What if Brand Purpose works, but not on purpose? #DigitalSense

What is Brand Purpose, but emotional advertising persevering?

A quiet debate about the role & value of ‘brand purpose’ has rumbled on in the marketing industry for many years, and like many of our debates it’s often hard to find a balanced middle ground. I polled my Twitter followers, a marketing science/strategy-heavy gang, and 51% of them said that no, Brand Purpose does not ultimately help brands grow bigger and faster. In fact, only 26% were confident that it did.

Given that my own personal brand purpose is to make digital sense of the extremes of marketing and bring us all together for the betterment of humanity* I suppose I should give it a try? But I THINK I’m here to tell the 51% that they might be wrong, kind of, or as many of them said ‘depends’.

I’m very loosely defining ‘Brand Purpose’ here as the need for marketers to find something bigger and more meaningful for their brands to stand for - social justice, environmental changes, or really anything other than what you buy them to do. The question then is whether this has some tangible impact on your brands’ performance, and if so whether that’s driven because consumers truly base purchase decisions on it, or... well, something else. The cynical might argue that purpose is a way to help guilty marketers, who hate the idea that their whole job is just making money, sleep at night. The more optimistic might point to changing consumer expectations and requirements to stay relevant in this space if you want to compete with others who are more progressive.

Purpose can appear in grand gestures, in epic 5-minute mood films, and fully integrated campaigns which say more about a charity or a cause than the brand itself. Light-weight purpose can also appear in much more throw away moments like posting a black square on Instagram or celebrating Pride month with a tweet. The best brand purposes provide a North Star to all the marketing that the brand creates beneath them - in most cases quite an emotional and rich storytelling North Star. And that folks I suppose is my hypothesis, that purpose perhaps works more as an emotionally strong, unifying creative guide than because consumers are truly basing their decisions on the social justice position of a brand’s Twitter account.

I’m a very public advocate for the role brands play in portraying positive diversity & representation in their advertising, so some people would be quite surprised that I am positively neutral on the bigger picture of purpose. I don’t for a minute doubt that brands can have an impact on society, and I strongly encourage us all to make that a good one, some purpose initiatives most probably do, though I’m sure many do not. I think there are wonderful steps brands can take to tear down stereotypes and I am all for brands working away on their purposes, partnering with charities and making the world a better place. I think brands showing support to their consumers around Pride, or Black Lives Matter can be a great thing, especially if it’s backed up by internal policies and wider action. I just think we might want to be realistic on why some of that works.

One thing I have found confusing in my career is the mental gymnastics and disassociation that can go together for some people, or whole businesses, in this space. Organisations can be hugely clued up about the realities of marketing science, the need for new customers and penetration, the scathing disinterest & ‘disloyalty’ (or repertoire loyalty) of consumers and yet swayed magically by a good Simon Sinek quote. We can build entire strategies based on needing to slowly build fundamental mental & physical availability just to have the slightest hope of renting a small plot of land in someone’s mind, and simultaneously indulge ‘The Power of Why’ and the idea that consumers might be making decisions based on an in-depth analysis of the very purpose of your business.

Nearly everything we know about consumers tells us they really don’t care - as much as anything brands exist to stop consumers having to think about what they buy, not to encourage them to spend more time researching it. I’ve long been inspired by Martin Weigel’s ‘How (Not) To Fail’ presentation which hails apathy as the greatest and most wonderful creative obstacle marketers face. Our biggest challenge is not communicating and convincing fans of our product to buy more but getting people who couldn’t care less to notice us at all. It’s hard for me then to also imagine a parallel world in which consumers spend hours researching every company and brand they buy.

To my mind Purpose is a powerful tool to cut through apathy not because people really care, but precisely because they actually really don’t.

Say you’re trying to sell some washing powder. There’s only so much you can say about your latest active ingredient or smell before all but the most dedicated launderers have tuned out. Take a step back and associate your product with cleaning up the world, tackling environmental issues, or fundamentally empowering kids to play because ‘dirt is good’ and suddenly you have a lot more to talk about. Rich emotional territory that will make great advertising, connected ecosystems and build emotional connections & fame. Now is the average consumer actually aware or impacted by your charitable partnership or environmental commitments? Quite possibly not.

