The Virtual CMO

How to Activate Your Brand Purpose with Scott Goodson & Chip Walker

June 21, 2021 Eric Dickmann, Scott Goodson and Chip Walker Season 5 Episode 13
The Virtual CMO
How to Activate Your Brand Purpose with Scott Goodson & Chip Walker
Show Notes Transcript

In episode 79, host Eric Dickmann interviews Scott Goodson and Chip Walker. They are both associated with StrawberryFrog, a full-funnel, marketing, advertising, and design company founded in Amsterdam in 1999 and New York in 2005. Their company has put together a new way to overcome the gap between purpose-based storytelling, data-led optimizations, and business transformation. For over 20 years, Scott, Chip, and their team at StrawberryFrog have continued to challenge the status quo and driven remarkable results for iconic clients worldwide, such as Walmart, P&G, Google, Emirates Airline, SunTrust, and Coca-Cola.

Scott Goodson is an entrepreneur, business mentor, award-winning author, and Founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog. For over 25 years, he has been helping business leaders galvanize people and organizations through "Movement Thinking" to help companies perform at their peak and gain a competitive advantage. Goodson's Movement Thinking is deeply emphasized in his best-selling book- Uprising, where he illustrates case studies from his interviews with 40 global business leaders.

Chip Walker is an entrepreneur, brand and business strategist, keynote speaker, author, and Head Strategist of StrawberryFrog. He leads the strategy and research divisions at StrawberryFrog and is focused on taking the idea of a higher brand purpose and turning that purpose into a social movement that galvanizes people to action. Walker aims to help companies leverage their brand and create a positive impact in the midst of the pandemic.

Scott and Chip's latest book- Activate Brand Purpose, is a wake-up call for leaders who want to change employee habits, transform their company, and grow their business. Activate Brand Purpose shows readers what is wrong with purpose and lays out a pragmatic roadmap for how CEOs, CHROs, CMOs, CSOs, and CFOs can galvanize the people who matter inside the company and out.  Here, Goodson and Walker reveal the process that leaders need in order to transform their culture and improve their business while making much-needed positive impacts in their communities. Scott Goodson and Chip Walker believe that companies that activate purpose thrive.

For show notes and a  list of resources mentioned in this episode, please visit: https://fiveechelon.com/how-to-activate-your-brand-purpose-s5e13/

A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.

The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at: 

https://fiveechelon.com


Eric Dickmann:

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. This week, I'm excited to welcome Scott Goodson and Chip Walker to the podcast. Scott Goodson is an entrepreneur, business mentor, award-winning author, Founder and CEO of Strawberry Frog. For over 25 years, he has been helping business leaders galvanize people and organizations through movement thinking to help companies perform at their peak and gain a competitive advantage. Chip Walker is an entrepreneur, brand and business strategist, keynote speaker, author, and Head Strategist at Strawberry Frog. He leads the strategy and research divisions and is focused on taking the idea of higher brand purpose and turning that purpose into a social movement that pushes people to act. Scott and Chip recently launched their book entitled Activate Brand Purpose. Their book is a wake-up call for leaders who want to change employee habits, transform their company, and grow their business. They are both grounded in the belief that companies that activate purpose thrive. Today, we're going to talk about movement thinking and what it really means to activate your company's brand purpose. Please help me welcome Scott and Chip to the program. Hey Scott and Chip. Welcome to The Virtual CMO Podcast. I'm so glad both of you could join us today.

Scott Goodson:

Hey Eric!

Eric Dickmann:

This is exciting. I was saying before the show started that this is the first time we've done two guests live, so you're going to give me some engineering challenges as we go through the show here, but that's great I'm really excited to talk to you both. And especially about this new book that you wrote, Activating Brand Purpose I was so captivated by the title of it and what a time to write a book like this, right? We are in a new era, it seems like there's so much in the news every day about different movements that are going on, and I love the way that you've written a book that really talks about how brands can start to apply this. First of all I'd love it if you could briefly just introduce yourselves and talk a little bit about how this book came together. Scott, let's start with you.

Scott Goodson:

Yeah, Thank you, My name is Scott Goodson. I am the Founder of StrawberryFrog- World's First Movement Marketing Company. Uh, I've been doing this for about 20 some odd years. I started my career and excuse me, I started my career in Sweden, back in the early nineties and helped a lot of Scandinavian companies define purpose. And then as we. launch those companies outside of Scandinavia in Europe and in Asia, and even in the United States, we found that purpose strategies were too theoretical. So we started this idea of creating a movement, like a societal movement as a way to engage people. So my background is that for the last, you know 30 years, and then I've been working with Chip, he can introduce himself. And you know over the decade, and we just saw this would be a great time during COVID, if COVID had a silver lining, to write this new book.

