The Problem with Purpose

Oh no, Dean, what have you done? Publicly posting a piece opposing the holy grail of change-the-world, purpose-led, creative-for-good? Yes, I’m afraid I have. While it may seem odd to be against social purpose work, I believe the elephant conservation in the room needs to be addressed.

For clarity’s sake, some refer to it as purpose or purpose-led, purpose-driven advertising, cause marketing or social impact work but what I’m talking about below is essentially and exclusively social purpose. This is about the idea that brands can attach themselves to a societal issue in the pursuit of a greater good, differentiation or acceptance from like-minded consumers.

You can’t swing a laser pointer these days without hitting a Simon Sinek, Patagonia or Dove example in a brief, strategy deck or marketing plan. From ad award shows to boardrooms, social impact and purpose themes still dominate. Just one such example of this: 25 of 33 Gold and Silver awards from the first night of the 2023 Loeries went to social impact campaigns. That’s 76%. Seventy-six percent of the work our industry recognised as the creative benchmark is social impact work.

The Loeries defines itself as “brand communication awards”, yet most of the 2023 winning social impact work had tenuous links back to the brand — and I’m willing to bet my agency house on this — very little real social impact. One such winning piece of work, verbatim, described the results of its social impact campaign for a serious issue as, “the campaign was shared on social media thousands of times by celebrities, journalists and opinion leaders nationwide. With all this momentum, it created serious public pressure to investigate [the cause]”. Well, if it was shared on social media, then I’m sure it got fixed <close sarcasm font>.

Global trend

This is by no means a slight against the Loeries; it’s a global trend at all award shows whereby purpose-led work carries a premium for the creatives who judge it. While this purpose obsession is exemplified by awards shows today, that doesn’t mean it’s a new idea.

Let’s go back 16 years to investigate deeper.

Purpose as a trend began and continued to build momentum after the 2008 global crash. Businesses and brands took an unsurprising reputational knock in 2008, and the purpose trend emerged as a counter to the reputational damage. Obviously, at the time and since then, the default became dirty words: capitalism, profits, big business, materialism. 

You’re in the wrong industry

What are marketers and agencies here for?

David Ogilvy believed we must sell or else. Hegarty told us the function of advertising is to promote and sustain a competitive advantage. Bernbach said creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved. This is our job as an industry but it appears that everyone has become too embarrassed to admit that we have a commercial directive to sell products, and would prefer to hide behind the idea that it’s more ethical to do well by doing good. Quite simply, if you don’t like the idea of capitalism, then you’re in the wrong industry.

Milton Friedman wrote in his 1970 essay, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits. Fundamentally, there’s nothing wrong with good and ethical businesses selling more and making more profit. That allows them to hire more people, pay better salaries and wages, create more jobs, boost an economy, pay more tax (looking at you, Cadbury and Patagonia), employ even more people, feed families, put kids in schools, allow their staff to support societal change of their own choosing and create even more jobs.

No solution to the problem

My personal issue with most of the purpose work I see is it does a terrific job of advertising the problem without offering any sort of solution. Brands attach themselves to complex societal issues that need so much more than an advert to fix. I’m sure you’ve seen several brands talk about gender-based violence (GBV) being a problem, or human rights, or rhino poaching, or sustainability, or global warming, or equality, or Women’s Day, or Black Lives Matter (BLM), or deforestation, or the negative impact of social media — but how many of these brands have ever offered a solution?

If you’re reading this, I’m certain you knew these issues were issues long before some clothing brand, mobile provider or insurance company told you they were. Yet what did any of these brands do to fix it? Advertising the problem just advertises that there’s a problem.

Legally, there are two types of enterprises: not-for-profit businesses and for-profit businesses. Obviously, I’m not here to talk about not-for-profit businesses. In fact, an important argument against purpose is that the nett result of brands attaching themselves to causes dilutes the efforts of specialist NGOs addressing these issues.

Give NGOs the monopoly

I would argue that NGOs should be given the monopoly on societal issues. This way they’d benefit from economies of scale and more resources directed their way.

Not only is purpose marketing disingenuous but I find it damaging. I believe it actively undermines and dilutes those more effective at addressing these important issues.

Not too long ago, these same purpose-obsessed brands had something called corporate social investment (CSI). They would support causes without turning them into “look how good we are” campaigns. They would do it in silence without asking for a pat on the back or more beer sales.

Commercially, from everything I’ve researched and seen, purpose marketing doesn’t work. I get the appeal of it, though. We live in the era of cancel culture and the last thing a brand owner wants is their brand cancelled on social media because it took one step too far on a risqué creative brand idea. It’s much safer to support the latest social issue and how can anyone cancel you for that? Not only is it safer, it’s easier. And it’s lazy marketing.

What consumers want

But consumers don’t want brands telling them which cause they must care about. Ask Disney or Pepsi or Bud Light. Consumers buy brands that make them feel better/safer/happier about their own lives.

Whether or not you believe the claim that Hellmann’s mayo can solve food waste (below), no one wants to buy mayonnaise because it delivers a guilt trip of food waste. Consumers buy mayonnaise because mayonnaise is delicious. People don’t buy Apple because of its Why (sorry, Simon) but because it makes unbelievable products that are beautiful to look at and work seamlessly, and because it’s built the world’s best brand through years and years of outstanding product design and extraordinary advertising.

Finally, at the very minimum, purpose needs to be a foundational business ideal, not a brand or marketing ideal. You can’t plaster purpose on top of a brand.

I would argue that businesses such as Patagonia (the tax thing aside), Toms or Tony’s Chocolonely created and built their businesses on principles they’ve not wavered on since launch. Their brands are an extension of the problems their business set out to solve and they’re woven into the very fabric of their products, literally.

The easy way out

I realise I’ve used a few generalist examples here but the point remains. You might think it’s a noble sacrifice for your brand to support a social purpose but it’s really the easy way out for your brand to jump onto the bandwagon. The argument for purpose marketing is about principles but, thanks to another Bernbach gem, a principle is only a principle when it costs you something. A principle isn’t a marketing tactic and you shouldn’t be trying to earn a return on principles.

Do you know what does work really well but is really hard? Making your brand interesting or fun.

In other words, creativity.

The much harder thing for marketers and advertisers to do is to discover why your customer should care about the thing you’re selling or design a product/brand/campaign that actually delivers on insights, a big idea and adds value to someone’s life. The best adverts are not adverts; they’re entertainment. And making something entertaining is hard.

One common thread

Go back and look at all your favourite advertising: there’s one common thread. You can clearly see the people who made the work had fun with it. You can tell that, the moment they thought of the idea or saw their final edit, hair stood up on the back of their neck. They knew it was special and people who engaged with it would love it as much as they did. That’s much harder to do.

People used to laugh at ads. Now they laugh at brands.

Thankfully, the tide is turning and humour seems to be returning to our industry again but it can, and should, happen much quicker. Only when the obsession with purpose subside, and the demand for quality and entertaining work replaces it, will we see better work, more effectiveness and a better reputation across the board.

This was first written and published for MarkLives.

There’s a lot more to be said about this and no one says it better than copywriter Nick Asbury. If you want to read more on the subject, I suggest you read his three-part case against purpose with more detail and research than I can go in to here. Nick is releasing his book on the subject in the next few months, which will be an important and timely read. He says it better than I can, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”