What is a concept? This can be a more or less abstract idea you have, an intention or plan providing a direction and forming the basis for the project you will be developing. When you're creating a concept, there are clear advantages of basing it on the company's purpose.

Three good reasons to develop concepts based on the company's purpose

Missions Purpose Report shows that a frighteningly low number of Norwegian companies operate with any purpose whatsoever. The ultimate consequence of this could be that the majority of Norwegian companies do not know why they exist or what they wish to represent in the world. They have not committed this to paper to show their own employees and/or the world around who they are. So when we are speaking here about developing concepts compatible with your purpose, we are painfully aware that most of you do not have any purpose for your concepts to develop towards. However, brands gain a great deal when creating concepts with a purpose:

You want to appear consistent

If your purpose is the way it should be, that is to say, it determines the direction of your company, everything that is not absolutely in harmony with this purpose will make you appear unsteady or unreliable. In the worst case scenario, this can destroy everything else you have built up.

You don't want to ruin your reputation

If a solar cell company were to suddenly invest money in a petrol station chain, this is something that would probably ruin the company's reputation. The concept could be both smart and well-thought-out but should, in truth, be further developed by someone else.

You want to be on good terms with your employees

Both your most important employees and those applying for jobs with you are interested in much, much more than the money you will be paying them. They also want their jobs to make sense. Modern and up-and-coming people care about what you and your company stand for and whether this is a core value that "fits them." If conceptual guidelines turn up that completely clash with the picture people have of you, you could lose the best of what you already have and miss out on the best of what you want.

Two examples of global brands that have used their purpose for their concepts

A furniture retailer with Scandinavian ideals wins global impact

When IKEA came on the scene with its flat furniture packs this was an entirely new concept, first and foremost a solution that made it possible for IKEA "to create a better everyday life for the many people", which is IKEA's purpose. This was perhaps not expressed using those exact words from day one in IKEA, but the desire to create furniture that everyone could afford has always been a central theme. It is the company's purpose that has necessitated a concept here that everyone benefits from. The idea behind this is that IKEA does some of the work and you do the rest and, in this way, saves both parties money. This makes IKEA one of the pioneers of the sharing economy, a kind of forerunner for the trend that is now spreading with great profitable strides in most branches. But this happened long before the Internet and apps were available to everyone who wanted to share.

Winning the heart of every kid by spreading happiness

It's easy for us to say that It’s a small world is a concept. This is an attraction you can find at Disneyland in California, Florida, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong, and more specifically a boat ride where you are exposed to 300 singing mechanical dolls in national dress from all over the world. A brainwashing melody about global peace accompanies you on the ride, and perhaps long after you have left the amusement park, if you are really unlucky. Other areas you can visit at Disneyland are Frontierland, Fantasyland, Mickey’s Toontown and Tomorrowland, and each of them has its own unique concept. You could also say that Disneyland is an absolutely unique concept that can be located in many cities in the world with great success. But this is only part of what Disney represents. They create a number of concepts: films, TV series and cartoon series, not to mention their merchandising division, which ensures you are guaranteed to meet Elsa & Anna from Frozen no matter which store you happen to be in. There are innumerable synergies between the different concepts Disney represents, but there is one fundamental concept that permeates absolutely all of their capers: Disney's purpose.

In 1955, Van Arsdale France of the University of Disneyland established a training programme for those developing Disney. Van saw his objective as being to get every employee to share the same dream and not just work there for the money. "Disneyland's purpose must be to create happiness for others", he insisted, and added the following: "Listen, you can park cars, clean up the park, sweep the area, work night shift or whatever but, no matter what you do, it needs to be part of creating happiness for others."

Today, more than 60 years later, this is Disney's purpose: To make people happy. It sounds almost banal but, if you look at everything Disney does, you will realise that Disney has made every effort to live up to this mantra.

What came first? The purpose or the money?

It is possible to operate with a purpose that does not work the way it should. Some companies may have decided at some point in time on a purpose that has not come from within, as it should, but that is only been chosen because it sounds good. In a case like this, a new, independent concept can actually feel more right than the purpose itself.

You will, consciously or unconsciously, very often see through a company that has designed a concept for the sole purpose of you buying as much as possible from them and not putting the customer's interests on the throne. You can actually sense the smell of a dozen besuited gentlemen discussing how they can trick people into throwing money at them. When the football organisation FIFA gets a concept going with the following payoff: ”My game is fair play”, this is fishy.

Sometimes you cannot manage to create concepts that achieve the objectives of your purpose. I personally think there was a period when Disney was producing animated films apparently created by market analysts. At times, these were so uninteresting that as an adult you preferably needed to to be a bit animated yourself to watch them. More recently, they have been using John Lassiter and other extremely creative film people with a sense for good and daring concepts, people who can develop suitable stories.

You need a bit of strategic courage to get yourself a purpose and live 100% in line with it. Because this could lead to you needing to say no thank you to conceptual opportunities that, viewed entirely separately, could be very valuable but that, in the bigger context, belong somewhere else entirely. But if you were to dare to take your own purpose - and associated concepts - absolutely seriously you could perhaps comfort yourself knowing that "someone who doesn't stand for something will fall for anything".