You have a successful product line, you are a known leader of a meaningful market parade, sales are growing, and so is your valuation. To quote a famous t-shirt brand, “Life is Good”. Congrats.
THEN you raise the big round, make the big acquisition, start to worry about upstarts who are beginning to nip at your heels. Or maybe the sales team needs to call higher, but feel they still are stuck at a functional level in the org. Or maybe the messaging across products is straining for consistency and impact. There must be another step to your mission.
Of course, it’s time to start a movement. Time to say goodbye to your Flashmob and your Market Parade. But Movements are BIG and require new thinking. It’s no longer about value, but it’s still about value. It’s no longer about context or Viewpoint, but it’s still about context. But to reach the next level of market leadership, it’s now about Market Transformation. And to transform the vary market you exist in takes bold new messaging that is above the current context of the market, and seeks to enable and empower , to transform and inspire. And not just your market, but the way we do business or even the society we live in.
In the last section of Launching to Leading, I introduce Purpose Messaging as the key to Igniting a Movement. In the book, I suggest that up to 40% of your messaging in this phase should be dedicated to Purpose Messaging, and use the examples of Salesforce, Google and Zappos to demonstrate this. We also take a look at how Zuora is starting to build a movement. However, the book ends without any real guidance on creating Purpose Messaging. This series of posts are meant to show how to build Movement Messaging.
First, it is helpful to understand the 4 different types of Purpose, or Movement Messaging. Simply put, Movement Messaging can either be focused on Transformation or Inspiration. And it can seek to effect either Business specifically or Society more generally. The four types of movement messaging are Business Transformation, Business Inspiration, Society Inspiration and Society Transformation, as shown in the following diagram:
Four Types of Movement Messaging
Let’s take a look at some examples and how they place on this framework. Many of these examples are mixes of the above, but all can be places somewhere on the diagram by weighting their focus.
- Example 1: Salesforce, “The End of Software” – A Business Transformation, enabling the adoption of Software as a Service instead of packaged software.
- Example 2: Zuora, “The Subscription Economy” – A Business Transformation, enabling the move from purchase to leasing, everything!
- Example 3: Zappos – “Delivering Happiness”- A Business Inspiration, you are empowered to focus on happiness first, product and service are secondary to satisfaction
- Example 4: Nike – “Just Do It” – A Society Inspiration, you are empowered to play like a champion
- Example 5: Google – “Accessing the World’s Information” – A Society Transformation, everyone is enabled to find everything
These examples are mapped on our framework here:
Movement Messaging Example Mapping
As you can see, highly effective Movement Messaging can be built in any of these four quadrants. Movement Messaging is all about purpose, it enables andempowers as it transforms and inspires.
In our next post, we will discuss how to develop your Movement Messaging as a natural extension to our Viewpoint Parade leadership framework. Until then, I leave with this short quote from Zappos Founder Tony Hseih:
“Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.”
For part 2 of the series, see here.