A recent opinion piece in The Guardian ruffled feathers in the industry after it pinned the advertising and marketing industry’s flirtations with and ultimately trivialisations of social justice movements—or more simply wokeness—as helping the far right grow in prominence among consumers. Here, Accenture Song’s Fabio Buresti, explains what purpose actually is and how brands can use it as a tool for growth.
Brand purpose hasn’t failed. It’s been hijacked.
What started as a serious strategic tool for growth, a way to give organisations clarity and creative momentum, has been diluted into a parade of virtue signalling and vague moral posturing. And now, as predictably as the backlash was inevitable, people are calling time on the whole concept.
For the record, purpose is a clear definition of the strategic north star that an organisation delivers on. The thing that informs everything: market position, differentiation, customer experience, internal culture. But like it or not, too many people think purpose is about social activism.
In The Guardian, Eugene Healey argued that the advertising industry’s flirtation with social good has “ultimately helped the far right”. That by commodifying activism and chasing progressive relevance, brands have disillusioned audiences and eroded trust. It’s a compelling read, and something that’s been on my mind for a long time.
Zoe Scaman makes a similar point in her piece “From Woke-Washing to Influence Architecture”, where she calls out brands for treating social impact like a seasonal trend, rather than building meaningful influence.
But purpose isn’t the villain here. The problem is the chronic misunderstanding of what purpose is. How an industry that is meant to be good with words got here, is beyond me. Marketing professionals sell language, craft narratives and sharpen positioning until it cuts through. And yet, somehow, they’ve managed to take perfectly good words and turned them into a dead weight for growth. Not through malice, but through overuse, and a chronic lack of strategic discipline. Nowhere is this clearer than the mess that’s been made of “purpose”.
Proper purpose isn’t about activism. It’s not a call to change the world. It’s a call to focus on what your brand contributes to the lives of real people, and how that contribution fuels growth. It’s a commercial tool, that reflects moral conviction. Strategy first. Meaningful always. Performative, never.
Michelle Klein, IAG’s Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, and the team at NRMA Insurance are taking the concept of “Help” and operationalising it across the business, from services, to innovation, to customer experiences. Becoming ‘A Help Company’ wasn’t plucked from thin air, it’s grounded in the parent company IAG’s purpose: To make your world a safer place. That’s not emotional fluff. That’s organisational design with commercial consequence: Growth.
IKEA has been purpose-driven since day one, even if they call it their vision: To create a better everyday life for the many people. I remember being at their global conference in Stockholm over a decade ago –it was the very first thing they talked about. Not a campaign line, and not social commentary; their purpose is a business strategy built on democratic design. It guides product development, store experience, pricing, logistics. It’s a purpose built for scale, not sanctimony.
Telstra gets it. Right up top in the annual report, before the numbers, there it is: To build a connected future so everyone can thrive. Not just a line, but a lever. It’s the kind of purpose that sets a high bar and then dares the business to meet it. It demands better networks, smarter tech, and services that don’t just work, they work for people. It’s not about sentiment, it’s about standards. And when you bake that into your operations, not just your comms, that’s when purpose earns its place on the balance sheet.
The issue is not brand purpose. It’s brand performance, purpose used as campaign paint rather than strategic architecture. And yes, when brands wander into social commentary with no right or credibility, they deserve the eyerolls. But the answer isn’t to abandon purpose. It’s to use it properly.
Real purpose isn’t designed to win applause or please keyboard warriors. It’s designed to make businesses coherent, distinctive, and growth ready. It aligns teams, fuels innovation, and unlocks powerful creativity for growth, if you treat it as strategy, not sentiment.
So, let’s stop blaming purpose for sins it didn’t commit. Let’s blame the vague thinking, the marketing-led misinterpretations, and the performative nonsense that buried its true value.
Purpose is one of the most powerful tools in strategy, and it’s time for the c-suite to re-evaluate what it means and take control of it. It’s not a tagline; it’s a growth engine. A clarity machine. A cultural anchor. A creative unlock.
The best leaders won’t just nod to purpose, they’ll drive it, fund it, and build around it. They’ll use it to cut through noise and accelerate everything that matters. The organisations that win, won’t just say they have a purpose, they’ll be the ones leading with it.
