--:-- Ryan Hanley: Brand action trumps brand communication. Today's guest, Jeff Fromm, teaches us why purpose must become a verb inside our business. And beyond being a best-selling author and strategist for some of the largest brands in the world, Jeff is an incredible guy and breaks down case study after case study of why purpose and the actions that we take around that purpose are going to be the differentiators in who consumers choose and who they ignore in the coming economy. You do not want to miss this episode. I thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to The Ryan Hanley Show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And guys, just one quick ask before we get to the meat and potatoes today. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you listen on iTunes or Stitcher, I would love for you to leave a rating and review of the show. It plays a big role in helping more people find this show, engage in, and become part of our community, the community of listeners of this show. It would mean a ton to me. And if you have any questions, comments, hit me up on Twitter. I'm Ryan Hanley underscore C-O-M or just search Ryan Hanley. You'll find me. And I would love to have a conversation about what you hear here, your ideas, if things work, if they don't. Twitter is where I'm spending most of my time in communicating with people. And I'd love to connect with you there. And as always, you can hit me up privately, Ryan at RyanHanley.com.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, with that, thank you for being part of the show. Let's get to Jeff Fromm. I guess, uh, if you're ready, we can formally start. It always feels weird to me saying that since we've been talking already, but uh, no, that's great. Sounds great. All right, cool.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: So, uh, I want to jump into um... there's... your area of expertise is an area that I would not say is my area of primary expertise, but it is something that I enjoy and I love talking to people who, you know, kind of... this area, particularly kind of some of the things around brand that I just find it so intriguing. And so, so many companies, and this is a sweeping stroke, so forgive me, but I feel like so many companies do this wrong. And in particular brand... like, I just feel like they attack it from a, from a place. They don't take it as seriously as maybe I feel like they should. Some obviously do, but I don't think as many do as should, particularly middle market and smaller size businesses. So I just enjoy this topic.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'd like to start with probably, out of all the research that I did in preparing for our conversation today, a line or a general concept that kept coming out over and over again. It was in your sizzle reel. I've seen it in a bunch of your articles and different versions. And it's this idea of brand action trumping brand communication. I just want to start there because that to me is so meaty and so important. So if you could just start in that place and go from there.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Yeah, I just published a book on the purpose advantage. And in there, I argue that the high-performing brands are going to have functional, emotional, and societal benefits. And in addition to functional, emotional, and societal benefits, metaphorically, they must use purpose as a verb, which means they must take actions that their internal and later external stakeholders can see. And in the absence of action, even if you have a great strategy, you're going to probably get accused of purpose-washing. And we see that happening time and again with brands like Gillette on toxic masculinity, Starbucks' "Race Together," Kendall Jenner, et cetera, et cetera, with Pepsi.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: [pauses] Hello? Yeah, I just lost there for a sec. Okay, so I just was saying if your actions are inconsistent with what you say or whatnot, then you know you're going to have a problem.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And if your actions are inconsistent with what you say, then you're going to have a problem. So the best brands on the planet understand that they must think of brand purpose as a verb. So the thing that... I think for a long time, your brand was... I think I shouldn't say for a long time, the misunderstanding of brand for so long, and the cliché is like your logo is not your brand, and that kind of thing, and the way you represent yourself.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You know, to me, it feels like this step from brand is simply your messaging and your three words for that year or your value proposition or whatever kind of marketing pieces you come out to the actual actions you take. That feels like a leap. A lot of people are going to struggle with.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Yeah, let's look at a couple of examples maybe and then sort of dissect. And we can start with Nike, which has always thought about using sport for the betterment of society. And they're pretty well known around, you know, making a formal arrangement with Colin Kaepernick. It's a very polarizing figure, but it's consistent with their brand's editorial authority. It's consistent with their view on the role of sport, on moving things forward. And it's consistent with what they've done for a long time and will do in the future with other people and other events.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Or we could look at Ben & Jerry's, which they've got a big focus right now on prison reform. Now, if they only made mediocre ice cream, their focus on prison reform would not be relevant. But they make great ice cream like many other brands who have great ice cream. So what separates Ben & Jerry's isn't the quality of their flavors, in my view, which are great, but so are the other brands. It's that there are people who align to the values of Ben & Jerry's.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And we see it again and again, even with brands that might be lesser known that are growing very rapidly. I'll give you a couple of examples of maybe a little lesser-known brands. I love chocolate. And I think there are a few other people out there who probably love chocolate. And the fastest-growing chocolate brand in Europe is called Tony's Chocolonely. And what they did as a young company is look at the supply chain. 