There are good reasons for Purpose to sit right at the very top of the Pyramid of Purpose.

Firstly, it shows that everything else is being directed towards that purpose, and the purpose therefore sets the overall direction for the agency.

Secondly, if you imagine the pyramid as a physical representation of your agency on a landscape, the behaviours are what clients, prospects and anyone else sees when they get up close to the business. It's how they experience your marketing, your sales, your delivery and your community work.

The purpose, meanwhile, shines like a beacon from the top and can be seen from a lot further away. If it shines brightly it attracts people from a wide distance to come to work with you.

It's why people aspire to work at places like the BBC, global charities, or companies like Red Bull, Nike, and more. They are drawn towards the purpose.

If you can define and communicate a valuable purpose brilliantly, and let it shine out, it becomes so much easier to gather your tribe around your agency. Brilliant recruits and dream clients will seek you out.

Beyond the bland

Bland companies create mission statements about how great they are, with statements like "Striving to be the world's best..", or "The leading provider of..." followed by a few lines of wishy washy unmemorable blather that you forget five minutes later, and doesn't attract or motivate anyone.

These focus on the agency and its vanity, rather than focusing on what the agency will achieve for anyone else.

Success comes from an exchange of value. To earn great success you must provide great value. The provision of that value is your purpose. So let's be really bold and clear about what it is.

With your agency's Purpose we want to stay really simple, and just be able to answer the question: "Why does your agency need to exist in this world?"

Beyond 'good'

A lot of people get bogged down into thinking the purpose of their agency needs to sound like one from a charity — something that can universally be agreed to be 'good'.

But that's not the case, and doesn't help you gather the people and organisations you are best connected with.

As a small to medium business you can't possibly serve or employ everyone. So figure out what will gather those you most want to connect with.

Ideally, we want to get to something that makes your core audience go "Wow, yeah!" and then we disregard what others think.

Investigating your purpose

In order to develop the simplest, clearest and most meaningful statement of your purpose, it's best to imagine the work as being a little less like a wild inventor suddenly shouting Eureka when we have the incredible idea, and a bit more like a detective. You're going to undertake a number of investigations, gathering evidence, sifting it and looking for clues and patterns. That will lead you ultimately to the killer phrase.