How To Scale Your Purpose and Impact From This Bar Saves Lives

Purposeful leadership is paramount to driving long-term business success. Companies across the gamut — from Nike to Lyft to MOD PIZZA — are actively working to carve out a competitive advantage with their impact-driven brand story. There are myriad ways to leverage your business as a force for good. Finding the method to not only tell your story in a memorable way, but also make a true contribution is vital to building consumer trust.

This Bar Saves Lives is an excellent example of a company that’s built its brand around a mission. In turn, the snack bar brand generates earned media, consumer goodwill and ultimately purchases. Co-founders Ryan Devlin and Todd Grinnell traveled to Liberia on a humanitarian aid project where they saw the horrors of chronic malnutrition and starvation. They were also introduced to a lifesaving nutrition called Plumpy’Nut. Ryan and Todd were compelled to take action and bring more nutritious food to those who need it most. So, when they got back to the United States, they pitched their food bar company to friends Kristen Bell and Ravi Patel and This Bar Saves Lives was formed.

While This Bar Saves Lives is a snack bar company, its mission is “to end childhood malnutrition worldwide”. The company uses its mission as a guiding light for business decision making. Everything from marketing to packaging to product design is inspired by a higher purpose.

In turn, the mission-based snack bar brand has established partnerships with distributors such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, Target and other major retailers. It also sells direct-to-consumer and via online outlets such as Amazon and Thrive Market. There are numerous snack bar companies, yet This Bar Saves Lives distinguishes itself from the competition with its simple, impactful and heartwarming strategy.

Here are impact strategy tips from This Bar Saves Lives:

• Build your brand around your mission: Impact-driven brands leverage purpose as a compass for business growth. By putting purpose at the center of your organization you connect your company with something bigger than your brand or your industry. You can then use that motivation to craft meaningful brand stories to promote your business and products. What’s more, purpose acts as an invitation for other impact entrepreneurs, nonprofits, government organizations and consumers to help you advance your planet-saving mission. This Bar Saves Lives embodies the We First principle to be ‘a mission with a company, not a company with a mission.’ And it’s the brand’s mission-first approach that distinguishes it from other snack bar companies.
• Develop purpose-inspired products: It can be challenging to inspire consumers to immediately associate your products with a higher purpose. By crafting products directly associated with your purpose, you make it easy for people to connect the dots between your brand and your impact. Sales of This Bar Saves Lives’s core product, the healthy snack bar, are sold to consumers, which triggers a donation to nonprofits like Second Mile Haiti and Action Against Hunger who provide nutrition to children in Haiti and the Horn of Africa. It is easy for consumers to associate the nutritious snack bar they are eating with the company’s impact initiatives. Essentially, it’s important to develop a product that’s both good for the consumer and for society. What’s more, ensure that your impact initiatives can easily be associated with your brand’s products and services.
• Celebrate the consumer: Another key We First principle is to be ‘the chief celebrant, not celebrity, of your stakeholder community.’ Consumers want to feel like they are using their purchasing power to support brands that actively build a better world. By positioning the consumer at the center of your brand-fueled impact, you build consumer goodwill and create brand ambassadors. This Bar Saves Lives’s one-for-one giving strategy empowers consumers to contribute to eradicating childhood malnutrition with every purchase. This model ties into marketing by encouraging consumers to get more involved by repurchasing products and signing up for a subscription box. In this way, the healthy snack food brand ignites contributory consumption, inspiring people to feel like they are making a difference while making a purchase. Ultimately, you will foster consumer advocacy if you position your customers as the heroes of your impact-driven community.
• Marry profit and purpose: Unfortunately, today’s world is faced with numerous social crises, all of which require resources and ingenuity to address. Contributions from nonprofits, the public sector and philanthropists are not enough to tackle the issues we face today. It’s time for corporations to do their part in building a better world by aligning business with purpose. Brands that intertwine bottom-line success with their social good initiatives scale impact as profits increase. Not only is this an excellent way to foster an engaged corporate culture, it’s also an effective way to gain consumer support, word of mouth advertising and advantageous business partnerships. This Bar Saves Lives is a great example of a company marrying profit with purpose. The one-for-one giving model engrains the brand’s impact into its growth. The more bars they sell, the closer they are to ending childhood malnutrition. Essentially, when you connect your impact with your income, you build a stronger business. Not only does this inspire employees and partners to work for a higher purpose, it also inspires consumers to buy your products and media outlets to feature your brand.

Consumers are looking to support businesses making a difference in the world. This Bar Saves Lives’s impact strategies — from founding the company on a purpose driven mission to crafting products that build a better world to putting the consumer at the center of brand contributions to connecting profit with purpose — provide valuable insights for socially conscious thought leaders looking to use business as a force for good.