Eric Dickmann:

Hey, that's great. Chip, how about yourself?

Chip Walker:

Yeah, yeah, Chip Walker. As Scott said, we worked together for a number of years. I head strategy at StrawberryFrog, and have for a little while. I had been doing this kind of work for at least a couple of decades. So about the book, we saw a hole in the marketplace, and there were tons of books out there that are about defining brand purpose. You know, what is our, why? You've probably seen a bunch of those. But what we did not see was a lot of books out there, or at least any good ones there were about, Well, what do you do with your brand purpose? How do you live it? How do you act on it? The other thing I think is we saw over the past couple of years, particularly during COVID, was that clients were coming to us with that problem saying we've developed a brand purpose or we develop more than one brand purposes. We've had consultants in, yet it just right now, it's words on our website, it's a coffee mug, whatever, help us figure out what to do with it. So that was kind of the onus for writing this book.

Eric Dickmann:

I mentioned at the top of the show you know what an amazing time we're in for a book like this to come out, but I think that there's a general feeling that government is more or less broken and that companies are having to step up and do things because of this perceived view that government is fairly ineffective at making big societal changes, making big societal investments. Do you really see that? Was that one of the things that drove you to write a book like this is because brands are needing in a way to step up and fill a void?

Scott Goodson:

Look, the world is full of problems to be solved. I mean the enormity of the problems is almost head spinning. Each one of those problems represents an immense opportunity for businesses. You know, why focus on ideas, the world doesn't need when there's good business in solving real problems?. And you know, whether you think the government is broken or I tend to think that government, you know, what government does is it's hard to visualize. So for example, you know, you go to a restaurant and you don't die because the government is, you know, legislation in place to ensure food is not going to kill you, or you get behind the wheel of a vehicle, and people don't die, so there are certainly things that government is really quite good at. There are of course, so many issues out there and it's in the interest of corporations and companies, and startups to solve those societal issues. As I mentioned, if there's better business in solving real problems, then simply starting a business to make money.

Eric Dickmann:

Hmmm. I'm curious too, and maybe just by way of definition, how do you really separate a movement from activism? What do you really define the two as?

Scott Goodson:

Activism is an element of a movement, but it isn't really doesn't have to be. So movement is basically a framework. Chip and I basically looked at this from a, let's say a psychological perspective, what is it that motivates people to participate in, you know, movement? And we've applied the principles of societal movements as a business tool for CEOs, you know, HR people, directors, CHROs, Chief Strategy Officers, even Chief Financial Officers as a tool to engage individuals, different types of stakeholders, whether they're employees, how do you galvanize a hundred thousand employees or you know a couple hundred employees? How do you engage prospects and consumers in the age of movement and cancel culture and activism? How do you, um, how do you introduce an IPO in today's world? Do you just use the old fashioned equity model or do you launch Mshares? You know there's a lot of really interesting thinking in this new world. And not every movement has to be what I call a big M social activist movement to drive, huge social change. You can try the elements of that. But it doesn't have to be truly activist, but it's always great when there's a little element of activism in it, because ideally what we want to do is mobilize people.

Eric Dickmann:

You used a term in the book I believe it was purpose washing. Do you think that that's a real problem today with companies standing behind or looking to stand behind an issue but really there's nothing there, it doesn't go deep into the culture of the company.

Chip Walker:

Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge issue, sorry. And I think it's one of the things that's making the whole purpose dialogue out there, it's making a lot of people skeptical. So purpose washing to me is about, um, you knowclaiming some higher order role in the world that it's not authentic to who you are. We see it all the time, companies sort of jumping on the purpose bandwagon. I mean, we've seen it with Pepsi, Gillette, others, particularly taking up some sort of a social issue because it's kind of hot. They've never had any involvement with it in the past. Uh, it's unclear to see how it's connected to what they do or what they make. And so all of a sudden it starts to seem really, really self-serving, and thus the cynicism we see are around higher purpose.

