Ever notice how some brands become part of our daily life so seamlessly that we don’t even think about them until something goes awry, like when Waze fails to detect massive roadwork, or Netflix suggests you might enjoy “Fuller House”?

At Prophet, we know that’s because these brands represent more than a product or service we buy–they’re an integral part of our lives: It’s what we call relentlessly relevant brands. Achieving this level of relevance is no easy feat given the current state of brand-building. For one thing, customers are more in control than ever, and their expectations of brands continue to rise. Technology, from mobile to wearables to Internet-embedded homes, further disrupt those expectations, allowing people to perceive and interact with brands in new ways. Brands that aren’t evolving get lost in the shuffle.

What are Relentlessly Relevant Brands?

Relentlessly relevant brands engage, surprise and connect. They are genuinely modern, finding new ways to delight and deliver. They push themselves to earn and re-earn customers’ loyalty—and they continually redefine what’s possible.

These brands have barreled through passive exposure to come to life, actively participating with customers. They use technology to be more human, creating new experiences to engage with people in ways that enrich their lives. Nike, for example, was once a brand built on bright products, colorful ads and legendary athletes. Today, it’s an ecosystem of dynamic ‘living’ experiences, like the Nike+ community, an ever-expanding universe that includes expert coaching from Nike pros, personal connections to millions of other athletes, training clubs, and valuable partnerships with the likes of Apple, Headspace and ClassPass.

The result is that Nike is one of the few brands with relevance that knows no boundaries, scoring high on our Prophet Brand Relevance Index^TM in every market we track.

How Do You Build Brand Relevance?

Building a relentlessly relevant brand starts with three essential commitments. First, brands must find a strategic purpose that creates shared value. It’s the only way to inspire people, both internally and externally. Next, companies need to engage customers through living brand experiences. And finally, brands need to be powered from the inside out through culture, capabilities, and engagement.

Let’s take a deeper look at the qualities relentlessly relevant brands have.

They Know Their Real Reason-To-Be

These brands know who they are, moving beyond positioning and into purpose. They are centered on a strategic purpose that creates shared value. This brand purpose is the fundamental binding agent between assets and aspirations of the business and customers’ motivations.

Starbucks, of course, sells coffee. But people love it for its bigger ambition, which is to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.

LEGO has long been a favorite of children for its delightfully consistent little bricks and has integrated those imaginative properties into physical retail, digital enterprises and full-length films. But all of its efforts speak to the purpose that provides so much value to parents: LEGO is inspiring and developing the builders of tomorrow.

It’s not that these brands don’t have a positioning. They do. But what gives them life is that instead of seeing positioning as a static definition of benefit, they understand purpose as fluid and participatory. They know that it’s the people drinking their coffee and building with their toys who make them what they are, and this shared purpose creates common ground. It gives customers and employees permission to build relationships that go beyond the next transaction.

That ignites innovation and growth, and also allows the company to inspire, attract and retain the best talent.

They Create Hyper-Personalized Experiences

Brands that are relentlessly relevant are those that enlarge the universe and engage customers in a living brand experience. That means constant, real-time engagement between customers and brand stewards, giving companies the ability to anticipate, adapt and respond in the context of customers’ lives. It’s what allows brands to create offers that are hyper-personalized, to leverage data in a way that extends experiences and relationships within customers’ lives and to combine human empathy with tech-enabled intelligence. As a result, every interaction delivers a greater business impact.

What makes these experiences so powerful is that they are based on the understanding that the days of either/or are behind us. These experiences are sprinting full speed into and/both. They understand that what they offer people needs to embrace the head and the heart, intelligence and emotion, data and story, and strategy and empathy.

Think of the way Disney keeps making visits to its properties more magical, by using technology to help guests unlock hotel rooms, make a playdate with Snow White, or even pay for a turkey leg. Or Spotify’s uncanny ability to follow you into an Uber, work with Tinder and Bumble to help you find better dates and cranks out playlists made up of songs you’ve never listened to but instantly love.

Customers are fiercely loyal to these experiences: When Samsung faced the massive recall of its Galaxy Note, pundits expected customers to defect in droves. The brand’s mobile phones have come back stronger than ever, precisely because people love the way they perform across devices, including smartwatches, tablets and increasingly, virtual reality.

They’re Powered From the Inside

Relentlessly relevant brands aren’t managed by a marketing team. They are powered through a company’s culture, capabilities and engagement. Because leadership is in alignment, they can catalyze change, motivate and empower employees throughout the organization to create a self-generating business, balancing customer needs and corporate goals.

