What Brands Need to Know About Purpose
Purpose marketing has been on the map for some time now.
Popularized by brands like Patagonia, Dove, and Ben & Jerry’s, it’s led to some of the most successful and memorable campaigns in recent times, like Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign, or Nike’s series of ads featuring Colin Kaepernick alongside messages like, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”
When it’s good, purpose marketing acts as a rallying cry, helping promote real, positive change in the world while deepening your connection with audiences.
But when it’s bad, it can be a disaster.
Purpose Fail
Think of Pepsi’s 2017 protest ad. The ad features Kendall Jenner, who abandons a photo shoot to join a Black Lives Matter-esqe protest where she succeeds in diffusing tension by offering a police officer a can of Pepsi.
That one didn’t go over so well.
In addition to being tone deaf and trivializing what was (and still is) a very serious conversation in our culture, it was an obvious attempt by a large corporation to capitalize on a conversation rather than engage with it.
Why Purpose Campaigns Fail
There are many cringe-worthy examples like this, and they usually fail for one or more of the following reasons:
Insincerity - “Talk is cheap,” as they say. Brands often dream up cool, purposeful initiatives that, in reality, they have little genuine interest in. These almost always result in a cool video, a PR campaign, and half-baked followthrough. This strategy can be effective for getting quick media attention and a spike in brand awareness, but this kind of awareness cuts both ways. Because, as soon as people start paying attention, it doesn’t take them long to realize something is off.
Hypocrisy - We see this a lot with environmental causes. For example, Shell has been accused of repeatedly greenwashing their investment in fossil fuels by publicly aspiring to be a “net-zero emissions energy business” and by overstating their investment in “Renewables and Energy Solutions.” Incongruities like these can make purpose marketing initiatives especially galling, as was the case with a 2020 Twitter poll that asked audiences, “What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions?”
Irrelevance - A common red flag is brands that have zero connection to the purpose or cause they are promoting. There’s nothing wrong with taking a stand on issues that are important to us, but as brands, when those issues feel too far removed from our own sphere of influence, it can start to feel like lip service. For example: all the brands that roll out their Pride flags each year without prioritizing inclusive workplace policies or doing anything substantive to support LGBTQ+ rights. Irrelevance is often the first sign of insincerity and/or hypocrisy.
Purpose Marketing vs Brand Purpose
All of this is to say that purpose marketing can be tricky. One reason for this is that, far too often, the discussion of purpose begins and ends with marketing.
Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, famously observed: “You can’t reverse into a mission and values through marketing… [T]he purpose needs to be the business.”
And that’s exactly why it’s so important that brands—particularly those wishing to make a positive impact in the world—incorporate purpose into their brand strategies.
A thoughtful purpose creates a real and lasting connection between your brand’s values and the work you do across all aspects of your organization; from marketing to HR policies, product and/or program development, and more.
By incorporating it into your brand’s strategy, your purpose actually becomes more authentic over time as it guides and shapes the decisions that impact how you grow, creating genuine connections with audiences while ensuring tangible impact in the world.
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