Showing Purpose Through Video

 

Without context, here are a few rapid-fire quotes:

“You’re not doing it just to look good, you’re doing it because you want to.”
 
“There’s no point in doing anything if you’re not going to try to get better.”
 
“This world is built on collaboration.”
 
“If I don’t keep my promise, that means I’m lying. And if I’m lying she won’t be my friend anymore!”

 
So, at first glance these might appear as excerpts from advertisements, blog posts, or keynote speeches. Except maybe the last one—but these are the words of a few children, aged 5 to 16, and they’re taken from Emerson’s Emerson Kids video. Rather than take the usual route of discussing how great brands form and rollout their purpose, I thought I’d just say a few words, and show you one great example of how a purpose-driven culture is brought to life.
 
Emerson, a multinational electrical and manufacturing company with somewhere around 76K employees, wanted to convey some of their brand values—like integrity, safety, quality, customer focus, and more. Now, those are all great values, but most companies will have similar ones (if anyone happens to know of a successful brand that champions dishonesty, shoddy products, and a ‘meh’ attitude towards customers, I would LOVE to hear more about that!).
 
A really fantastic, inspiring and, at times, adorable way to show these to the world is Emerson’s video featuring the children of Emerson employees explaining the values they’ve learned from their parents; those values are the same ones Emerson tries to take to heart. So, if you’re looking for a quick uplift on a lazy Sunday morning, that also does a great job of highlighting brand values in a format that travels well to customers, prospects, and employees, check out the video, here. Plus, if you’d like to hear CMO Kathy Button-Bell discuss more of their efforts to build this culture, check out my interview with her here. She also makes an appearance discussing how she effectively pushes her teams to be creatively bold in our recent guide to effective marketing, which you can read here.