Brand purpose has become a misunderstood buzzword, argues columnist Andrew Tindall. Treated as a consistent, emotional mission that fuels creative expression and cultural relevance, it’s not the enemy of effectiveness – it’s just proper marketing.
Brand purpose has become the villain of marketing strategy. People have it confused and, quite like the word “woke,” it has been used to bamboozle marketers into shutting down decent campaigns, building personal profiles and selling books.
The issue is our definition of purpose. And how sloppy some well-meaning marketers have been in enforcing top-down strategies of purpose on to a house of brands after seeing pockets of purpose success.
Peter Field dramatically demonstrated the issue with this blanket assumption of effectiveness in 2021 – well, the lack of effectiveness, as he used IPA data to show that the average campaign with a purpose strategy produced 32% fewer very large business effects. This definition of purpose was a campaign with some sort of CSR outcome.
That’s 32% less gains in market share, profit, penetration and price. The kind of stuff marketers are here to produce. At least we should be, but I grow more disillusioned by the day.
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It’s a brilliant example of the messy catch-all definition of purpose and how flawed averages can be. As he equally showed, purpose campaigns that get it right manage to increase business effects by 32% in his trademarked, robust and industry-leading style (honestly, Field has done more for this industry than most).
There are clearly good and bad examples of using CSR to grow brands and businesses. As such, anyone making sweeping, generalized statements about the use of purpose is a moron. It cannot be that simple. Purpose isn’t one thing: it’s a strategy each brand approaches differently.
But the conversation needs to move on. Giving a brand a purpose is a powerful thing. I don’t mean a brand trying to stand up for sea otters or collecting small, knitted hats from the elderly. I mean a dramatic, creative idea that brings a brand’s positioning to life over the years. That’s what ‘purpose’ really means. It’s a public mission.
Adam Morgan, author of Eat the Big Fish, discusses this concept frequently. His agency works with challenger brands to outpace the competition to become category leaders. One of his key pieces of advice is to give the brand a goal to shoot for.
We must start thinking about purpose in this way. It’s an emotional, creative idea that forces us to be consistent while giving us an unfair advantage to show up in culture and earn attention.
Elf Beauty is a great example of this. It isn’t necessarily paying back to society in a CSR way (although it does), but it decided that its brand purpose was to make beauty for everyone. This, and how it has achieved 25 quarters of growth, is explained brilliantly on the recent episode of the Uncensored CMO podcast with Jon Evans.
This goal is visible in its ads, in its products, in how it shows up in PR and events. It’s an emotional and creative idea that brings its positioning to life. It’s simply proper marketing.
It’s not dissimilar to ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers.’ It is positioned as a brand that allows you to see (too simple? Good positioning is). This creative expression of its positioning is in its ads. And it shows up in culture when someone does something daft, presumably because they couldn’t see, like ordering a Murphy’s instead of a Guinness. It jumps on that with their line, or it stages those situations as stunts.
This isn’t a purpose; it’s a consistent expression of its positioning through a creative idea. Purpose is a version of this. A supposed mission the brand is on. It’s a clever way to make the idea more viral and emotional. Just look at all the awards Dove has won by doing this.
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Patron’s recent campaign efforts are a modern, powerful show of this definition of purpose and what it could do for the brand. It’s a fight against what tequila is and what the Tequila Regulatory Council (TRC) now stands for.
Patrón’s tequila has always been made from 100% Weber blue agave. Nothing else. However, the TRC allows tequila to have 1% of additives in it (usually flavors, caramels and sweeteners to mask nasty flavors created from shortcuts in the tequila process).
Patrón doesn’t have to do this. Its juice is delicious. So, it has been shouting about its additive-free tequila for a while, but this led to its stock being taken by the Mexican government at the border. The TRC does not want a tequila shouting about this; it undermines other tequilas loaded with additives.
Patron’s ‘purpose’ has always been to create proper tequila. It’s an amazing liquid and a great brand, which is why Bacardi bought it for $5.1bn.
Its new campaign (see top of page) is it doubling down on this idea.
It’s a great example of how a brand’s creative idea can be a mission (a purpose, if you may), which makes it more emotional and gives it an excuse to show up in places consistently and grab headlines like a good creative idea should do for a brand.
Sure, there’s no CSR related to this. So, it might not fall into some people’s definition of the P word and I expect to get some stuff thrown at me for even writing this.
But this is Patron clearly laying out what it is here to do and following through with that. It will wind up Mexico. Maybe more stock will get stopped at the border. Other tequila brands will move against it, but purpose isn’t a purpose until it costs you something.
So please, I beg you, if a marketer is yapping on about purpose and how powerful or terrible it is, stop them and ask what they mean by purpose. Share the good and the bad examples.
Because when it’s done right, as a consistent, emotional, creative idea that’s framed as a mission, I defy anyone to argue that it’s not just proper marketing.
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Andrew Tindall is a senior leader in the advertising industry and SVP of Global Partnerships at System1, where he champions creative effectiveness and evidence-based marketing. Known for his sharp thinking on out-of-home, emotional advertising, and brand growth, he’s become a go-to voice on how creativity and data can work together. With experience across major brands like Diageo and Bacardi, Andrew now helps global agencies and marketers make better ads that actually work, contributing regularly to panels, podcasts, and the occasional punchy LinkedIn rant.