CASE STUDY / EF’s brand purpose
Finding The Soul that binds a multinational conglomerate
For more than 50 years, EF was very clear about what they offered. What they didn’t know how to express was why they offered it. I knew a deep sense of purpose was there, this was an organization dripping in passion. But it was also obvious to me that they didn’t know communicate that in a way that people could easily understand. So a small group of us decided to figure it out. After a week holed up in London at the Ace Hotel, after endless hours debating, writing, revising, probing, and questioning, I wrote what became the definitive purpose statement for EF globally. In the seven years since, EF staff at all levels, in all countries, can articulate it—“We believe the world is better when people try to understand one another.”
THE APPROACH
Discovery through Curiosity
As a family-owned, privately held company, EF long had “EF-ness”. Everyone who worked there knew what it felt like. It came from the founder and his family. A commitment to doing good by doing good business. A nothing is impossible spirit. The belief that cultural exchange, educational travel, and language learning made the world better.
But as a multinational conglomerate with 52,000 team members working across 50 different countries in almost 20 different business units, there wasn’t a unifying way to describe what that EF-ness meant. What was the the thing that made the community so committed to the work EF did?
I decided to approach this challenge with deep curiosity and a lot of questions. Although I had worked at EF for over six years at this point, I approached the project as if I knew nothing about what we did or why we did it. I filled an entire notebook with handwritten observations and insights. And that was only the start.
THE WORK
A Melding of Minds
The work of trying to crack our purpose happened with a small team of people from diverse perspectives and approaches. We spent a week holed up in London at the Ace Hotel, spending endless hours debating, writing, revising, probing, and questioning. At one point we came up with the idea of the ‘Uber Test.’ If we couldn’t get in an Uber and share the purpose with the driver and have them get it instantly, we hadn’t come up with a solution that was simple enough.
The Team // Worldwide Creative Officer: Joel Hladecek / Strategy & Writing: Amy Van Aarle / Design: Julia Hoffman / Technology: Charles Li
THE SHIFT
A Promise that’s felt Because it’s true
Once our purpose had been defined, I went on a road show across the organization to share it with various businesses and teams at EF. And I knew it was working once team members starting using the phrase—in presentations, on LinkedIn, in coffee chats.
We had succeeded in not only pinpointed what united EF across the world, what I wrote expressed it in a way that was simple enough for everyone to remember. No matter what someone’s first language was, country of work, or type of EF business they worked for, we finally had a purpose that was easy to remember, easy to repeat, and most of all, true.
52,000
Team members globally who needed to understand EF’s purpose
100+
Countries where team members needed to be able to communicate EF’s purpose
~20
Different businesses that each needed to connect to EF’s global purpose