Purpose
The purpose is the final pillar of the fashion business, it delivers the ‘why’ of the brand’s existence beyond profit. A company that clarifies the content of its purpose and firmly put it in every step of the company development strategy will achieve better economic feedback.
The mission, vision, value, and proposition of a brand are closely related, which helps brands set the appropriate framework for their business. Jonson (2017) believes that clarifying brand purpose gives the brand stronger resilience in marketing disruption and purpose drive profit and performance in uncertain times. Purpose can help a brand separate itself from the rest of the market (Johnson,2016 )and convene employees to deliver distinguishing experiences for customers. The purpose of the brand reveals the ‘why of the brand’, not just storytelling to the customer, according to the report from the EY Beacon institute survey of 1470 global leaders representing companies across various industries with the topic’ How Can Purpose Reveal a Path Through disruption ‘, revealing that purpose, not profits, is the crucial point to success among the rebellious global economy. Meanwhile, Vision state what the company want to achieve as an outcome of the purpose that is set, and Mission explains how the purpose gets done.ASOS is a good case to display considering the purpose and making the corresponding action toward accomplishing the final goal. The brand set its 2030 goals involving two aspects——be Net zero and be more circular for the aim of the planet, and be transparent and be diverse for the aim of people. The company developed toward these two goals in integrity initiates a lot of related activities in recent years and achieve a significant statistical breakthrough in their recent years’ KPI.
In accordance with Curry (2020), nowadays, Gen Z expects companies to institute and fulfilled clear stances on social or political issues. it’s true that they have strong powder to use social media and their pocketbook to impact and shape corporate behaviour.
In terms of how brands communicate to Gen Z, in accordance with Wilson’s (2021) article,‘digital campfires’ already become a popular place in the span of three years, he claims that ‘the biggest cultural moments to capture the attention of younger audience s in 2020 happened on digital campfire platforms’, younger audiences are leaving many traditional social platforms and gathering to smaller, more confidential online destinations. Fortnite is a representative example of recent popular ‘shared experience campfires’ which is a massive gaming platform and has 350 million accounts, the brand is famous for its ‘brand integrations’ tactic. Marvel and Nike have debuted custom skins (Wilson,2021) and limited edition product drops inside the game.
Fortnite is also good at collaborating with celebrities, like football clubs or hip-hop artists to offer player’s avatars new skin sets and provide exclusive action or hold online concerts, which congregate a lot of players to attend. Besides, the brand also engages users in creative mode, letting players build their islands (Wilson,2021). Overall digital campfires like Fortnite and Roblox actually give fashion brands a lot of opportunities to engage in the cyber world, simultaneously advertise and market for profit， which is also the runner of digital campfires happy to see.
Johnson,C(2016)The Difference Between Brand Purpose, Vision and Mission.Available at:
https://www.carlajohnson.co/difference-between-brand-purpose-vision-mission/(Accessed at: October 31th 2022)
Johnson.C(2017)How Brand Purpose Drives Profit & Performance in Uncertain Times.Available at:
(Accessed at: October 31th 2022)
Curry,L(2020) How Brands Can Follow Through on the Values They’re Selling. Available at:
https://hbr.org/2020/08/how-brands-can-follow-through-on-the-values-theyre-selling(Accessed at:October 31th,2022)
Wilson.S(2021)Where brands are reaching Gen Z. Available at:
https://hbr.org/2021/03/where-brands-are-reaching-gen-z(Accessed at: October 31th)