Yet creative and emotional advertising is scientifically proven to outperform and bingo, your purpose has just opened a door to a whole world of it. In fairness you also can get called out for this behaviour, and jumping on social and cultural trends, if you don’t back it by action and pull it through your brand - better to make a big deal about a lofty purpose and make such ads, than slap them on a more questionable business approach.

It’s perhaps healthy for my own future employment status to recognise that I work for a company that really believes in marketing science, but also believes in building brands with humanity and in exploring their brands’ purpose. I also work for a healthcare company and so it’s not that much of a stretch to take a pain/arthritis brand like Voltarol and believe they might stand for the ‘joy of movement’. That a product that literally enables millions of people to have healthier, happier and more mobile lives might be able to passionately talk about that and extend its impact to arthritis support or other initiatives in that space seems quite natural. That large segments of our consumer base are black, LGBT, differently abled, or otherwise diverse is a reality for all marketers and one which we should also reflect in our marketing approaches.

It’s fair to say that the best purposes as well as being a good creative North Star are also not an over-stretch. Now many relatively mundane products can actually play a higher order role in our lives - I personally see no issue for instance in believing that chocolate can trigger momentary joy, bring people together or do other lovely things because many times in my life I’ve seen chocolate do just that. I’d have more hesitation if you told me your chocolate bar’s brand purpose was solving global hunger, or campaigning solely for racial equality, unless you happen to have an incredible and authentic back story in that space.

Some would argue that there is scientific evidence that Purpose works (and to be clear I’m not really arguing that it doesn’t). Unilever is often hailed as the proof point here and they really do do some wonderful things as a company and with their brands for which I truly commend them. They report regularly that their brands with purpose outperform their other brands, which does indeed seem like evidence. That said, it’s also true that they bother to develop fleshed out purposes for their biggest and most important brands. They also then choose to invest far more in those brands across all touch points, and of course per my thesis, those purposes no doubt play a handy role in elevating the emotion and impact of the content created along the way.

In many ways I have no doubt that Purpose is helping their business and helping their brands grow, but I have some questions around whether that’s because of any sort of conscious consumer awareness or interest in that purpose, or something more passive and broadly emotional.

Dove hugely elevated itself from a slightly generic brand (albeit a quality one) to a vastly more defined and successful one by embracing its Real Beauty purpose. In such a human and emotional sector, and with a purpose which fundamentally made them appeal to a broader range of their target audience, the purpose they have adopted is a clever piece of marketing strategy and a wonderful creative North Star. Yet even there I wonder how many of their customers would honestly answer that they were buying it specifically for the higher purpose it stands for, versus generally having built up a strong affinity for it over the years due to great communications. I’ve long been a fan of Ben & Jerry’s but managed to consume their products for years before hearing, in a marketing conference, about their devotion to purpose and causes – I mean, it’s not like cereal where you actually sit and read the pack is it?

Often in marketing it’s easier for us to exaggerate how much a change has blown the ceiling off versus realise how much it’s simply raising the floor beneath us.

Generously, perhaps even a majority of consumers these days pays some attention to ethics and purpose related topics at some point. Many of them may even have specific brands, products or purchases they have made because of these factors. If you ask consumers about this, they tend to say it’s a good thing, and probably would influence their purchase decision, after all most people answering surveys are not sociopaths.

There’s less evidence that anything but a tiny handful however is applying that as a filter across even the majority of things they buy. Picture a supermarket with 100 people in it - how many of those are actively evaluating the ethics and purpose of every product they put into their trolly? The answer of course is 0 because if you truly based your shopping choices on this, you’d have chosen a different shop, with a focus on eco products and refillable packaging. Some mainstream supermarkets are embracing that trend, but I suspect it’ll be a decade before we see if it really takes hold anywhere. None of which is to say that the shoppers in that store haven’t in some way been influenced by purpose, in the same mysterious ways that all advertising influences us, builds association and creates mental availability.