Scott Goodson:

I understand. I mean, I understand the CMO marketers out there, you know, they, they hear a lot of talk around purpose, that companies should have a purpose, a brand should have a purpose. They see brands like Dove, they see brands like SunTrust or other types of organizations that have really activated their purpose. And they sit there and say, you know, we really need to bring purpose in, but it's really, really hard, you know? It's like, how do you take this concept of purpose when you can read about in like, why from Simon Sinek, once you know, how do you find that purpose, which is undertaking onto itself?. But once you find that purpose, it's a bit like finding your belly button. Once you find your belly, what do you do with it?

Eric Dickmann:

Right, right.

Scott Goodson:

I think the question is really important because toothless purpose is giving it all a bad name, isn't it? And I think purpose washing is one aspect, but so is having a purpose and not doing anything with it.

Eric Dickmann:

Hmm.

Scott Goodson:

Yeah.

Eric Dickmann:

You know I'd love it if we could take an example of one company so that you know people really get the idea of what you're talking about here and then deconstruct it a little bit with your core sort of building blocks around this movement thinking. If you could, can we talk a little bit about Patagonia, because I think that that's a brand that people recognize and I think that their purpose, their DNA is pretty deeply embedded in that company culture, and you've certainly made reference to it in the book. Can you talk about why that's a good example of a real purpose driven company?

Scott Goodson:

I think Patagonia is a great example, but it's not the right example for everyone. And it's, it's much more of an activist brand, and so I think, you know, um, SunTrust is perhaps an example that most CMOs can wrap their head around. You know it's a huge funding, it's a large financial group, they developed a purpose called Lighting the Way to Financial Well-being. And then we stepped in to work with the leadership to activate that purpose, and what we did was we came up with a movement called On Up, which was a movement to help Americans move from financial stress to financial confidence. And they were able to you know, in the course of five years, to generate over six and a half million participants in this movement, and many other, you know benefits, business growth and engagement, you know, benefits. Both inside the organization and among customers and prospects. So that's a good example of what I would describe as a small end movement. There's a sense of activism to drive this sort of positive change in society to help Americans, which is a real issue. You know, I mean, a lot of Americans are financially devastated or financially illiterate, and this is a financial institution helping both corporations help their employees become financially literate as well as their customers. Um, but I'll pass it to Chip to talk about Patagonia.

Eric Dickmann:

What I would just add to that's a mission that's very close to their line of business too. So it makes a lot of sense, it feels authentic that they would be doing that.

Scott Goodson:

Absolutely. And that's a key, you know issued or come when it comes to activating, first of all, defining a purpose, but then activating it. And Chip has examples of really bad use of that.

Chip Walker:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, regarding Patagonia, I think Scott is right in that. I think there a little bit of an exception to the rule in that. They are kind of a hardcore activist brand. I saw the CMO speak,a year or so ago, a couple years ago now. And she was pretty much like you know, that this is our belief, we're about saving the planet, we don't care who we piss off, if they don't like it, then they don't need to be our customers, which is an admirable point of view. But it's obviously not everyone feels that way. think if you just kind of wanted an example of movement thinking, I think a related, but maybe more relatable example would be a Smart Car. I know, you know, the tiny, smart cars that you see around the urban environments.Well StrawberryFrog helped develop and position, that. It was one of the first movements I think the company developed. That's a good illustration of movement thinking. All movements start with kind of a grievance or dissatisfaction, what's going on out there in the world that needs to be made right? What is a problem in society that we need to solve? Is there a change you want to see in the world? Is there an enemy that's standing in the way? And then there's a stand you're going to take to kind of overcome the enemy and achieve the change. But I think the shorthand that we do, which is easy to remember, especially for a situation like a podcast like this, it's just sort of for and against. What is the brand against? What is the brand for? And in the case of Smart Car, the enemy was sort of stupidly over-consuming. A big gigantic SUV in the urban landscape that's polluting things and taking up too much space. And whether the brand was for was really just sort of a more conscious style of automotive consuming. So we called the enemy dumb and we called the stand smart, and the movement became against, dumb. And as we all probably know now it was a big success and you know Smart really took off. So that's just kind of an example of how movement thinking works. You know, we could have cell Smart as being more energy efficient or making it more convenient so you can park, but none of those really connected people, the way that the movement did.

Eric Dickmann:

I'd love to drill down into those points a little bit more because I know that the audience for this podcast tends to be a lot of small and mid-sized businesses. They're working on growing their marketing trajectory, trying to figure out how to be successful out in the marketplace. So if they're looking at this and saying Okay, I want to activate my brand purpose here. I really want to stand for something as a company, what are the steps that I need to consider? Because you know we always hear about the big guys in the news, you know the Apples and whatnot, and all the things that they're doing for the environment but for some smaller businesses they look and say why I have such more limited reach? I'm such a smaller company, I don't have the recognition, so how can I do that? So I know that the first point in your building block is dissatisfaction, what do you mean by that?