Relentlessly relevant brands can drive change and quickly turn new ideas into reality. They empower the diversity of thought, customer centricity, collaboration and agility.

Chick-fil-A, for example, is a fast-growing chain of restaurants built around a culture devoted to delivering delicious food with grace, and it strives to have a positive impact on everyone it comes in contact with. It’s no surprise that on our Brand Relevance Index^TM, it scores high for trustworthiness, consistency and having a better product than competitors. From its innovative corporate test chefs, highly-engaged franchisees and hard-working hourly employees, heartfelt hospitality is as meaningful a menu item as its tasty chicken.

Southwest Airlines, the only airline to rank in the Top 50 of our U.S. Index, also recognizes that delivering outstanding customer experiences has to be a company-wide commitment. To deliver on its promise, which it sees as serving passengers with warmth, friendliness, individual pride and a sense of humor, starts with a commitment to treat its employees the same way. From ticket agents to baggage handlers to pilots, customers have come to expect a personal connection they don’t get from other carriers.

When brand executives come to us with what they think is a positioning problem these days, we typically have an entirely different diagnosis. Usually, it’s a purpose problem.

Positioning around a functional or emotional benefit isn’t enough anymore, with purpose instead emerging as the heartbeat of modern brands and as a key ingredient in what makes a brand become — and stay — relevant. Brands with purpose stand for something beyond their product or service, and consumers know it. These are brands that can always answer two questions: What do we believe? And why do we exist?

Purpose has become one of the best ways to inspire people, both internally and externally. And it’s essential to creating shared value. Brands with purpose don’t just transact with people; they deliver something more, an intangible element that becomes part of an ongoing relationship.

By The Numbers

Industry research backs this assertion up, including a recent study that found that brands with a strong sense of purpose grow at rate 2x that of those that don’t. Our own Prophet Brand Relevance Index shows time and time again that components connected to how consumers interpret brand purpose propel “meaningful” brands to the top, led by the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Apple. Brands like Pinterest are beloved, while others lacking a strategic purpose may be used but lack relevance. Facebook, for instance, doesn’t even crack the top 100 in our latest ranking.

Consumers can name many coffee brands, but they know Starbucks. When they lace up their sneakers or use Nike+ to track their morning run, they believe Nike is hoping to inspire the athlete inside them.

This sense of purpose isn’t just about winning with customers. It’s the No. 1 reason millennials choose to work for a given employer, studies have found — sometimes even trumping salary. It is then through a clear purpose that companies can attract and retain exceptional talent. It’s also essential to appeal to potential partners and is the foundation for creating a meaningful experience.

Of course, this is not to say that purpose is the only thing that builds relevance, or that it immediately translates to higher sales. Brands must do many things right to succeed. But it’s increasingly clear that the brands that fare the best and are the most differentiated from their competition are those with a crystallized strategic purpose.

How To Find True Purpose

It’s important to point out that brand purpose can, and often should, be different than a corporate mission. Unilever, for example, has staked its claim on sustainability and has supported that through its portfolio of brands. But Axe’s purpose is to help guys look, feel and smell their best, while Dove strives to turn beauty into a source of confidence, not anxiety.

Some brands are lucky enough to have been based on purpose from the very beginning. Parents can buy many types of toys, but their favorites are likely Fisher-Price because they share the belief that play is learning, or LEGO, which sees all children as the builders of tomorrow. Others, such as Ford, GE and Bank of America, have reshaped their purpose to hold more meaning for today’s audiences.

Centering your brand on a strategic purpose isn’t easy, but the intersection of a few lenses can put you well on your way to achieving this goal:

• Societal impact — where does the world need help and you can make a difference?
• Major capabilities — what are you good at beyond the products and services provided?
• Passion point — what is your organization most passionate about?

The first step when examining these issues is to ask the question that goes to the heart of a brand’s sense of itself: What do we believe? It’s the value closest to the center of an enterprise, one so fiercely held that it sets it apart from peers. Many companies believe in being good corporate citizens. Only State Farm believes in being a good neighbor.

Put in simpler terms, how does your brand see the world? What makes that viewpoint different?

Examining Tough Questions

The second question marketers need to answer is harder: Why does our brand exist?

This comes bundled with a few other points, such as what tensions do we want to do address? What experiences do our customers love or couldn’t live without? What do our employees think we do best? A purpose is only valid if it’s known, shared and prized by everyone within and around the enterprise — from potential employees to core customers to investors.

