Post Purpose: Why Brand Purpose Got Personal

Brand purpose and punk have a surprising amount in common.

When the son of Sex Pistols manager Malcom Maclaren and Queen of Punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood discovered that there were official plans to celebrate the movements 40th anniversary he burnt £5m worth of memorabilia in protest at what he saw as the scene being co-opted as a marketing ploy for London.

His argument was that punk shouldn’t be a piece of slap-on nostalgia for the sake of fitting in. Neither should brand purpose. Both share a similar fate: they have apparent adherents who are described as inauthentic “posers”, and they are constantly declared finished.

After peaking in the 2010s, early brand purpose was called into question and not because consumers became more cynical but because brands had to accept that it was rational.

As Weber Shandwick’s global chief creative officer Tom Beckman told Creative Salon in a discussion about his role as a juror at Cannes Lions: “Authenticity and branding are typically things you cannot mix". He believes that brand purpose is simply a medium with which to achieve financial growth, and consumers are increasingly cottoning on.

But is purpose really over, or like punk has it just morphed into a less idealistic, more selfish, and honest, concept?

Just as post-punk splintered into new scenes, post-purpose has morphed beyond moral posturing. 

Brand purpose initiatives are most frequently criticised for being performative - from Marks and Spencer’s ill-fated LGBT sandwich (lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato) sandwich in 2019 to the infamous Pepsi advert in which Kendall Jenner was criticised for trivialising the Black Lives Matter movement.

Recent years have also seen concern about brands back off from supporting initiatives such as Pride, often for fear of being accused of "pinkwashing". In the US, some brands have also been accused of backtracking due to the climate of Trump's presidency.

As Ikea’s Inga Group global comms and positioning manager, Belén Frau puts it brands are plagued by “purpose fatigue”. “It’s one of the main reasons why I love working for a brand that I think wants to be your partner in life at home. I think trust comes from transparency and consistency,” she says.

At the same time, research by the Unstereotyped Alliance - a UN Women convened initiatived with Unilever and Mars as vice chairs founded in 2017 - analysed 392 brands across 58 countries and found that progressive advertising does drive improved business outcomes. According to the 2024 report there is a 3.46 per cent uplift in short term sales and a 16.26 per cent uplift in long-term sales.

In its latest Brand Trust Barometer, Edelman produced a special report which declares that Purpose isn’t dead but it’s expanding and becoming more personal. That it was entitled ‘Brand Trust: From We To Me’ describes a shift where marketers are avoiding preachiness, all while inventing new ways to slot into people’s daily lives meaningfully – this can be seen from the likes of Monzo with its ‘Book Of Money’ and its simple-to-use pots, or Hellmann’s ‘Make Taste Not Waste’ which helps people save money (and reduce their harm on the planet) by wasting less food.

The shift means brands need to be clear about what their customers need and the tensions they can help solve.

But what went wrong?

Revolt’s chief strategy officer Matt Jones explains that the evolution of purpose in advertising can be split into different eras. Revolt’s ‘Poking The Bear’ report maps purpose advertising into three eras: “inspiring infancy”, “erratic adolescence” and “backlash and retreat”. 

The inspiring infancy era saw brands such as Patagonia pioneer a mainstream take on ethical business (pushing the notion that brands should help make the planet a better place), but it was followed by brands latching on to purpose and becoming increasingly empty and performative which Jones describes as “erratic adolescence”. 

He argues: “If you jump on an issue that’s unrelated to your business, people can see that you’re just trying to use purpose as a marketing hook.”

Former Dove CMO, Alessandro Manfredi, who is widely credited with pioneering the purpose movement as we know it, believes brands can learn from the Japanese concept of ikigai. The key element of ikigai is the idea that people should balance what they are good at, what they love, what the world needs and what they can be paid be for. According to Manfredi this also applies to brands.

“Ikigai is a way to explain how a brand finds a human tension where the world needs a solution and where the brand is well-positioned to do something about it,” he says.

Iris chief strategy officer Ben Essen says  that everything is social and collective. “Even the idea of being anti purpose, or anti social purpose is a collective ideology. It's a purpose. It's a mission,” he says.

And Manfredi says that there are three main ways in which brands can get purpose wrong:

•  Lack of authenticity

For Manfredi stating that something is your purpose means that a marketer  needs to “make it part of your business not just your communication”. This is something which Dove has done through its Real Beauty initiatives – and consistently adapted them to tackle modern issue such as young teenagers using adult skin products.

In response to being questioned about their purpose credentials – some brands have taken a step back from saying anything at all. This issue is addressed in Revolt’s ;The Cost Of Silence’ report which found that businesses that do well on environmental performance have a 6 per cent higher EBITDA on average.

Essen argues that there should be an element of caution around when to speak and when not to but that businesses should be practising even when they are not preaching.

“We should separate the premise that businesses should have a moral implication to people, which, which is, for me, a non-negotiable. Even if you're not talking about it, you still have to be doing it as a business. But understand that that's a different thing. So talking about sustainability versus investing in it are separate things,” he notes.

Getting purpose right

For Jones the brands that are using purpose in the right way are moving the concept forward and centring their customers. “We’re now entering what we call ‘The Era of Enduring Maturity’. There will be fewer brands doing it but the brands that do it will become more persistent and will do it properly,” he says.

• Book Of Monzo

One example of a brand which has created a new form of purpose around its brand is Monzo. Building an identity around easy-to-use saving pots and a bright orange bank card. In collaboration with Freuds and BBH it recently opened a pop-up store in Soho to showcase its recently launched Book Of Monzo which offers easy-to-digest financial advice.

“Monzo is a great example – there purpose isn’t about saving the planet – it’s about making money management accessible and easy,” says Jones.

• St John’s Ambulance, CPR Bra

In 2024, Revolt worked with St John’s Ambulance Service to create an initiative which raises awareness about the fact that women are less likely to receive life-saving CPR. The result was a green CPR bra which wass not only eye-catching but could be used as a demonstration tool such as at student’s union first aid societies.

“By focusing on a specific, solvable problem rather than a broad message about saving lives it became more powerful and memorable,” explains Jones.

• Hellmann’s Meal Reveal

Hellmann’s Meal Reveal app also exemplifies how drawing on consumer needs can help a brand be successful. The app doesn’t simply preach about food waste – it allows users to scan items in their fridge so that they can access meal ideas.

“It is not just about a global problem, it’s about something tangible for the individual,” explains Jones.

• Diageo's 'Drink Better'

As part of its “Drink Better” philosophy, Diageo has created DrinkIQ a global resource which helps educate consumers on the dangers of drinking – available in 23 different languages. “It’s powerful because it directly addresses responsible drinking – an issue they have a credible reason to talk about,” says Jones.

Moving forward

“I don’t like it when people say that purpose is dead, because it’s not at all,” Manfredi says, “But in a way purpose fatigue has avoided people that don’t really know how to do it, and don’t do it authentically jumping on the bandwagon.” 

Likewise, Essen sees brand purpose as a fundamental part of how brands have to act in the modern world, “otherwise all you do is create ads, you can’t create anything else, so you need to have a sense of what you believe in,” he adds.

Like punk, brand purpose only succeeds when it is lived. It should sneak into daily life and solve problems – and it should tell the stories of products that are a daily rebellion against waste, or even just boredom and inconvenience.