I was reminded recently, whilst watching the various political party election kick-offs, of a book by Simon Sinek called “Start with why”.
As David and Ed start kicking metaphorical lumps out of each other, it occurred to me just how far political parties in the UK are from the organisational ideal Sinek espouses. Neatly wrapped up in what he calls the ‘Golden Circle’, Sinek highlights how the greatest brands and businesses talk about why they do what they do rather than how they do it or what they actually do.
The Golden Circle
What
Every organisation on the planet know what they do. These are products they sell or the services they offer.
How
Some organisations know how they do it. These are the things that make them special or set them apart from the competition.
Why
Very few organisations know why they do what they do. 'Why' is not about making money. That's a result. It's a purpose, cause or belief. It's the very reason your organisation exists.
What is particularly striking about politics today is that the parties barely even touch on what they do or how they do it, preferring to focus on what the other parties don’t do. Judging by the apathy of many people in the UK towards politics, this negative approach doesn’t seem to work, but that doesn’t seem to be changing the way political parties behave. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is primarily down to the fact that there is so little difference between what the parties plan to do and how they plan to do it, that it they just aren’t differentiators. The only way they can build these points of difference in the mind of electorate is to create negative space. And this is an easy route to follow; doing something different can be scary and isolating. It sometimes requires a certain degree of faith and always requires courage. What it also requires is authenticity; if we do things differently and say that we’re different, we must be able to back that up with authentic proof points.
'Why' is not about making money.
And that was our starting point for the latest work we have been creating with STIHL; authenticity, focusing on the ‘why’ not the ‘what’ and doing something different. Our competitor research demonstrated just how similar everyone else’s advertising was in the sector; product led and feature rich, it failed to emotionally strike a note with people. It told them all about what the products were and how they worked, but never why they had been developed in the first place. The STIHL team was courageous enough to work with us in starting with the ‘why’. Why did it matter that they produced the world’s most precise power tools and more importantly why would they benefit our customers’ lives? What was equally important, was that STIHL had earned the right to talk to their customers on this level – they could stand authentically behind the fact that all their products are developed with the greatest level of passion with the customer need always in mind and a culture of engineering excellence – even if we were not talking about that directly in our campaign.
Focus on the customer.
Our end point was a campaign focused on the customer not the product; the enjoyment and lifetime of memories a garden brings, not the actual act of creating the garden. If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about Simon Sinek, you can watch his TED talk on the Golden Circle here. Maybe we’ll see a political party courageous enough to focus on their ‘Why’ someday. But I don’t think it will be in this election.
- Kieron Weedon, Director of Strategy at BWP Group