Chip Walker:

Dissatisfaction is something going on in the world that's kind of a grievance for you, but not only for you as a company, but the people that you serve. What is the shared grievance? Every movement starts with a grief grievance, think about, you know, Black Lives Matter, or Me Too, or any of those, there's something that people thought this is not right, and it needs to change. And it was not only the organizers of the movement, it was the people that they wanted to reach all believe that there was something going on. And to give you a small business example, we have in the book illustrated a company called Boll and Branch, they make sort of luxury linens. And it started out as a startup, and you know they're sort of in the luxury linen business, but the founders sort of looked and saw that it was one of the most environmentally harmful processes of creating luxury linens that you could imagine. Of course, nobody who buys looks really the thinks of that. And so, um, that really became a grievance for them. Why do you have to destroy the planet just to get a really nice luxury linen experience? And what they really did was went in and focused on supply chain. That's really been their point of difference. And that is a very, very clean supply chain and sort of redefining what luxury even means and linens. And that it's a great, it feels great you know when you sleep on these linens, but it's also a great experience from an environmental standpoint. So that's an example of how a small business was able to use movement thinking and kind of elevate itself above competition.

Scott Goodson:

And I think just to add to what Chip said, you know, in Activate Brand Purpose, in the book, we talk about this idea of movement thinking and how it changes behavior and minds and has been doing this obviously for generations. You know, it's not like, it's not in the last five years that movements have just risen out of the earth. I mean movements that have shaped human behavior for 10,000 years. But it is now the time for either startup founders or small business leaders to apply this to the core of their business to drive tangible change. And I think our economy and our world need it, and you know the founders or the leaders of these companies will be rewarded. We just which I Shouldn't say just in 2019, we launched the Purpose Power Index, the first empirical study of purpose brands or a first empirical measure of purpose brands in the US, which Chip led. And we had, you know, it was over 17 and a half thousand responses and clearly and unequivocally brands that are activating their purpose are thriving, especially during the last year and coming out of COVID. So it is a business strategy for growth, for transforming your organization, and whether you're a startup or you're a you know, a mid cap, it is a really valuable business strategy.

Eric Dickmann:

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. So if we take that then to the second point which is the desire change aspect of the building block, If we look at that Boll and Branch example, so they wanted to have a cleaner supply chain, right? But is it just within their own organization or do you view these changes having to affect you know more than just the company's own supply chain, but really pushing that out and making it a cause that's outside the company as well?

Chip Walker:

Yeah, it's bigger. I I mean the supply chain was the executional way they brought about the change they wanted to see in the world. The change they wanted to see in the world was really the ability to have a great luxury linen without destroying the planet. The world would be a better place if you as a luxury buyer, you know, didn't have to feel like you were as I said, destroying the planet. The way they went about that executionally was through their supply chain. But the change you want to see is the change in the world. And I think one of the issues that we often see with people starting to do movement thinking is that, you know, they'll think about the dissatisfaction and then the change they want to see in terms of their category, like the dissatisfaction is that my competition, um, moves too fast. And the change I want to see is that we beat them in the marketplace. And that that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the change in the world and people's lives and, and culture and the society cause we wanna, we want to, you know, connect emotionally with people. People are already feeling these ideas out there. We're not a brand cannot create a movement. company cannot create a movement company, can identify and crystallize a movement that exists in our society. And the power of that, if you think about it is millions of people are already feeling this right? And so in the case of SunTrust, millions of Americans already feel this economic stress. It doesn't matter whether you are unbankable or if you're a multimillionaire over the, you know, during the last economic recession in the late two thousands. And then now coming out of COVID, a lot of people are feeling anxiety and in that situation, you don't, we're not going to come make something up and then put it out there. We're just taking what already exists and that change. Is what the movement is all about. We want to help Americans move from financial stress to financial confidence. That's the change we want to see in the world. And the movement is designed around that and it's not being made up. It's something that is real. We're helping the organization connect with customers and prospects and by doing so it's a much more engaging. Uh, and more emotional way, uh, to participate in the world and with those different audiences.

