Rather than the faux-purpose fluff that clings to social activism, Fabio Buresti, managing director, design & digital products lead, ANZ at Accenture Song, writes that there’s a need for a rethink of corporate purpose in the face of AI.
AI isn’t coming, it’s already on the job for us, integrated into every corner of business. But without Liquid Purpose, AI will scale confusion, amplify noise and turbo-charge strategy drift.
Organisational purpose has been static for too long. Corporate wallpaper hung on the office wall, parroted at town halls, then sidelined by Wednesday.
Strategy? Alignment theatre: craft the deck, collect the polite nods, then lob it over the fence to execution and pray for alignment. Meanwhile, your client’s next fire drill, the inevitable budget haircut or the arrival of a new CEO turns your masterplan into yesterday’s scrap paper.
As strategists, we’ve chased one elusive prize: embedding belief so deeply it survives leadership coups and austerity drives, nudging every customer touchpoint and employee action long after we’ve packed up.
Well, buckle up. For members of the C-Suite with vision and strategists with conviction, AI just handed us the tool to do exactly that. Welcome to the era of Liquid Purpose, where we codify strategic intent into the very parameters that govern AI behaviour.
And I’m not talking about that faux-purpose fluff that clings to social activism; this is the hard-nosed, revenue-driving engine that powers product roadmaps, engineers customer experiences and galvanises culture from the ground up.
But we can’t be lazy: AI isn’t a magic wand you wave over your brand guidelines. It demands a strategic playbook. One that goes beyond slapping logos into every app or sprinkling surface-level personality traits across every touchpoint.
AI calls for one thing: Liquid Purpose – distilled, codified and plumbed into every decision-making loop.
The opportunity is to make purpose truly liquid by coding it into the dataset that forms the DNA of your AI – which inherits whatever belief system the data teaches them. Which means purpose isn’t a statement, it’s a training set. And it needs to be curated, not set-and-forget. When done right, your AI will translate belief into behavioural logic, channel values into design constraints and shape fluid experiences, not just messages.
Imagine a travel business promising to “provoke cultural connections”. Through Liquid Purpose, rather than queuing up another gallery of sunset selfies, AI will curate local under-the-radar guides, and nudge every moment, loyalty mechanic and chatbot to ensure they are taking travellers deeper into local culture, not just padding the margins. That’s purpose made liquid.
Liquid Purpose doesn’t stop at customer touchpoints. It pulses through your entire ecosystem. Your MarTech stack, email automations, chatbots and even internal workflows. AI-powered service doesn’t just close tickets; it embodies your strategic intent, flagging off-tone content, suggesting sharper alignment and performing brand behaviours at scale, in real time, across every channel.
This isn’t about polishing clever copy. It’s about erecting an infrastructure of meaning that carries conviction into every interaction. Because scale need not dilute meaning; when designed correctly, it sharpens it.
AI isn’t here to conjure purpose out of thin air, that’s like expecting a toaster to invent breakfast. Defining purpose remains a distinctly human job. AI is here to pour it through your systems with surgical precision. And if you haven’t done this? AI, and whoever is orchestrating it, will widen the gap between your purpose and the customer experience.
This isn’t just a call to arms for strategists and CEOs.
The entire C-Suite must shift from treating purpose as a “North Star” in theory to embedding it in every AI-driven workflow. It’s time to invest in hybrid talent, strategists who understand both purpose and AI systems, while building multidisciplinary teams (strategy, design, data, engineering) to translate purpose into code and continuously refine parameters.
Critically, they need to elevate purpose metrics alongside financial KPIs in executive dashboards and hold AI-product owners accountable not only for technical performance but for alignment to purpose.
C-Suite leaders who embrace this approach will not only safeguard their strategic vision against the next budget cut or leadership change but will also unlock new levels of customer loyalty, employee engagement and sustained growth.
Strategy is the antidote to AI chaos – infusing purpose into every AI data point and harmonising each action to its intent.
The strategist of tomorrow isn’t a deck builder with a two-week runway, they’re purpose-led design thinkers, masters of system alchemy, orchestrators of agents, data champions and architects of Liquid Purpose.
Because if your purpose isn’t liquid, it can’t be experienced. And if it can’t be experienced, it simply doesn’t exist.