70% of the cacao beans in the world come from West Africa, 70%. 2% of the $100 billion chocolate economy goes back to the people who grow beans. So there's a disequilibrium between 70% and 2%.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And what that means is many of the workers are literally slave laborers. And Tony finds that unacceptable. So do most people when they hear that. And so as long as they have great flavors of chocolate and the price of the chocolate is only a modest premium to other choices, consumers will, once they know that, often choose Tony's Chocolonely. Now, if they don't have great-tasting chocolate, or if the price is an extra $50 a bar, consumers are not going to use Tony's. But when they have all of those things together and you understand the story, that's how they become probably the fastest-growing chocolate bar in Europe and starting to make headway here in the US.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And so their actions are remarkably consistent. I think the best brands on the planet don't think about purpose as part of their marketing strategy. They make it part of their business strategy. So I'm going to tell a quick David and Goliath story, if that's okay.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You tell as many stories as you want to tell.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: All right. So Tide is one of the strongest brands on the planet. If I say, let's go into the grocery store, we're in the laundry detergent aisle, and I'm going to show you an orange bottle. What am I showing you? Most consumers would immediately say Tide without actually seeing the bottle. And they've done an amazing job of building that brand. And they have a world-class cause marketing program called Tide Loads of Hope. But they are losing share to a lesser-known brand called Seventh Generation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And Seventh Generation charges an extra buck a bottle on shelf at the grocery. So how is the smaller, lesser-known brand able to charge an extra buck and win consumers over? Because consumers assume that it cleans just as well as Tide. That's the price of admission in the category, and everyone listening competes in a different category where they have price of admission. But at the end of the day, the consumer doesn't write a check to the environment. They write a check to Seventh Generation, and they assume the actions taken by that brand are worth the extra buck.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And if you were to dig in deeper, you would find that they take a lot of brand actions, very consistent with their brand, which is around the law of the Iroquois and thinking forward seven generations about the actions we take, which is why you do not find pods from Seventh Generation because that product would be wildly accepted, and a risk analysis would suggest they should introduce it, but it's inconsistent with their moral compass.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And so at the end of the day, what we're seeing is a radical shift. And we're seeing the shift on Wall Street. The biggest player on Wall Street, BlackRock, a $6 trillion, and I said trillion, not billion, dollar investor, sent a letter to the CEOs of public companies. And that letter basically said Milton Friedman was wrong. Yes, you must make profits, but it's not your sole job. You must make profits and you must do good for society. And if you don't do both, we will disinvest in your brand. No one wants to get a letter as the CEO of a public company from BlackRock telling them that they're going to disinvest in their brand if they fail to take the right actions.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: So there is a sea change happening. And I think it's because discerning consumers can decide to pay a small premium for brands that they like that align to their values and discerning investors can separate companies who make a profit from companies who make a profit and in addition to making a profit, do good for society. And they're not mutually exclusive.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to ask your opinion about a conversation that I got into the other day with someone who was, they brought up another marketing professional and they brought up the idea of CEO activism. And the conversation started because I saw them hashtagging CEO activism on Twitter. And then I reached out to him and said, I'd love to just chat about this because I have some of my own feelings about CEO activism.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And I guess my first question for you is, at least my first question on this particular topic is, is there a difference between a company building purpose into their business, as you've discussed so far, and CEO activism? And what do you think these things are similar? Do you think CEO activism is a natural derivative of a brand with a purpose? Like, where does this fall in the idea of the purpose advantage?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I'm not sure if I understand the exact language around CEO activism. Yeah, no problem. CEOs represent brands, and so when I think of CEO activism, for example, I think of Levi Strauss's CEO who started a conversation on gun violence and gun policy reform and has managed to get hundreds of other CEOs of companies to sign a pledge that that's something that the vast majority of Americans want and the vast majority of large companies also want, but he's doing that on behalf of his brand, Levi Strauss, right, not as a CEO, you know, personal, uh, personal kind of thing.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Yeah, that was my take that I had on CEO activism, from, from my standpoint was, um, the, the position of the person that I was, that I was talking to was that every CEO should, as a way to separate their company, almost as a tactic, have positions, um, uh, either purpose-driven political or otherwise that define them as individuals and as leaders and relate to the company.