Collaboration & Co-Creation Collaboration & Co-Creation

For World's Most Purposeful Brands, Collaboration Is Key for Putting Purpose Into Practice

British creative consultancy Radley Yeldar (RY) has launched the 2016 Fit for Purpose index, ranking the world’s most socially, environmentally and economically purposeful companies. The overall trend that surfaced in this year’s index was collaborative thinking; the top purposeful brands are collaborating with stakeholders and partners within and outside the company to embed purpose in authentic and meaningful ways.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 8 years ago | About a 3 minute read

British creative consultancy Radley Yeldar (RY) has launched the 2016 Fit for Purpose index, ranking the world’s most socially, environmentally and economically purposeful companies. The overall trend that surfaced in this year’s index was collaborative thinking; the top purposeful brands are collaborating with stakeholders and partners within and outside the company to embed purpose in authentic and meaningful ways.

The report is Europe’s only extensive review of brand purpose and measures how well brands are putting purpose into practice. Out of the top 100 companies ranked, 83 percent demonstrated some type of collaboration, with nearly half demonstrating robust collaboration overall and 70 percent of the top 20 engaging in a long-term partnership related to their purpose.

This year saw both new entrants and fast risers in the top 10: New entrant British Land came in at 4th place, partly due to its commitment to customer insights, having conducted 150,000 consumer surveys over the last four years. Pfizer rose an impressive 53 places since last year to land at 9th place, primarily due to its commitment to partnering with key stakeholders in order to increase its ability to deliver on its purpose. Novo Nordisk climbed 33 places to number 5, thanks to its mission to help defeat diabetes.

The Top 10 2016 Fit For Purpose rankers:

The Fit For Purpose Index assesses each company across four criteria: purpose and story, communication, performance, and behaviors. RY is launching the index with a series of events featuring speakers from purpose-driven brands across different industries to contribute to the growing body of collective thinking around purpose, including Top 10ers Unilever and Pearson, along with Danone, TOMS, London Business School, SAP, SKINS and The Science Museum.

"At Pearson we have a simple mission: To help people make progress in their lives through learning. Social impact is at the heart of our brand and that strong sense of purpose is a driving force for many of us that work here,” said Rebecca Sinclair, VP of Brand for Pearson. “Meeting the global demand for education drives our commercial strategy and our success allows us to invest into improving education for everyone to create a fairer and better world for all of us to live in. We know that we can’t solve the big education challenges alone so we work as part of a global community of teachers, parents, students, governments, institutions and businesses to try to tackle them together."

Access the Fit For Purpose hub here.