Why do some brands stay with us?

Energy helps explain whether a brand is creating buzz and being noticed more. Fit helps explain whether a brand has personal relevance and trust. Whereas Purpose explains whether a brand is truly consistent in the role it plays in people’s lives.  

It takes consistent commitment to a tightly defined brand strategy to grow Purpose.  

When we talk about Purpose, we're not talking about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). There is strong evidence that people are mostly unaware of the CSR actions brands are undertaking, and even if they are, it has a very limited impact on brand choice.  

Rather we’re talking about why the brand exists. Does the brand clearly stand for something? Is their position in the market clear? Do they remain passionately committed to their brand strategy and positioning?  

Clarity has been established. People know what to expect, believe the brand will deliver and feel confident choosing it again.

This is where the final pillar of Brand Edge comes in: Purpose.

Meaning is not always dramatic

The relationship people have with brands is often more complex than we assume.

We often like to think many purchase decisions are rational and that customers take time to compare prices, evaluate features and assess value. Yet, most choices are made fast using cognitive shortcuts and are based on emotions.  

A brand that remains committed to communicating a positioning that resonates helps people understand why they should choose it. In essence, it provides meaning to the brand and allows people to make quick emotionally driven decisions. People know what to expect from the brand and what experience it is likely to deliver.  

Now, a brand's Purpose doesn't mean it needs to be drastically different from others on a functional level. In most established categories, it is very difficult to be meaningful differentiation to other brands. All established banks offer home loans at a similar rate, offer term deposits options, and have credit cards.  

Believe it or not, but all chocolate bars include chocolate and fulfil a craving for something sweet. Most people buy from a repertoire of chocolate bars overtime because they are substitutable; if the chocolate bar you want isn’t there you will likely buy a different one.  

Establishing a clear brand Purpose is about the position you create in the minds of people. It is emotional and can be based on a particular perception you carve out in people's minds, or a category entry point you consistently link your brand to.

Let’s stick with chocolate and talk about KitKat. KitKat has maintained consistency in their marketing strategy and brand positioning for over 60 years, committing to their tagline “Have a break, have a KitKat”. This has helped position the brand around owning the moment of taking a break.  

A clear and committed positioning, like KitKat's, ensures people know what the brand stands for, what role it plays in their lives and what they can expect from it.

In highly competitive categories, a clear commitment to building relative advantages through perceptions or category entry points can become incredibly important.

When functional differences narrow and competitors begin to offer similar products and services, clear positioning on what a brand stands for often becomes one of the most powerful forms of differentiation available.

How do we measure Purpose?

Purpose reflects the role a brand plays in people's lives and the significance customers attach to that role. Within Brand Edge, Purpose isn't about corporate purpose statements or social campaigns. It's about clarity and passion.

Is the brand clear what they stand for? And are they passionate about what they do?  

Why is Purpose important?

While it's never nice to hear, people don't think about or care much about your brand. They're exposed to a plethora of brands every day.

This means people have a very limited number of brain cells available to store memories about each of the brands they know. A focused, single-minded purpose has a better chance of sticking in those brain cells than something vague and ill-defined. You don’t need a save-the-world purpose. You just need to be very clear about the role you play in people’s lives.

Commitment remains key to building Purpose

Purpose is built by increasing clarity of what a brand stands for and the dedicated passion they show to this positioning.  

Ultimately this requires brands to be ruthlessly consistent. Everything you do and say should be a signal that reinforces what your brand stands for; “this is what we do, and here you can see us doing it”.  

However, it is equally important to show people what you’re not. Pick moments or touchpoints where you can demonstrate that you’re passionate about what you do by not doing something that’s at odds with your core role.  

Pak’nSave is a brand with a particularly strong Purpose score. Key to their brand strength is unwavering consistency about one focussed purpose: New Zealand’s lowest food prices. For over 15 years, Pak’nSave has utilised their brand character, Stickman, to demonstrate the brand’s passion for keeping prices low.  

However, this doesn’t just show up in their marketing activity but across how the whole business operates. The stores have a warehouse feel to them while groceries often sit on industrial-like shelving in cut out boxes. They also stay true to this right through to the customer experience with shoppers packing their own brands.  

Purpose like this takes years to build and is delivered through both marketing activity setting the expectations and the customer experiencing matching it. This results in people feeling like: "I know what I'm getting." "They've never let me down." "It's just easier." It reassures them that the experience they receive will align with the expectations they have formed and reduces the effort involved in making a choice.

This matters because people don't approach every decision with a blank slate. They draw on previous experiences, existing perceptions and accumulated knowledge to simplify their choices. Purpose acts as a shortcut, helping people make decisions more quickly and with greater confidence.

How Purpose develops over time

While Energy can shift quickly and Fit can evolve as consumer needs change, Purpose develops through accumulation. Every interaction, experience and expectation either strengthens or weakens people’s perceptions of the brand, what it stands for and the role it plays in their lives.  

Over time, people learn what a brand stands for through repeated experiences that build confidence, reinforce clarity and confirm the brand delivers on its promises.

This is why Purpose often reflects the longest-term relationship between a brand and its audience. It cannot be manufactured through one campaign or accelerated through communications alone. It has to be earned.

The brands that perform strongly on Purpose tend to understand this. They focus on creating alignment between what they say and what they do, recognising that clarity is built through behaviour. Rather than relying on communications to create clarity alone, they ensure everything the business does aligns with that Purpose. The Purpose is as much internal as it is external.  

What weakens Purpose?

Just as Purpose is built over time, it can also be diminished over time.

One of the most common causes is inconsistency. Purpose begins to weaken when brand strategies change to frequently. When marketing plans are built for 1or 2-year cycles rather than 5- or 10-year cycles. When new CMOs or brand managers come in and want to ‘shake things up’. When the whole business hasn’t bought into the brand strategy. This is often the reason why brands also struggle to shift any brand perceptions over time.  

Purpose also weakens when the experience people receive no longer matches the expectations a brand has created. Authenticity suffers when actions and messaging point in different directions. Meaning becomes harder to sustain when consumers can no longer see evidence of the values or promises a brand claims to represent.

These shifts are often subtle at first. Sales may remain stable and awareness may remain strong, creating the impression that very little has changed.

But people's relationship with brands is constantly evolving. A brand can become less relevant to people's needs, less connected to the moments that matter and less differentiated from its competitors over time.

This is why Purpose deserves a place within brand tracking.  

From measurement to action

Traditional brand tracking is good at telling us what happened. It is often less useful at explaining why.

Awareness increased. Consideration declined. Preference remained stable. These are important signals, but on their own they don't always point to what organisations should do next.

Brand growth is shaped by more than movement through a funnel. It is influenced by whether a brand feels visible, relevant and meaningful to the people it serves. The brands that succeed are rarely the ones that excel in just one of these areas. They build momentum within their category, remain aligned with changing customer needs and create emotional significance that endures over time.

This is what Brand Edge seeks to measure

Brand Edge is a framework for understanding the persuasive power of a brand. It captures the emotional dimensions of brand strength that help explain why traditional brand metrics move.

Energy helps explain whether a brand is building momentum. Fit helps explain whether customers see it as relevant and trusted. Purpose helps explain whether its position is clear in people’s minds.  

Together, these dimensions provide a richer understanding of brand strength and a more useful lens through which to understand future growth.

Learn more about TRA Brand Tracking.

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