How B2B Brands Can Use Purpose to Win in the Marketplace

An idea that's hit the business world like a tsunami in recent years is "higher purpose." In 2019, the Business Roundtable of 181 leading CEOs signed a declaration of "purpose over profits" and a Harvard Business School study was published linking purpose with stock market performance. However, most of the companies getting attention for their purpose-based efforts have been B2C companies.

Recently, a major change, driven by the pandemic, seems to be underway in the world of brand purpose. When a large-scale study called "The Purpose Power Index" was repeated in early 2021, nearly one-third of the top 100 purpose brands were new to the list and over half of the top 20 were new. Six of the top 25 purpose brands were B2B companies, as were 11 of the top 50. Drivers of this change include reaction to the pandemic, trust in brands over government, and less purpose-washing.

Major B2B companies such as Space-X, 3M, Intel, Zoom, SAP, and Microsoft are being credited with the public for being purpose-driven, and many are activating their purpose rather than just talking about it. When B2B companies activate their higher purpose in tangible ways, it can have impressive business payoffs such as increased investment, employee recruitment, and public defense.