Eric Dickmann:

We've talked a lot on this podcast about the power of storytelling and having a very compelling brand story to go along with your marketing messages, and I love that you're talking about that emotional connection here because your third step in this process is really defining a nemesis and when you talk abouta nemesis, a villain, immediately an emotional connection sort of comes to mind just by using that word. So what do you really mean by a nemesis? Who's the nemesis in the SunTrust example?

Scott Goodson:

Well, the nemesis, the way I like to think about it, there are different types of nemesis and you can see how different movement leaders have cherry picked a kind of, you know enemy out there, nemesis. The way I think about it is that classic Hollywood movie, where the small village is bickering amongst themselves, and then Frankenstein comes rolling up and everybody goes home and gets their pitchfork to keep the monster out. It's you know, what is the nemesis that we're trying to you know, rally people around in order to defeat? That's the way I think psychologically you think about it. It's not the competition, we're not talking about our competitor in the market. In the case of. SunTrust, the nemesis is financial stress. The enemy is anxiety, that incredibly the pit of your stomach, you feel at your son's high school graduation, when you're worried about how you're going to afford to pay for college instead of enjoying that moment, you know sitting there and fretting. You know, can't even look at your wife, kind of look at your child because you're so anxious about the next four years. That is the enemy,

Eric Dickmann:

These are the pain points.

Scott Goodson:

That's the pain point. So we try to map out, you know, those moments in human life, where the enemy is ruining lives, affecting negatively impacting people's lives, and we use that as a power source. We plug into that, we put our finger in that nerve and that thing propels the movement into something more meaningful and relevant to a wide audience because they can identify, they can identify with that, with that moment.

Eric Dickmann:

Yeah I like that. Once they've identified this, how do they go about taking a stand? What does that look like?

Chip Walker:

Well, that one's pretty simple. I mean if the enemy's what you're against, the stand is what you're for. Well specifically, you know, what is the stand you're going to take to kind of overcome this enemy to sort of slay the dragon and achieve that important change that you've said you want to see in the world. So as Scott just said, in the case of SunTrust, if the enemy was financial stress, the stand was for helping make everyone financially confident, so which is kind of the antithesis to distress.

Eric Dickmann:

Hmmm.

Scott Goodson:

And when we launched that, we launched it with a number of different initiatives and activities, uh, both inside the outside of the organization. But you, you know, when you launch that movement, you can lean into different aspects of that strategy. So sometimes you might want to lean into the nemesis in order for people to feel what we're fighting against. And other times you want to lean into what we're standing for and you get to use those two as real, those tillers as really strong mechanisms for storytelling, and emotional storytelling, but also logical frameworks that people can say, Oh, that makes sense. Yes. I see why that company is doing that, that, that does help me. Um, and, and then underneath that of course become, you know, you put your position, your portfolio of products, the services that you deliver. And, you know, if you think about it from the context of how do I engage people, both our customers, our employees, as well as our prospects, then you see how this becomes a really powerful tool in the age of movements.

Eric Dickmann:

So you've gone through the process, now you're taking a stand obviously action follows. And one of the things that you talk about in the book is that there are problems inside many companies where a lot of these things just end up as posters on the lunch room wall, right? They're not really actionable. And I was surprised by this statistic, I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but how many executives that you surveyed recognize that this could be impactful, but still aren't doing anything about it. How does this turn into action?

Chip Walker:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, that's kind of the subject of the entire book is how you so, but, uh, if, if I had to sum it up, um, you know, first, first and foremost, when you reframe something as lofty as a purpose, And as Scott was saying, in order to be inspiring, a purpose often has to kind of sound lofty, but when you reframe it in movement terms, just as we've been talking about finding out what you're for, finding out what you're against in order to achieve this change you want to see in the world. All of a sudden it starts to become much easier to see what it is we need to do as a company and as an enterprise. So in the boll and branch example, uh, when they identified, uh, the issues with, um, destroying the planet via luxury, unfortunately in the worlds of linens it, that it started to become very clear to them they needed to do something about their supply chain. Uh, which you wouldn't think was as strategic, you would think that that's kind of, uh, something for the, um, logistics department to worry about, but, but for them it became very central to their entire proposition. Uh, but, and for, in the case of other folks like SunTrust, it became very clear if you want to get people financial confidence, right. You needed to help people get financial education. And that became a real cause for them, both inside their company for their employees, but also for, for just regular, uh, retail customers of bank. So it wasn't just about, uh, yacking and talking about stuff. It was actually doing something about financial education.

