Brand purpose and why you should never trust a hippy
While there are a number of articles claiming a cause-and-effect relationship between a brand’s ability to serve a higher purpose and its financial performance Eaon Pritchard asks if this really proof that the most successful brands are built on an ideal of improving lives?
The rhetoric of the ‘brand with purpose’ goes along these lines. It’s much harder to run a mission-driven company than it is to run one that is simply devoted to making a profit.
This is possibly why there was a sense of disappointment from Benjamin Harrison in his article, in which he laments the inability of many companies who adopt a purpose-driven position to actually deliver on that promise.
But should we really expect the purpose driven brand to be authentic in this way? It’s pretty hard after all.
In their book ‘The Rebel Sell’ Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter note that “…whenever you look at the list of consumer goods that [according to critics of capitalism] people don’t really need, what you invariably see is a list of consumer goods that middle-aged intellectuals don’t need … Hollywood movies bad, performance art good; Chryslers bad, Volvos good; hamburgers bad, risotto good.”
It could even be that the much-deified new generation of ‘millennials’ – the bullshit proof authenticity-seeking information generation defined both by their strongly held values and their strong intention to live by them – is another invention of these same middle-aged intellectuals, are now looking to temper the disappointment they feel over their own generations counter-culture failure.
The list of usual suspect purpose driven brands, as indicated by the Stengel 50, seems to play out to that point.
Chipotle’s The Scarecrow talked about the fast food chain’s mission to serve better produce
Starbucks, Apple, Google, Innocent, to name but a few. And, of course, Chipotle.
There is no small irony in how Chipotle appear to expect farmers to produce food for the world using technologies from the early 1900s, yet seem very comfortable using every trick and tech from the 2014 marketing book to promote that point of view.
Of course, every new pseudo anti-establishment approach business that declares itself as some sort of alternative to the mainstream – more artisanal, authentic or purpose-driven – is simply a response to demand from the mass market looking for things to consume that signal their alternative status to others.
My favourite description of anti-consumerism is the one that calls it as ‘the criticism of what other people buy’.
But the truth is that the market is just as good at meeting consumer demand for anti-consumer products as it is for straight up consumer products.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, to be honest.
Take the sharing economy poster child Uber, for example. A shining example of a new social era built on transparency, connectedness and stakeholder empowerment.
Driven by both a social mission and social values: advocacy, connection, and collaboration. Harnessing technology to create social marketplaces that facilitate trust, dual accountability and social capital between and amongst its stakeholders, employees, customers, and partners.
A brand with a purpose beyond profit.
The Uber Drivers Networks of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and London who went on the latest of several strikes and held protest demonstrations against the company’s somewhat unethical driver squeezing practices outside Uber HQ’s last week might contest this.
Or let’s ask the drivers working for third Party fleet partners operating as mini-Uber bases, which, for all intents and purposes are operating under the exact same economic and operational principles of the yellow cab or black car bases that Uber was supposed to replace.
We should also give (dis)honourable mention to Uber in la France with their recent promotion offering riders the option ‘hot chick’ model drivers. To be fair, it was France, but to describe the promo as “acceptable” misogyny feels like a bit of a stretch.
Uber is an easy target, admittedly. In Jean Baudrillard’s 1970 book, The Consumer Society he describes consumption itself as some sort of ‘magical thinking’. This is why advertising works so well.
Goods conveying properties beyond their intended use. Anti-consumption is probably more so.
You see, the post-social media analysts like to think that organisations like Uber are somehow subversive.
But they are not. The system is simply incorporating a new market segment. And it is the same old competitive consumption, that drives this same consumer spending.
We always seek to gain status for ourselves with what we buy (or rent), and everybody does it too.
Seemingly purpose-driven brands might be the new cool, but the status-oriented nature of the activity remains the same. It’s positional and pure marketing.
And the label helps resolve that particular cognitive dissonance.
Now you can be a do-gooder and still consume.
Eaon Pritchard is strategic director for Red Jelly
Unfortunately for Benjamin, the last line in his otherwise excellent article has opened him up to this critique.
On another note; ‘the criticism of what other people buy’… Gold.
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Sorry mate, purpose isn’t about doing good. It’s about adding value for customers. Google’s purpose “is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” isn’t about doing good, its about being really good at something that isn’t measured in dollars and cents but will create dollars and cents.
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@Martin: Google is a poor example of Brand Purpose; your description applies just as equally to Bing, Yahoo and others.
Try Ello vs Facebook – Brand Purpose (Ello): social connectivity without the data mining. And will this Brand Purpose be a strong enough differentiator to achieve critical mass?
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@martin Correct.
It was Mark Earls who coined ‘purpose idea’ back in 2002 or something in his book ‘…Creative Age’ The premise being that the word ‘brand’ had become – what he called – a ‘fat-metaphor’. A word that could be used it to mean just about anything we want it to.
Purpose-Idea was a proposed replacement for ‘brand’ – defined as the ‘what for?’ of a business – as in your Google example.