Answering this second question is a logical leap from the first. Bank of America, for example, believes in the power of meaningful connections. Its reason for existing is connecting individuals, families and businesses to make their financial lives better. GE’s core belief is that with imagination, anything is possible. It exists to use that imagination to invent the next industrial era, one that will build, move, power and cure.

“How does your brand see the world? What makes that viewpoint different?”

Answering this second question also delves into the ways your organization delivers on promises. A commitment to purpose, once crystallized and communicated to all parts of the organization, is what inspires a steadily evolving array of services and products.

Following Through

Once the answers to those two questions have been synthesized and articulated into a clear and succinct brand purpose, that purpose needs to be infused in several ways throughout the organization. The smallest details matter, but so do high-level strategies. In 2014, CVS stunned many observers with its decision to stop selling tobacco products. It told customers it needed to do this to better deliver on its purpose of striving “to improve the quality of human life.”

In hindsight, the retailer had to make that call in order for employees, customers and business partners to take its commitment seriously.

Finally, it’s essential to continually validate your brand’s purpose. While purpose reflects deep and enduring values that shouldn’t change much over time, it’s still essential to track the purpose of competitors. Without finding new ways to engage customers through living brand experiences, competitors can hijack your purpose and take customers with them. Is the purpose still clear and evident in every way? Are there new ways it can be conveyed more meaningfully?

Preserving Relevance

By the same token, brands need to continually take the pulse of core consumers and stakeholders, monitoring shifts in the way they interpret purpose. Many concerns about sustainability, for example, have evolved to be as much about people as the planet, expanding the purpose to address issues of fair trade and human rights.

Great care must be paid to delivering on brand purpose. Ingredient scandals are destructive for all food brands, for example, but they’re crippling for those positioned as especially healthy. And while Volkswagen has bounced back from #dieselgate, the damage was precisely because the fraud involved faked emissions results, negating its purpose of environmentally-sound engines. Consumers virtually always dislike bad corporate behavior, but they’re especially fierce in punishing what they perceive as brand hypocrisy.

This article was originally published on marketingdive.com.

Ever notice how some brands become part of our daily life so seamlessly that we don’t even think about them until something goes awry, like when Waze fails to detect massive roadwork, or Netflix suggests you might enjoy “Fuller House”?

At Prophet, we know that’s because these brands represent more than a product or service we buy–they’re an integral part of our lives: It’s what we call relentlessly relevant brands. Achieving this level of relevance is no easy feat given the current state of brand-building. For one thing, customers are more in control than ever, and their expectations of brands continue to rise. Technology, from mobile to wearables to Internet-embedded homes, further disrupt those expectations, allowing people to perceive and interact with brands in new ways. Brands that aren’t evolving get lost in the shuffle.

What are Relentlessly Relevant Brands?

Relentlessly relevant brands engage, surprise and connect. They are genuinely modern, finding new ways to delight and deliver. They push themselves to earn and re-earn customers’ loyalty—and they continually redefine what’s possible.

These brands have barreled through passive exposure to come to life, actively participating with customers. They use technology to be more human, creating new experiences to engage with people in ways that enrich their lives. Nike, for example, was once a brand built on bright products, colorful ads and legendary athletes. Today, it’s an ecosystem of dynamic ‘living’ experiences, like the Nike+ community, an ever-expanding universe that includes expert coaching from Nike pros, personal connections to millions of other athletes, training clubs, and valuable partnerships with the likes of Apple, Headspace and ClassPass.

The result is that Nike is one of the few brands with relevance that knows no boundaries, scoring high on our Prophet Brand Relevance Index^TM in every market we track.

How Do You Build Brand Relevance?

Building a relentlessly relevant brand starts with three essential commitments. First, brands must find a strategic purpose that creates shared value. It’s the only way to inspire people, both internally and externally. Next, companies need to engage customers through living brand experiences. And finally, brands need to be powered from the inside out through culture, capabilities, and engagement.

Let’s take a deeper look at the qualities relentlessly relevant brands have.

They Know Their Real Reason-To-Be

These brands know who they are, moving beyond positioning and into purpose. They are centered on a strategic purpose that creates shared value. This brand purpose is the fundamental binding agent between assets and aspirations of the business and customers’ motivations.

Starbucks, of course, sells coffee. But people love it for its bigger ambition, which is to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.

LEGO has long been a favorite of children for its delightfully consistent little bricks and has integrated those imaginative properties into physical retail, digital enterprises and full-length films. But all of its efforts speak to the purpose that provides so much value to parents: LEGO is inspiring and developing the builders of tomorrow.

