Why most brands shouldn’t “start with why”

If you’re a marketer and you haven’t heard of Simon Sinek or read his book, you’ve probably at least heard his mantra: “Start with why.”

(If you’re already familiar with what Simon says, and with what others before me have had to say about it, maybe skip the next few paragraphs.)

The TED Talk in which he first shared his theory is the third most watched of its kind, with 43 million views.

By way of summary, here’s his go-to illustration of the power of starting with why:

Then he says it again, in case you missed the profundity.

Now, in the context of inspirational leadership, this all sounds fine. (The title of his book in full is “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.”) Starting with why, he says, worked for leaders like Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Conflating leadership with marketing

As the cult of “Start with why” spread, however, something funny happened.

People started using the mantra as a marketing or branding tactic for any old business.

Skip to today, and zealous marketers everywhere ­– especially in tech – talk about their higher purpose as if they were on a crusade.

And you can’t really blame them for conflating a special kind of leadership with any old company positioning, because that’s exactly what Sinek is doing in his TED Talk.

According to him, because Apple like to “think different” (as the old tagline went), people are more likely to buy one of their computers.

He then goes on to talk about what goes on in the neocortex and the limbic brain when people hear how and why messages respectively. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard very intelligent marketers (and some others) invoke neuroscience to back up their theories, and it’s one of the fastest ways to stimulate my bullshit receptors.

If anything, he’s missing a word.

I might want to work for a company that believes the same things I do. I might vote for someone with the same values as me. If I like a story, I’ll buy into it.

But most of the time, when a company tries to win my custom with a why story, it fails.

Here are a few reasons why…

Most people just don’t care about the why

When I meet people for the first time, they often ask me what I do for a living. They don’t ask me why I do it. (Although I have had that as a genuine follow-up question…)

Same goes for companies. If I haven’t heard of a company, I’ll ask what they do. And almost everything I buy from a company, I buy because of what it is, not why it is that way.

Even Apple products.

Even if Simon starts telling me about how Apple’s worldview works on my limbic brain.

In B2C, you might buy Nike shoes because you like their brand associations with sporting excellence. You might buy an Apple product because you want to be seen as someone who buys Apple products. But are these branding vibes really given off by why messages or by a mixture of advertising, sponsorships and consumer tastes? Not to mention a whole load of whats like design, performance, cost…

In B2B tech, the cult of why has found fertile ground in part because marketers seem to be scared – or a little embarrassed – to lead with their whats. Which seems bizarre when, of all markets, this feels like one where buying decisions rely heavily on tech specs and proof points.

It sounds wanky and/or insincere

United Airlines talks a good game about being all about togetherness.

Among their “shared values” you’ll find:

Fine. Cringe. But fine. Then you see a paying passenger dragged, bleeding, from a United Airlines aircraft because the company chooses to overbook flights for greater profits, and we move from cringe to something else.

When you ask us to believe values and vision statements like United’s, you paint a target on your back. You run the risk of looking like not just wankers but hypocrite wankers.

In other words, when you invite the tackle, sometimes you get nailed. It’s impossible to ensure all your people adhere to your why all the time, especially when it’s about values or ethics.

A fluffier what does not a why make

Is United Airlines’ purpose even a why at all? “Connecting people to the moments that matter most” is just a lofty, emotional way of saying they fly people to their holidays, or to important meetings, or home to their families.

Spotify says their mission is to “unlock the potential of human creativity.” Same deal.

Take Apple too, for that matter. When Sinek says they challenge the status quo in everything they do, that’s really just an abstracted, kind-of-wanky what. There’s no compelling reason. No real why.

If you want to test a why statement, try reading a what statement, followed by the word “because”, followed by the why statement in question. If it makes sense, the why might just work. If it doesn’t, it’s probably a contrived retrofit.

So when should you start with why?

At Velocity, we help lots of tech companies figure out how to position themselves, and, yes, sometimes we start with why. But the more it comes up, the more I think it’s a bad idea – in most cases.

Every now and again, though, I’ll see a piece of messaging or a positioning that starts with why and actually works. Here’s one example.

Entrepreneur First (EF) are a talent investor. They bring together exceptional, ambitious people (who usually have deep expertise in a particular field, industry or technology). Then they help them find a co-founder, develop an idea and start a company. The first thing you see on their website is this line:

This works so well it almost annoyed me – because it didn’t fit with my recent experience positioning other companies.

Then something clicked. Starting with why works for EF because they’re doing two things.

1. Recruiting people to a cause 

EF have a few distinct audiences, including the investors who fund the growth of their companies. But their most important audience is made up of all the exceptional individuals they need to convince to join the EF program (instead of, say, working at McKinsey or Google or in research).

That is, the primary goal of EF’s marketing today is recruitment. Not of employees but of raw materials.

It also helps that they’re recruiting people to a pretty revolutionary cause.

2. Evangelising a new way

EF and companies like them can start with why because they’re operating in a changing market. They can say:

The backstory is indispensable. The context is the content of the story. In EF’s case, what’s changing is the way in which the most talented, ambitious people make their mark on the world. (Today, it’s not by working for a management consultancy firm, or even by working for big tech. It’s by founding your own tech company.)

Of course, any company can claim to be on a crusade or pioneering The New Way. But few can pull off the double whammy of identifying a justifiably significant trend and nailing their colours to it with integrity.

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TL;DR: Start with why, but don’t always lead with it

If your company has a why without which it wouldn’t exist, then it would be stupid not to lead with it.

If you’re offering something new and necessary in a changed world, start with why.

If your success relies on your ability to recruit the right people to your cause, start with why.

But if “Start with why” means “Make your why the first, most important thing people know about you, regardless of what the why is”, then it’s bad advice.

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Any other cases when starting with why works? Stick ’em in the comments. Thanks.