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And the pushback that I gave was, to me, a company building purpose into their business, although I did not articulate it this way and maybe not even close to exactly the same way, but the idea of building purpose into their business, that to me makes a tremendous amount of sense. Standing for something makes a tremendous my sense.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: I guess my concern was for anyone in a leadership position, whether title CEO or otherwise, for them to step forward individually and take specifically political stances on topics as a tactic feels like a very slippery slope to me versus, you know, a cultural idea inside a company. I guess for some reason, the individualistic nature of it versus the organization as a whole, it felt different and potentially more hazardous because it's great to be an activist when everyone agrees with you. But if you are, you know, if your position is some, you know, when people stop agreeing with you, you know, you could have a mob running against your business, I guess was kind of where I was coming from.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I haven't looked at the topic specifically of CEO activism, but from where I sit for most companies, particularly larger brands, certainly public companies, you know, I can't really separate the CEO of Levi Strauss from the company that much. And so when he gets the CEOs of other companies to sign a pledge on a gun policy issue, you know, he's doing that on behalf of his brand. His personal views may or may not be the same. That's not really relevant to me because he's running that company and his company as CEO has made a decision that that's important.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And by the way, it's important to the employees who work there because what happened is a customer was trying on jeans and their gun accidentally went off and the customer shot themselves in the foot, and no one was hurt. And we've seen employees get very upset at Walmart and bring up issues in their private internal portals around gun policy, and so the CEO of Walmart sent a letter to both Republican and Democrat leaders of both sides of Congress, so Senate and House of Representatives, and all four of those individuals got the same letter. It said, "Do your job."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And the reason it said "do your job" is because they're not. And so what we have going on in this country is a failure. And when I say Volvo, you'll think safety. But when I say government, how many people think collaboration? I don't think very many. Yet they are being paid to collaborate to solve issues on behalf of constituents. And fundamentally, they're not doing their job. They're failing. And last I checked, an F on your report card got you fired, except if you're in the Senate or Congress where it might not.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Yeah. Don't listen to Joe Rogan's new podcast with Edward Snowden. That'll take you even farther down that path. Yeah. And that wasn't a comment toward Republicans or Democrats. That was a comment toward collaboration, which is why brands have stepped in. Patagonia is one of the most purpose-driven brands on the planet. They were built on a foundation of "do no harm." Patagonia decided to reimagine their purpose in light of changing consumer views. Their new purpose is "protect and defend." Here you have one of the most successful brands on the planet reimagining from "Do No Harm" to "protect and defend." That is a radical transformation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And Patagonia has built their business on that kind of thinking, just like many of the other brands I've mentioned. Again, purpose in combination with something else is really what drives performance. If you don't have great flavors, you can be all about prison reform, but Ben & Jerry's is not going to get bought by anyone because someone else will pick someone else's flavor. Same with Tony's Chocolonely. It's the combination of purpose and another strategic choice, whether that's innovation, whether that's access, convenience. It could be any number of factors, but it's a combination of factors around purpose that really drives consumer preference.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: What are the reasons that a company would choose not to align a purpose or some segment of purposes to their business? Well, um, first of all, um, there are companies who haven't sort of seen this movie yet, so they're they haven't gone through an awakening right, um, there are companies that don't know how to get there, which is part of what I get into in the Purpose Advantage book, is a workshop laid out in the book after you get through reading the stories.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And you have to have a path because the purpose can't be a marketing scheme. It needs to be related to your supply chain and your business model. So you have to think about your flywheel. Is your flywheel aligned to that purpose? Is it going to work in a win-win way? Seventh Generation charges an extra buck a bottle. They invest that money more efficiently than consumers in making a positive impact on the environment. So consumers are willing to spend that dollar as soon as they invest it less efficiently, consumers will no longer be willing to buy Seventh Generation because Tide is a very strong, very reputable brand.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: So it's important to understand this has got to be based on business model thinking and making your flywheel better and stronger and faster. Right, and some companies haven't had a reason to sit down and look at it, but most will because they're going to find disruption is around the corner when they don't.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What are some of the pitfalls of this being marketing-driven and not aligned to your core principles? Like, how do you, how would you recognize that if you, you know, how would you recognize maybe as a, as someone inside a company or even a leader of a company, if somehow you came out with a purpose-driven campaign, campaign's the wrong word. You made this a priority in your business, having a purpose, but it was misaligned or it was driven more by marketing. Like, how would you know you missed I guess. Or what are some indicators that you missed.