It’s not that these brands don’t have a positioning. They do. But what gives them life is that instead of seeing positioning as a static definition of benefit, they understand purpose as fluid and participatory. They know that it’s the people drinking their coffee and building with their toys who make them what they are, and this shared purpose creates common ground. It gives customers and employees permission to build relationships that go beyond the next transaction.

That ignites innovation and growth, and also allows the company to inspire, attract and retain the best talent.

They Create Hyper-Personalized Experiences

Brands that are relentlessly relevant are those that enlarge the universe and engage customers in a living brand experience. That means constant, real-time engagement between customers and brand stewards, giving companies the ability to anticipate, adapt and respond in the context of customers’ lives. It’s what allows brands to create offers that are hyper-personalized, to leverage data in a way that extends experiences and relationships within customers’ lives and to combine human empathy with tech-enabled intelligence. As a result, every interaction delivers greater business impact.

What makes these experiences so powerful is that they are based on the understanding that the days of either/or are behind us. These experiences are sprinting full speed into and/both. They understand that what they offer people needs to embrace the head and the heart, intelligence and emotion, data and story, and strategy and empathy.

“What gives them life is that instead of seeing positioning as a static definition of benefit, they understand purpose as fluid and participatory.”

Think of the way Disney keeps making visits to its properties more magical, by using technology to help guests unlock hotel rooms, make a playdate with Snow White, or even pay for a turkey leg. Or Spotify’s uncanny ability to follow you into an Uber, work with Tinder and Bumble to help you find better dates, and cranks out playlists made up of songs you’ve never listened to but instantly love.

Customers are fiercely loyal to these experiences: When Samsung faced the massive recall of its Galaxy Note, pundits expected customers to defect in droves. The brand’s mobile phones have come back stronger than ever, precisely because people love the way they perform across devices, including smart watches, tablets and increasingly, virtual reality.

They’re Powered From the Inside

Relentlessly relevant brands aren’t managed by a marketing team. They are powered through a company’s culture, capabilities and engagement. Because leadership is in alignment, they can catalyze change, motivate and empower employees throughout the organization to create a self-generating business, balancing customer needs and corporate goals.

Relentlessly relevant brands can drive change and quickly turn new ideas into reality. They empower diversity of thought, customer centricity, collaboration and agility.

Chick-fil-A, for example, is a fast-growing chain of restaurants built around a culture devoted to delivering delicious food with grace, and it strives to have a positive impact on everyone it comes in contact with. It’s no surprise that on our Brand Relevance Index^TM, it scores high for trustworthiness, consistency and having a better product than competitors. From its innovative corporate test chefs, highly-engaged franchisees and hard-working hourly employees, heartfelt hospitality is as meaningful a menu item as its tasty chicken.

Southwest Airlines, the only airline to rank in the Top 50 of our U.S. Index, also recognizes that delivering outstanding customer experiences has to be a companywide commitment. To deliver on its promise, which it sees as serving passengers with warmth, friendliness, individual pride and a sense of humor, starts with a commitment to treat its employees the same way. From ticket agents to baggage handlers to pilots, customers have come to expect a personal connection they don’t get from other carriers.

Summary

For over 100 years, brands have been built a certain way. But the modern world demands something new. Prophet has played a pivotal role in shaping brand strategy – it’s our heritage and our future. We set out to answer the question, “What does it take to build a relentlessly relevant brand?”

Here’s our answer. Relentlessly relevant brands engage, surprise and connect. They push themselves to earn and re-earn customers’ loyalty—and they continually redefine what’s possible.

Relevant brands:

1. Center brands on a strategic purpose to create shared value
2. Engage customers through living brand experiences
3. Power from the inside through culture, capabilities and engagement

Learn about building a relentlessly relevant brand and see where your company ranks by analyzing our latest Prophet Brand Relevance Index™.

Approach

Building a relentlessly relevant brand starts with three essential commitments:

1. Brands must find a strategic purpose that creates shared value. It’s the only way to inspire people – employees and customers alike.
2. Companies need to engage customers through living brand experiences. Brands are no longer one-dimensional. They are living, purpose-driven systems that deliver humanized experiences, leveraging empathy and technology.
3. Brands need to be powered from the inside out through culture, capabilities, and employee engagement. After all, at the center of building brand relevance are the heads, hearts and hands responsible for shaping and delivering it – employees.

Learn about building a relentlessly relevant brand and see where your company ranks by analyzing our latest Prophet Brand Relevance Index^TM.