Highlights from MadFest 2023 Part 2
Welcome back. Last week, we spoke about the emphasis on the representation of women in leadership roles at MadFest, the UK’s biggest destination marketing festival. In Part 2 of our wrap-up, we will speak about the importance of brand purpose in turbulent times.
The importance of brand purpose in turbulent times
Simon Groves, Director of Brand & Marketing at O2, spoke about the importance of having a customer-first approach in contributing to brand loyalty. Having a brand purpose can help you navigate turbulent times and make a company more resistant to external factors.
As a brand, you should be looking for ways to improve your customers’ lives. Ensure your purpose is authentic. Don’t flip between purposes for the sake of innovation, stick to one that you feel passionate about and that is relevant to your brand and helps your customers.
As an example, Simon shared that when EU roaming charges were introduced after Brexit, network providers started charging for data roaming in Europe. However, O2 opted not to do this, prioritising customers before profit.
O2 also created a National Data Bank for people in need to use for free, to help solve the issue of 1.5 million homes not having a connection to the internet.
In another talk, Sustainability, Inclusivity + Creativity. How to Harness Their Power in a Cost-of-Living Crisis, Bronwen Foster-Butler, CMO, Finisterre, built on this, by recommending that your measure of success is consumer focused, not sales focused.
Finisterre’s brand purpose is to make surfing more accessible. They create custom-made wetsuits for amputees, as well as seasuits for women in the Middle East who want to surf and stay covered up comfortably in hot weather. For every seasuit or hijab purchased, one will be gifted to those facing financial hardship.
Our brand purpose and how we’ve helped clients show theirs
At distillery, we feel strongly about diversity and inclusion. We worked with charity AKT and identified that queer youth struggle to see their life past their 20s due to the lack of older queer representation, so we set out to change this! We recently launched Queer Joy, which shares words of resilient wisdom from one generation to the next.
We created a series of videos and YouTube shorts featuring older queer individuals sharing advice and stories. We also ensured we used LGBT crew to ensure authenticity behind and in front of the camera.
We have also created studio d, which is our large global network of over 300 talented and diverse creatives that we can tap into anytime for more authentic and impactful content for our clients and help underrepresented talent get the exposure they deserve.
How we help our clients
We’ve recently helped Google Cloud hero their customer, Aruna, and highlight their brand purpose of creating sustainable fishing. Watch the video below:
Stay tuned for Part 3. Want to know more? Let’s connect to create a positive impact.