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Well, the starting point for me is it has to start with your internal culture, and you have to make sure the purpose is lived and breathed. If you don't live your purpose, you're going to be called out as a phony. People figure it out. And so, you know, what are the rituals inside your company, and what are the things you're doing? The people who work for the company have to love the company. If they don't, consumers figure that out.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Assuming you do a great job internally, then you have to make sure your purpose is well aligned to the history and future of the company. The best purpose-driven brands have a history that they lean back into when they think about their purpose strategy, and then they refine and reinvent it to make it relevant for future consumers. And that's what I lay out in the book. It's sort of a combination of looking backward to look forward. You don't want to just come out of nowhere and come out with a point of view on toxic masculinity, have not taken strides internally to communicate that.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And by the way, charge millions of women a pink tax on razors because women aren't stupid. They know they're paying for the same product and they're paying more because it's pink. Come on. So it's like, is the topic a good topic? Yes. Was it smart for Gillette to look at that topic? Yes. Do I think they did the right thing in terms of moving forward without ingraining it in their internal culture? No, I think it was a mistake.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now there might be people at Gillette who said, no, it was a big win. Great. Glad it was a big win for you. I think it was the wrong approach. And I think what companies have to think about is how they make sure they make purpose of her before they move forward and make sure it's not a marketing scheme. And when you introduce an idea like toxic masculinity around the Super Bowl, it sure smells like a marketing scheme to me.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: So one of the things that you had said very early on was, and this is an area that you've done a tremendous amount of research on, is Gen Z. And as much as you care to elaborate into how this impacts millennials as well, that this tying purpose into your business, making purpose a verb, which is a tremendous slogan, it's very important to those generations and the people in them and the individuals making those buying decisions. You know, why is that the case? What are the characteristics, maybe, of these generations that make purpose more important in their buying decision?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sure. I think it's becoming cross-generational. So I think youth culture informs a lot of decision-making, whether we're talking about entertainment, technology, food trends, yoga trends, what have you. I think it often starts with young people, but there are plenty of people over 50 who use technology and participate in yoga and pay for their Starbucks coffee with a mobile device. I don't think mobile pay started with people over the age of 50. So young people are the canary in the coal mine on trends. That's why we spend our time paying attention to what they're thinking about. But I think a cross-generational theme is that consumers are very discerning.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And when the cost of doing good is small, consumers will often choose to do good as long as there's other strong benefits. If Bombas doesn't make better socks, I'm not going to pay for those socks. They're too expensive. But I've tried them on, and they're amazing, and they're better, and it's worth it. And so the key part here is there are consumers who shop on low price for sure, and that's a market. And there are brands that compete on low price, and that's fine. If your strategy is to compete on low price, you're probably going to not follow a purpose and sustainability model most of the time. Sometimes you will, because Walmart actually does a very good job of thinking about sustainability.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And they do compete on low price, but many brands won't. And so as a result, what I think is, is companies are thinking about, hey, we have to retain our employees. We have to engage our employees. It's going to have a positive impact on employees, and consumers are going to be willing to pay a small incremental amount, not a large incremental amount, a small incremental amount, as long as we deliver on a great product or a great experience. And if it's really, really that great and they understand your purpose, then the extra couple of cents or 50 cents or whatever it is, and the different products have different amounts, is going to be okay.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And if the brand isn't that strong or they don't understand your purpose, then I'm not going to pay an extra quarter. What was the impetus for this? Because it doesn't feel like this has always been the way that buying decisions were made. What was the impetus for this? Yeah, I think what's happened is we have a fundamental shift happening in the way of sort of macro trends. So lack of government collaboration creates a purpose void. Lack of innovation in religion, organized religion creates a purpose void.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And when I say organized religion, not too many people think innovation. And so historically, people got a dose of purpose through organized religion, but they're not joining organized religion at the same rate. And historically, government dealt with societal issues, whether it's the environment, whether it's equal rights, whether it's equal pay, whether it's whatever. But between lack of collaboration in government and lack of participation in organized religion, there was a purpose white space.