The brand purpose debate

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A lively debate in the marketing community today centers on the usefulness of brand purpose.  Some like Keith Weed, former CMO at Unilever, is a true believer.  Others, like Byron Sharp, say the purpose of marketing is to sell things and brand purpose is a bunch of bunk that gets in the way.

This week, ad effectiveness expert Peter Field presented research that shows brand purpose advertising has the potential to be “incredibly effective.”  The key word there is “potential.”  The best executed brand purpose ads create significant market share growth, according to his research.  However, this is kind of a tautology. (“Effective ads are effective.”)  Field’s own research suggests most purpose ads are, in fact, not well executed, and those mediocre ads fare especially poorly.

Moreover, in Field’s study, when he compares the impact of all purpose-based ads (not just the best ones) to all non-purpose ads, the non-purpose ads win out.

Perhaps brand purpose is meaningful, but not so much in the context of advertising.  A column by marketing expert Samuel Scott makes that more nuanced point (which also is echoed here).   Consumers may say they want to buy from purpose-driven brands but it isn’t clear that most people actually do. And it isn’t clear they can even tell which brands have a purpose and which do not.

However, brand purpose can help a brand in other ways, like generating good PR, encouraging supply chain efficiencies, and bolstering employee commitment and retention. Scott illustrates a number of examples.  (My all-time favorite example is Deutsche Telekom’s effort to use gaming to help in dementia research.)

Where it doesn’t work is when a brand just throws together an ad to prove its awareness of whatever social issue is in the news this week. That won’t embed purpose in the organization, and consumers are likely to see those efforts as cynical and opportunistic and, thus, not credible.