Now I’m not in total denial here either and hence my point on raising the floor. The world is much more transparent than it used to be, people are much more aware of social issues, and bad news travels much faster than it used to. On some topics of environmental impact, or negative public scandal, expectations can move fast, and you can find yourself easily caught out. What might at one point seem like a ‘woke’ niche can rapidly become an established norm and looking globally you can already see markets like the Nordics where consumer expectations for environmental impact and the like are having tangible business impact. I think it’s fair to assume that some key sustainability attributes, especially your environmental footprint, will move rapidly to being an expected condition of business in many categories (and certainly in premium ones) but no one will think you are purposeful & wonderful for it, they will just think you’re doing the basics well.

There are likely to be some step change moments along the way, something like the introduction of ‘carbon labels’ to notify consumers of carbon footprints could very rapidly make this at least a consideration in purchase for a far greater audience - after all whilst consumers probably aren’t researching your ethics they may well be willing to look at a traffic light summary of them. By this stage though we’re not really talking about higher purpose but the cost of doing business.

Now one of the ‘it depends’ watch outs of the value of purpose is that if you approach it in a very blunt and slapped on way it certainly can backfire - if you profess your support of Black Lives Matter whilst paying your black employees less, or champion Pride whilst not appropriately providing for trans needs then don’t be surprised if you are called out. This starts to explain why Purpose might work better as a true business North Star impacting your total approach than just as a tacked-on gimmick in an ad campaign, even if again most of your consumers remain blissfully unaware.

Marketers should also perhaps be aware though that changing consumer perceptions are just as likely to come for your personal data strategy as they are your environmental or social impact, so buyer beware. I volunteer for the Conscious Advertising Network and one thing we challenge brands on is that all that good purposeful activity can be hugely undermined if your advertising is accidentally funding hate speech, disinformation and climate change denial - bonkers as that all sounds, much of it still is. We need to do more in the ‘brandy safety’ space and evolve it from being about avoiding negative headlines for our brands and into truly consciously investing in a quality internet that provides safety for our consumers.

I hesitate slightly on talking about how far the floor has raised because we can again overestimate the risks here - will a consumer really care or notice if you don’t support Pride or Black History Month? Probably not, though there are a fair few who will broadly look positively on you if you do. The reality is brands can have terrible scandals about faking emissions results, or sourcing products through modern slavery, one month and still often be largely forgotten by next and yet, wouldn’t it be great if none of us did enable slavery eh? It’s also worth noting that truly caring about such ethical matters will likely remain a preserve of the richer, middle classes for some time, many consumers simply don’t have the money power to choose, but that doesn’t mean we cannot help make their purchases pain free.

I mentioned diversity & representation before, and I think this is a good point to briefly unpack. Clearly a hot topic of late, there have been some stand out examples of purposeful inclusion and storytelling, to champion minority voices and perspectives and deliberately break down barriers. I think it’s fantastic that marketers are using their scale and impact to do this, and fully believe that both benefits diverse consumers and the business bottom line. Yet a lot of the best work in the representation space is far more casual than that, positive casting and inclusion, unstereotyping, different perspectives and voices- the advert doesn’t have to be ABOUT diversity to tackle & embrace it.

Research I’ve seen through Outvertising backs up this point, that positive representations of the LGBT+ community help break down sterotypes and drive positive acceptance, and yes it is nice just sometimes to see yourself reflected on the TV. We’ve just published a new WFA Guide to Creative Bias designed to help marketers who understand the importance of this build out a creative process which truly allows for it.

The whole industry should move along a spectrum from regrettable exclusion of minority groups, past awkward tokenism and stereotyping, to a place of positive representation and inclusion, where the faces seen, and the stories told in our adverts truly reflect the world around us. You don’t need to be charitable to do this; you just need to be a marketer doing their job and engaging broad audiences and with modern society. Now some brands will choose to go much further into the purposeful representation space and good on them, if nothing else it will give them a lot more to talk about and most likely some powerful and emotional stories to tell that resonate widely.

As another example I know a few people on Twitter who like to challenge Cadbury owner Mondelēz for their Age UK ‘donate your words’ partnership - how can they claim to be this worthy & purposeful organisation if they barely even pay taxes in the UK? For the record I did use to work there myself and still have very warm feelings towards anything purple!