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And part of the purpose white space, not all of it, is being filled by brands that understand people still have a fundamental human need to feel good about the decisions they make. And when the cost of feeling good about that decision is small, it's not too hard to decide to do it. When the cost is greater, it's hard. And so I think what we see is that in combination, we have the CEO of the largest investor on Wall Street telling the CEOs of public companies, Milton Friedman was wrong. The objective you have is to both make profit for shareholders and do good for society.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When the cost of doing good is small, consumers will often choose to do good as long as there's other strong benefits. If Bombas doesn't make better socks, I'm not going to pay for those socks. They're too expensive. But I've tried them on, and they're amazing, and they're better, and it's worth it. And so the key part here is there are consumers who shop on low price for sure, and that's a market. And there are brands that compete on low price, and that's fine. If your strategy is to compete on low price, you're probably going to not follow a purpose and sustainability model most of the time.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Sometimes you will, because Walmart actually does a very good job of thinking about sustainability. And they do compete on low price, but many brands won't. And so as a result, what I think is, is companies are thinking about, hey, we have to retain our employees. We have to engage our employees. It's going to have a positive impact on employees, and consumers are going to be willing to pay a small incremental amount, not a large incremental amount, a small incremental amount, as long as we deliver on a great product or a great experience.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And if it's really, really that great and they understand your purpose, then the extra couple of cents or 50 cents or whatever it is, and the different products have different amounts, is going to be okay. And if the brand isn't that strong or they don't understand your purpose, then I'm not going to pay an extra quarter. What was the impetus for this? Because it doesn't feel like this has always been the way that buying decisions were made.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Yeah, I think what's happened is we have a fundamental shift happening in the way of sort of macro trends. So lack of government collaboration creates a purpose void. Lack of innovation in religion, organized religion creates a purpose void. And when I say organized religion, not too many people think innovation. And so historically, people got a dose of purpose through organized religion, but they're not joining organized religion at the same rate.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And historically, government dealt with societal issues, whether it's the environment, whether it's equal rights, whether it's equal pay, whether it's whatever. But between lack of collaboration in government and lack of participation in organized religion, there was a purpose white space. And part of the purpose white space, not all of it, is being filled by brands that understand people still have a fundamental human need to feel good about the decisions they make.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And when the cost of feeling good about that decision is small, it's not too hard to decide to do it. When the cost is greater, it's hard. And so I think what we see is that in combination, we have the CEO of the largest investor on Wall Street telling the CEOs of public companies, Milton Friedman was wrong. Yes, you must make profits, but it's not your sole job. You must make profits and you must do good for society.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And if you don't do both, we will disinvest in your brand. No one wants to get a letter as the CEO of a public company from BlackRock telling them that they're going to disinvest in their brand if they fail to take the right actions. So there is a sea change happening. And I think it's because discerning consumers can decide to pay a small premium for brands that they like that align to their values and discerning investors can separate companies who make a profit from companies who make a profit and in addition to making a profit, do good for society.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And they're not mutually exclusive. I want to ask your opinion about a conversation that I got into the other day with someone who was, they brought up another marketing professional and they brought up the idea of CEO activism. And the conversation started because I saw them hashtagging CEO activism on Twitter. And then I reached out to him and said, I'd love to just chat about this because I have some of my own feelings about CEO activism.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I guess my first question for you is, at least my first question on this particular topic is, is there a difference between a company building purpose into their business, as you've discussed so far, and CEO activism? And what do you think these things are similar? Do you think CEO activism is a natural derivative of a brand with a purpose? Like, where does this fall in the idea of the purpose advantage?
--:-- Jeff Fromm: So I'm not sure if I understand the exact language around CEO activism, yeah, no problem. CEOs represent brands, and so when I think of CEO activism, for example, I think of Levi Strauss's CEO who started a conversation on gun violence and gun policy reform and has managed to get hundreds of other CEOs of companies to sign a pledge that that's something that the vast majority of Americans want and the vast majority of large companies also want, but he's doing that on behalf of his brand, Levi Strauss, right, not as a CEO, you know, personal kind of thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that was my take that I had on CEO activism, from, from my standpoint was, um, the, the position of the person that I was, that I was talking to was that every CEO should, as a way to separate their company, almost as a tactic, have positions, um, uh, either purpose-driven political or otherwise that define them as individuals and as leaders and relate to the company.