PURPOSE OR HAMMER
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a fast food, a car, a loaf of bread or a beer; every brief that comes across my desk lately is asking for the same thing. Everybody wants to show what a good corporate citizen they are, what good they do for society, how they’re making the world a better place. Everybody wants a purpose-led strategy.
And who can blame them?
Every day brings a new consumer study telling us “62% of people say their purchasing decisions are influenced by a company’s ethical values and authenticity. 62% Want companies to take a stand on social, cultural, environmental and political issues close to their hearts and 60% of say they are happy to pay more for brands that promote sustainability.
We’ve had the chief brand officer at P&G, tell us that “more than half of people are making choices on brands based on shared values and more than half of people from gen Z all the way to boomers really expect brands to take a stand on societal issues.”
And, of course, there’s the grand Poobah himself, Simon Sinek exhorting us to “start with why,” because “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
So for the past few years, social purpose marketing has been the shiny, new thing for us magpies in advertising to become obsessed with and we’ve become one-trick ponies. Frankly it’s all become a little bit bland. A little bit predictable. A little bit “here’s my dead dog, where’s my award?” - look it up. Not to mention a greater and greater stretch of credibility with each successive campaign.
It won’t be long now, before even the fossil fuel industry finds a way of getting in on the act.
But worse than all that is that there’s very little evidence showing that it even works as a strategy.
According to an IPSOS survey, only 12% of millennials have actually bought a brand because of its responsible behaviour and only 16% have actively boycotted a brand. And that was before the cost of living crunch started having an influence.
How is this possible? How can we possibly have 62% of people saying they take a company’s ethics into consideration when buying a brand and yet only 12% actually do? Or, to put it another way, how can we possibly have a majority of people saying they take a company’s ethics into account and yet Amazon, Apple and Uber continue to soar?
David Ogilvy knew why when he said, decades ago, “the trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, they don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.” And when research questions are worded in such a way that they are bound to elicit socially-responsible answers from consumers, our chances of unearthing their true motivations are even slimmer.
Of course we would all prefer it if our chosen brand of cool drink were doing something good with at least some of the money we’re giving it. And if someone were to ask, that’s what we’d say. But that’s not how we make our buying decisions in real life. In real life, when I’m standing in front of a fridge looking at the cool drinks, I’m not thinking “which one of these tasty beverages is more committed to saving the world?” I’m thinking, “fuck me, it’s hot! I need something refreshing. Ooh look, Cherry Vanilla flavour!”
People choose brands that satisfy their goals, not yours. And as disappointing as it may seem to your world-view and estimation of your fellow human, research consistently shows that value for money, reliability and product/service quality are almost always the most important factors when real buying decisions are made.
I’m not saying purpose never works. For some brands, it undoubtedly does. Mainly those that were created with that purpose in mind, rather than having it derived and tagged on by a marketing team afterwards. I’m just saying it’s no more the only answer to every brief on every brand than convenience would be, and we all know what a cop-out a convenience strategy is.
I’m just saying that the next time we want to change someone’s mind about a car, clothing, toothpaste or beer, can we just give it a little more consideration; a touch more circumspection.
Before assuming every marketing problem is a nail?
