What the Spice Girls Teach Us About Brand Purpose

If you were a young girl growing up in the ’90s, you pretty much had no choice but to love the Spice Girls. They were absolutely EVERYWHERE. If it weren’t for them, I certainly would have had a much harder time making friends on the playground.

I owned the CDs, saw Spice World in theaters, and had school supplies with their faces on them. My only regret is never having seen them in concert.

But as an adult fan looking back on the Spice Girls’ legacy, I think about what I learned from them. For one, they taught me how to be a good friend because your girls always come first. But secondly, they were the first to teach me about brand purpose… I just didn’t know it yet.

What is a Brand Purpose?

It goes back to what Simon Sinek says in his popular TED Talk and best-selling book, Start With Why.

Your brand purpose should directly answer “Why does this brand exist?”

Sometimes, brands go wrong when drafting their purpose and they make it about them. They think it’s about selling lots of products, boosting their bottom line, or filling the pockets of their C-suite executives. But a brand purpose is never selfish.

It’s not about the things you sell, but about what those things can do for people or the planet. It’s how your brand can make the world a better place.

Here are some examples of brand purpose:

• Crayola: to unleash the originality in every child
• Southwest: to connect people to what’s important in their lives
• Dove: to help women everywhere develop a positive relationship with the way they look
• Nike: to bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world
• Google: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

You’ll notice a pattern here. When writing a brand purpose, it should always have a powerful verb, because it’s what you do for others. There is an action. In the examples above, we saw verbs like unleash, connect, and help. Simply following this format will strengthen your own brand purpose.