Woolley Marketing: Purpose or profit – why not both?
In his regular column for Mumbrella, Trinity P3 founder and global CEO Darren Woolley proffers that purpose has become lost in translation. Instead of defining the true purpose of the business, an easier substitute is found, usually some kind of cause or charity, and this is simply bolted on to the brand or business through comms or advertising without any real business commitment to deliver.
When the C-suite of two of the largest Consumer Package Goods advertisers speaks out on the need to rethink the trend towards purpose and doing good in business, then you know something has likely gone horribly wrong.
Cartoon by Dennis Flad, with permission (2022)
Unilever CEO Alan Jope warned that “brand campaigns promising to improve the world, but failing to take real action, only further destroy trust in the industry when it’s already in short supply”.
More recently, Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&G, after years of pushing doing good being good for business, stated: “We were saying ‘a force for good to be a force for growth’. But we found we spent so much time on the good, you know, we need to make sure we pay enough attention to the growth”.
But why the concern? When major advertisers are calling this out, you must start wondering if the focus on advertising doing good has gone too far.
In his book “Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell”, ex-creative director Steve Harrison argues that the creative industry has been highjacked by the political left, and that the industry no longer wants to drive the capitalist engine for growth and instead has a new purpose, which is to save the world.
Steve Harrison even quotes the industry bastion of creative effectiveness, the UK IPA, in declaring the industry is facing a “crisis of effectiveness”.
So, what is the issue? Is it the focus on purpose? It seems highly unlikely, as there are many successful organisations which have corporate purpose at their centre. Most people can reel off a list of companies who at their core appear to exist to make a world a better place.
But the reason they define and live this purpose is to be profitable. After all, profit is to business what breathing is to people. None of us live simply to breathe. But if you don’t breathe, you don’t live.
Instead, the issue appears to be that purpose has become lost in translation. Instead of defining the true purpose of the business, an easier substitute is found, usually some kind of cause or charity, and this is simply bolted on to the brand or business through comms or advertising without any real business commitment to deliver.
As Alan Jope said above, simply promising to save the world without doing anything tangible to deliver on that promise is destructive.
In Will Storr’s excellent book ‘The Status Game’ he defines three types of status: the traditional dominance status, competence status, and virtue status. It is this third one, in a world of social media and curating a persona of being good by doing good, that becomes toxic. Instead of having to do good, it is enough simply to state you are doing good and you obtain the virtue status. There is even a term for this – virtue signalling.
Take the creative award judging room, where highly experienced creative people are judging the work of their peers largely based on the criterion of choosing the work you wished you had done. Believe me, this is the way creative work is judged, because unlike effectiveness awards, there is only the work to be judged.
Faced with a great campaign to sell an extra thousand tonnes of laundry powder and one that viscerally communicates it is determined to save the world, which one would you choose? Is it any wonder that ads that offer a purpose beyond selling are the ones that are more likely to take home the gold?
This does not mean there is no place in advertising for communicating purpose. But purpose in a business sense is more than just a communications brief. It is a way to align culture and strategy across multiple groups of people, including employees, shareholders, suppliers, distributors, and yes, even customers.
Simply picking up the latest cause and bolting it to the brand or business doesn’t cut it. And doing it for a particular month such as Pride, Black Lives Matter, or just for a day, like World Environment or International Women’s, only to go back to business as usual for the other days of the year does not work either.
If your strategy is to do good to be good, then it is a commitment 365 days a year and expressed in everything you do – not just your advertising. If you can’t manage that, then best you simply focus on delivering growth and driving profit.
Trinity P3 founder and global CEO Darren Woolley