Scott Goodson:

And I think, you know, it can be really hard. Yeah. As a, as a business leader in today's world. I mean, so many things are flying at you and you know, we've been through quite a challenging year and coming out of this year, um, people inside your organization feel stressed there. A lot of people are emotionally anxious. They don't know about the future. Um, they may have health. Okay. Issues coming out of, of, of COVID. Um, there's certainly many people that are worried about their finances. Um, and there are issues around diversity and, you know, the role of women and women have felt the brunt of the pandemic the last year when there was an article. Um, or sorry at podcasts last week, um, in New York times podcast that interviewed mothers across the United States, most of them had, had gone crazy. I mean, there they're women who are leaders in business. Who at the same time and parents have to deal with the kids. And many of them would have literally jumped if they have another year of this, they would be jumping out of windows. And so there's so many issues. Of course, there's racial equality issues. And as a CEO of a company or a COO or a marketer, You can't just stick a BLM sticker on your website and think you're doing well, or put a post up every year, um, during pride week. And think that's fine. Check. I did that. Now you need to have a purpose and you need to think through all of these things so that you can have an appropriate response and hopefully a proactive approach that makes you relevant both to your employees. So they feel pride and confidence that you, as a leader really know what you're doing and that you're modern company whose best years are ahead. And also for the consumers who we know from the purpose power index, that chips, uh, the study that ship's done, consumers are buying products from companies who are activating their purpose. So, you know, take those two things into account, I think is really important.

Eric Dickmann:

You We know I had a guest on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he represented on employee advocacy platform so basically giving tools out to the employees to be able to reshare social media posts automatically. And if I think back in the not too distant past, you are often limited in what you could do to demonstrate maybe what your company's purpose was, right? Maybe you put a team together and you ran in the annual 5K charity run that they did downtown or there was a donation drive that you participated in, or you cleaned up some litter on the side of the highway once a month, but there were sometimes limitations in what you could do and now with some of the digital tools that are out there, you can spread the message of that brand much more easily if you get the employees to buy into it. I think a lot of them want to participate.

Scott Goodson:

I mean, I would even go one step further. I would say that the peer-to-peer world is really dominant in how companies are, um, how employees are actually thinking about the company and what they do, and the strategies, the CEO, the leadership, it's a completely flipped the pyramid. Uh, we tend to say you can't demand compliance. Or even mandate change inside an organization, or if you're implementing a strategy, you can't mandate that in a company anymore. However, you can galvanize people by means of a movement where they feel you're fostering trust and you're allowing for creativity and participation, you know, think of it yourself. You know, you're. Gonna sit there and develop a purpose. And then you want that purpose to be genuine. Take root, grow into a sturdy oak tree in the front yard of your building. How do you do that today? Do you just sit in your office, you, the CEO with your CFO and your CMO, and write it up and launch it to rapture this applause, or do you reach out to all your people and say, Hey, help me build this, help me do something here? That's going to be meaningful. Get their input. And then launch it, activate it with some program over a three, four year period measure each type of activity. And some of them are digital. Some of them could be broadens, as you said. Um, some of them are ambassador programs and so forth and, and you will see a completely different organization, enthusiastic, you know, people that are feeling like this company understands them. And this company is where the world is going. It just makes, it just makes sense. It's not, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be so complicated. Um, but you know, stop stopping at the beginning and saying, you know, let's simplify all this down. Let's take our business strategy, let's take our vision. Let's take our mission. Let's take our values and let's try to simplify all this. Um, and there's a new book by a professor from Harvard called, Better Simpler Strategy. I think simplifying all those things into something that people can do is the best way forward.

Eric Dickmann:

Hey Scott, I think that's a great way to bring the conversation to a close. thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, its packed, full of a lot of great examples, a lot of research, its well cited. I would highly encourage people to pick it up. Where can people go to find out more about both of you guys on the web and where can they get a hold of a copy of this book?

Chip Walker:

Yes. So, uh, we, the book has a website, so it's www.activatebrandpurpose.com. Its obviously available and, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those kinds of platforms. Uh, but if they want to learn more about movement thinking, um, and just sort of see how movements, uh, come to life in action. Uh, I know this sounds self-serving, but there are a lot of good examples on our company website, which is strawberryfrog.com.

Eric Dickmann:

Scott, Chip, thank you both for being on the show today, I really enjoyed it, enjoyed reading the book so much, and we'll make sure we have all of this linked up in the show notes so that people can find it.

Scott Goodson:

Awesome. This was really great. Thank you so much for having us.

Eric Dickmann:

us Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.