Well Mondelēz is a publicly traded business in which its executives and employees are legally mandated to try and make money for their shareholders. To actively choose to make less money and return it to Governments would need a new stated goal and for them to persuade their shareholders that in the long run it will do more good than harm. Not impossible (there are arguments around colleague engagement, business positioning or yes even the value to consumers of such a noble purpose) and some have done it, but it’s quite the hill to climb when your investors are just there for the pay check.

For the most part you can understand why large multi-national companies would do everything in their power to minimise their tax bill. Probably you can also argue that global tax laws are not well equipped for such breeds of companies and perhaps in due course will do more to tackle this, at which point I suspect many companies will willingly pay more tax rather than break the law.

All that said companies do still have options of being totally ruthless corporate monsters or being willing to use some part of their influence to make the world a better, or at least not worse, place. That might be their communications, their supply chain, their policies or indeed how they choose to spend or donate their money. Most brands have a hugely global footprint of where they source their product, and chocolate is no exception. Early efforts by Cadbury to become fair trade and then to develop their own Cocoa Life hands on initiative were smart ways of getting ahead of consumer trends but also good ways of doing business, and something employees strongly welcomed.

It’s much more justifiable for a company to choose to give some of its shareholder’s money to specific charities or causes they choose because it’s far more likely you can infer a direct benefit from it. Investing in good causes can again engage colleagues, generate PR, help drive emotional brand campaigns and lots of other things. CSR is a reality of modern business and having worked at a charity before I’ve seen the direct and brilliant impact that it can have, on all sides. Encouraging the public to be part of that is no bad thing either, though I’m appalled when campaigns resort to ‘retweet this message or we won’t feed the starving children’ tactics.

To me it seems entirely logical that a company could choose both to legally avoid tax (which would in part help care for old people) and at the same time donate to a charity that supports them. Now, does Cadbury truly have a higher purpose of making the world a better place for older people that they will pursue at all costs in the most impactful way possible? No, of course not. They are a snacking company. Do they have a positive and purposeful idea for an advertising campaign that lends itself to some rich executions and does do some good along the way? Yes. Does it build on a rich heritage of the brand, and authentic role that the gift of chocolate can have? Yes. And that’s why they are a brand running an advertising campaign driven by a broadly purposeful North Star, and not themselves Age UK.

And I think most consumers picking up a bar of Cadbury are doing so for the same reason - because it’s a brand they like which has done a good job of building emotion and association over the years, and not because after extensive research they have concluded that the most purposeful investment for their chocolate budget is the purple one.

So there we have it Purpose once again working but not on purpose...not necessarily because of great higher power and charitable work, but because ‘donate your words’ or ‘dirt is good’ or ‘real beauty’ are rich and emotional advertising campaigns... and indeed campaigns you could never have gotten to without the purposeful North Star that guided you there, and gave you so much more richness to talk to. Certainly putting your money where your mouth is and genuinely supporting these causes both shields you from criticism but also will appeal to those that do dig deeper, and give you more to talk about, even if most of your consumes aren’t really aware of the details.

In many ways purpose is just... advertising? Though there are other levers of effective advertising that we seem to have forgotten of late, might I suggest a return to more humour and catchy jingles sometime as well? It’s perfectly possible to create emotion without a big Purpose as well, and so none of this really answers the question of whether it’s all worthwhile, and part of the answer to that might be found elsewhere in your business, or even in your conscience.

And dare I say it Simon Sinek may even be accidentally kind of right too - not really because any part of the company or audience is really that consumed by the ‘power of why’ but because on a macro level too it helps to have a big idea and a clear North Star of what you’re all working towards to inspire great thinking and results... and sure, if that star is not ‘take over and destroy the world’ it probably is something good and dare we say ‘purposeful’.

Jerry Daykin is a Senior Media Director and a volunteer at Outvertising, the Conscious Advertising Network, and the WFA Diversity Task Force

*his brand purpose as of now is to make digital sense of the extremes of marketing and bring us all together for the betterment of humanity