How the brand fits into people’s lives.
Not the ‘mission, vision, values’ place that it’s ended up (for many).
And, if anything, ‘purpose’ has now landed in place even more esoteric than the b-word was in the first place.
Cheers..
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A very good example of what you just said is this post, isn’t it? While Fast Company puts the word “mission” in its cover and dedicate pages to talk about companies like Chipotle, you wrote a post criticizing what they claim as a new way to look at business. At the end of the day, you both saying that purpose are as important as profits. Guess there’s a missing word: balance.
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Consumers buy into a brands, in part, to boast.
I was brought up not to take the sticker from the person with the charity box because charitable giving was something we should keep to ourselves.
But the ‘boastful’ mentality enables brands like Toms to do good, “look at me doing good by buying trendy shoes” (not sure how good an example Toms are as I know nothing about them…).
But Toms are not being dishonest – if anything they’re being strategic.
Not entirely sure if this is relevant to your point… but I suppose the proverb of being unable to serve two masters, i.e. “good” and “money” is being proven to be true.
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A core issue is flabby surface level thinking. Many confuse morals, ethics and purpose and in combining the three create contorted missions that the brand will never achieve and the customer will not see as valuable.
If we could start to to delineate and think harder we might end up with more ethical brands and purposes that customers actually value.
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I understand the point you’re making but I don’t like the way it denigrates what I believe is more positive consumer behaviour by labelling it as self interested status seeking.
By tarring it with superficiality as an industry we seem to be giving off the same message to brands – i.e. you just need to look good, not actually be good.
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My boss believes in brand cause and he’s a hippy. He’s done pretty well with it. His name is Dan Wieden. The issue isn’t about your motivations or spirit … it’s whether you mean what you say or you’ve adopted it because you think it has additional commercial benefits.
The easiest way to tell their true motivations is by seeing what they are willing to sacrifice in their quest to fulfil their purpose.
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@rob the west’s conspicuous authenticity is as the east’s conspicuous consumption.
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It used to be. Not any more. At least not with everyone Eaon.
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@me I never said it had to be unique – they are just making decisions based on that purpose that are making them the best choice for people and therefore the most profitable. I agree with @Rob but maybe not from a hippy POV. If you mean what you say and are willing to sacrifice some short term gains for the long term game then thats a purpose thats working. I think the article has just tied up ‘purpose’ with some ‘hippy’ examples which is isn’t what its about. I’ve help surf companies, building companies, winemakers, health insurance companies all divise a purpose thats achievable for them and more importantly kept them focused on creating good customer experience which has lead to dollars. None of those companies are focused on saving the environment or trying to seem noble – they are just trying to be the best at one thing that people need.
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…’the usual suspect’ 50 purpose driven brands?
Nah, they don’t scrape the barrel of my list that includes brands so niche, they would not be on the radar – but they’re pure play purpose driven brands, that scale due not to GREED and return, but to genuine capacity!
Google, Starbucks and Apple long ago sold out their ideals and a pure-play purpose to their shareholders and the return and the fat cat bank accounts of the founding teams.
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So the Q to ask is, does a company have a purpose BEYOND making moolah and optimising shareholder return?
Will it stay TRUE to itself – to its PURPOSE – EVEN WHEN – not if – any of these apply:
a. that means accepting zero growth or – the shock! – a LOSS,
b. execs don’t get bonuses or more shares
c. they have to turn DOWN a partnership opportunity because there was one aspect a little shonky in the partner, that was misaligned with purpose – and they did not bend nor yield to accomodate
…..well, will they? None of the companies quoted in the article will.
. If a bunch of the execs have to sit ( maybe with a consulting company) for a day or more to define their purpose, and make it (force-fit ) to trendily authentic, then they’re not pure-play purpose-driven
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@martin totally nailed it in his comments.
@me I disagree with your response. Google is a GREAT example of a brand with a purpose. In defining themselves as being guided to “organise the world’s information” they’re focused on one thing and one thing only. It is that sense of purpose that gives focus to their business, and helps make them successful. Bing and Yahoo! DON’T have that same purpose. They are not driven by that same thing. They might do some of what Google does, but they don’t have the same purpose. And they don’t have the same success. And that’s why purpose can be good.
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Whichever side of the argument you are coming from, what is clear is tat ‘purpose’ has become another ‘fat metaphor’.
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@martin, @nick. My take of Benjamin’s article is that Brand Purpose exists as a counterpoint to prevailing negative associations within a category. You seem to be confusing things with ‘focus’ and ‘single-mindedness’.
I think @rob nailed it in two ways; he used the word ’cause’ which i would agree is a better term for the actual concept and he works for guy who lives it.
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I worked in a multinational agency where the urge to save mankind came up in every brief on their global brands. It was breathtakingly hypercritical. Advertising encourages more unhealthy behaviour across the planet than any other industry. The best thing most of these brands could do, If they care that much about people and planet, is to go away.
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