What’s our purpose?

The battle for our souls rages on. Our industry continues to be in flux over what works for brands, but more interestingly, what works for us. 

The recent research published by Peter Field and the IPA exploring the effectiveness of brand purpose marketing campaigns has come under scrutiny, as it appears to draw conclusions that many felt simply weren’t there. Indeed, the data actually seemed to conclude the opposite when analysed fairly. 

Most of the arguments surrounding Field’s research focus on the methodology used. However, what interests me more is the intentions behind research like this, and why brand purpose has become such a pronounced topic in our industry over the last ten years.

Why are we wishing purpose-led campaigns to be more effective? 

And why do we need this to be true?

Bursting our bias bubble

In my view, this has a lot to do with a shift in personal political identity within our industry, and the idea that we are becoming increasingly more left-leaning and liberal in our personal politics. Moreover, we are becoming more aggressive in how we express it. 

This was one of my core arguments in my piece analysing the problems with brand purpose. 

We are an industry largely populated by left-leaning liberal individuals. People whose values and ideals are largely centred around caring for those around them and the world we inhabit...Our remedy for this situation is to implant our ideologies within our work, and go about reshaping how brands talk about themselves in the hope that it will bring about more systemic change. We’ve invented the idea of brand purpose as the catch-all solution for our own guilt.

Andrew Tenzor, Director of Market Insight & Brand Strategy at Reach, recently researched our industry’s political leanings to uncover the data surrounding this, and it seemed to confirm my view that we are typically left-leaning liberals. 

But are these biases increasing? 

I’m yet to find actual data that allows us to compare Andrew’s research back over time to understand if this is a recent shift or not, and whether the discrepancy between our industry and the general public is increasing. 

I spoke to Richard Huntington the Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi who offered an anecdotal point of view.

“My picture of advertising before I joined is one that was far more right-leaning. I always felt there was a big change when Thatcher’s children (like me) entered the business in the early 90s and largely recoiling against the right we had witnessed in the 80s’, came of age and changed the politics.”

This disparity between us and the general public has led many to argue that we are part of an increasingly distant urban elite, who have failed in our understanding of what the average person in the street thinks or feels. That’s deeply problematic given it’s our job to do so in service of our clients. How can we sell effectively if we are out of touch with whom we are selling to? 

Against the backdrop of an increasingly polarised post-Brexit society, our biases seem to be powering a revulsion towards the general public whom we sell to. This lack of understanding or willingness to empathise with those who don’t see the world the way we do will drive a further decline in creative effectiveness if we don’t burst our bias bubbles. 

Interestingly, it was Field’s research that demonstrated creative effectiveness was in decline, pointing out amongst other things, that we were drifting from the creative best practices that defined earlier, more effective work. 

Could it be that the increase in brand purpose-led advertising is pulling us away from the work that we know truly works?

Getting out of bed in the morning

The reality is our frustrations towards the impending climate crisis and our complicity in it (among many other problems we see in society), are affecting our will to do what we do. 

We know the demand we generate feeds the consequences of unabated consumption. We know where this all leads. So, brand purpose offers us an existential escape route. A parachute back to a greener earth from the toxic air we’re currently breathing. 

And who can blame us? 

The complexity and scale of our clients’ businesses make changes for the good of the world and humanity incredibly difficult to affect. And we aren’t wired to wait to see change happen. We will fall out of love with our work, and indeed our clients, if we don’t feel like change is possible and within our grasp.

Change is depressingly slow. And while we feel complicit in the changes we are witnessing in the world, or the lack of change we see towards a more ideal world, we feel helpless, and reach for quick solutions. The trouble is that businesses that have become successful, have well-established, complex systems that often span geography, culture, language, and a myriad of interdependent webs. These highly efficient mechanisms of commerce have taken decades to perfect. Changing them for the benefit of a higher-order thought process will be met immediately with resistance. Put simply, any change will likely be costly. Not just in terms of money, but more critically, in terms of time. And the longer something takes to change, the more costly it is perceived to be. The effort required for change is magnified over the axis of time, creating not only short-term resistance, but long-term pressure that will mount against those seeking to make change.

What do we do about it?

Despite my concerns around the current use of brand purpose advertising (or social purpose advertising to be more precise), brands should absolutely still transform for the betterment of humanity. This really isn’t an option anymore. It is essential to all of our futures. 

However, we should really see this now as more of a hygiene factor. This is just what is expected of modern businesses, and therefore, it doesn’t need to be placed on a pedestal every time they do something right. 

We should be challenging clients in every brief to prove their credentials before allowing them to claim anything that can’t be proven in an authentic voice. Again, this is what we were trained to do. 

Beyond applying stricter controls on what we do or don’t say about a brand’s social credentials, we need to double down on what we know how to do well: creating effective advertising. Creating work that emotionally resonates with people, while satisfying their needs. 

And we should still be good at what we do, regardless of our own personal ideologies. For some of us, that means making peace with our own personal purpose. And therefore, those of us that need to affect greater change within businesses, should consider a change of focus. Many in the industry are already spinning off sustainability consultancies, giving them the opportunity to get stuck in with the hard work of convincing CEOs and boardrooms to change their businesses for the better.

And lastly, as an industry we need to find ways to reconnect with normal people. People from all backgrounds, and every corner of the country. 

People who voted for Brexit, attended anti-lockdown marches, or read the Daily Mail. People who cheer for Piers Morgan when he tweets. 

It may be painful for a lot of people in our industry to hear, but these are audiences we sell to. They aren’t from a totally separate dimension. They’re our neighbours, our friends, and family members. And probably a few of our colleagues too, believe it or not. 

We need to come down off our own pedestal, stop preaching, and start listening.