types tracked appear to range across the types of values in the book:
- Evoking pride taps modern values
- Enabling connection, inspiring exploration, and eliciting joy (in the sense of search for happiness) tap postmodern values
- Impacting society taps integral values
Traditional values are not explicitly targeted, which makes sense given that newer brands will tend to appeal to “newer”consumer types, thus postmodern values are tapped the most, which makes sense given they are the largest new set (being that “integral” values are just emerging on the scene). Andy Hines
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