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And the pushback that I gave was, to me, a company building purpose into their business, although I did not articulate it this way and maybe not even close to exactly the same way, but the idea of building purpose into their business, that to me makes a tremendous amount of sense. Standing for something makes a tremendous my sense.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I guess my concern was for anyone in a leadership position, whether title CEO or otherwise, for them to step forward individually and take specifically political stances on topics as a tactic feels like a very slippery slope to me versus, you know, a cultural idea inside a company. I guess for some reason, the individualistic nature of it versus the organization as a whole, it felt different and potentially more hazardous because it's great to be an activist when everyone agrees with you. But if you are, you know, if your position is some, you know, when people stop agreeing with you, you know, you could have a mob running against your business, I guess was kind of where I was coming from.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: Yeah, I haven't looked at the topic specifically of CEO activism, but from where I sit for most companies, particularly larger brands, certainly public companies, you know, I can't really separate the CEO of Levi Strauss from the company that much. And so when he gets the CEOs of other companies to sign a pledge on a gun policy issue, you know, he's doing that on behalf of his brand. His personal views may or may not be the same. That's not really relevant to me because he's running that company and his company as CEO has made a decision that that's important.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And by the way, it's important to the employees who work there because what happened is a customer was trying on jeans and their gun accidentally went off and the customer shot themselves in the foot, and no one was hurt. And we've seen employees get very upset at Walmart and bring up issues in their private internal portals around gun policy, and so the CEO of Walmart sent a letter to both Republican and Democrat leaders of both sides of Congress, so Senate and House of Representatives, and all four of those individuals got the same letter. It said, "Do your job."
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And the reason it said "do your job" is because they're not. And so what we have going on in this country is a failure. And when I say Volvo, you'll think safety. But when I say government, how many people think collaboration? I don't think very many. Yet they are being paid to collaborate to solve issues on behalf of constituents. And fundamentally, they're not doing their job. They're failing. And last I checked, an F on your report card got you fired, except if you're in the Senate or Congress where it might not.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Don't listen to Joe Rogan's new podcast with Edward Snowden. That'll take you even farther down that path. Yeah. And that wasn't a comment toward Republicans or Democrats. That was a comment toward collaboration, which is why brands have stepped in. Patagonia is one of the most purpose-driven brands on the planet. They were built on a foundation of "do no harm." Patagonia decided to reimagine their purpose in light of changing consumer views. Their new purpose is "protect and defend." Here you have one of the most successful brands on the planet reimagining from "Do No Harm" to "protect and defend." That is a radical transformation.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And Patagonia has built their business on that kind of thinking, just like many of the other brands I've mentioned. Again, purpose in combination with something else is really what drives performance. If you don't have great flavors, you can be all about prison reform, but Ben & Jerry's is not going to get bought by anyone because someone else will pick someone else's flavor. Same with Tony's Chocolonely. It's the combination of purpose and another strategic choice, whether that's innovation, whether that's access, convenience. It could be any number of factors, but it's a combination of factors around purpose that really drives consumer preference.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What are the reasons that a company would choose not to align a purpose or some segment of purposes to their business? Well, um, first of all, um, there are companies who haven't sort of seen this movie yet, so they're they haven't gone through an awakening right, um, there are companies that don't know how to get there, which is part of what I get into in the Purpose Advantage book, is a workshop laid out in the book after you get through reading the stories.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: And you have to have a path because the purpose can't be a marketing scheme. It needs to be related to your supply chain and your business model. So you have to think about your flywheel. Is your flywheel aligned to that purpose? Is it going to work in a win-win way? Seventh Generation charges an extra buck a bottle. They invest that money more efficiently than consumers in making a positive impact on the environment. So consumers are willing to spend that dollar as soon as they invest it less efficiently, consumers will no longer be willing to buy Seventh Generation because Tide is a very strong, very reputable brand.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So it's important to understand this has got to be based on business model thinking and making your flywheel better and stronger and faster. Right, and some companies haven't had a reason to sit down and look at it, but most will because they're going to find disruption is around the corner when they don't.
--:-- Jeff Fromm: What are some of the pitfalls of this being marketing-driven and not aligned to your core principles? Like, how do you, how would you recognize that if you, you know, how would you recognize maybe as a, as someone inside a company or even a leader of a company, if somehow you came out with a purpose-driven campaign, campaign's the wrong word. You made this a priority in your business, having a purpose, but it was misaligned or it was driven more by marketing. Like, how would you know you
