To Purpose or not To Purpose.
We can maybe change the world, if we focus on what we can actually impact.
One of the hottest debates for the past few years in our very insular industry is to Purpose or not to Purpose. WARC's Lena Roland hosted a debate between two champions on both sides of what is effectively not really a binary issue, Thomas Kolster for Purpose, and Nick Asbury against it:
I recommend listening to the pod, it's unfortunately too short to come out with a substantive view on the topic, but it can be a good starting point to further explore both positions and realize that, as with 99% of things in life, the answer is closer to "it depends" than to "this is right and that is wrong".
Both have written and said a lot about this important topic, I haven't read it all but have followed their thinking for years, drawn to either side at different times like a kite in the wind. I've thought a lot about this topic myself, trying to deal with the conflict that seems to exist inside a lot of us working in Advertising and Marketing, the constant tension between wanting the World to be a better place and being a small cog in the unstoppable machine that is Capitalism. The truth of the matter is that I think both sides are right, they're just talking about different things and missing each other's point (to some degree). The one critical point they both agree on in the pod that is at the heart of this debate is what Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard decided to do. Instead of selling the company or going public, him and his family donated it to a trust designed to use Patagonia's profits to fight climate change. As Thomas points out, this decision is the nail in the coffin of the idea that the Shareholder Corporation model can accommodate Purpose and keep Shareholders happy at the same time. Time and time again we have seen corporations try to do both and learn the hard way that they're at odds, and guess what, money always wins.
What about all the amazing Advertising campaigns that have won hundreds of Advertising Awards in the last 10 years you say red in the face, don't they matter?!
This is the crux of the entire debate around Purpose. We massively misunderstand our role within the Marketing Mix and overestimate its impact on the World.
Our job is to promote products, services, and brands, not build them. We are the last step in a very long series of steps that have a much larger impact on the World and on Society than what we do. The Iceberg analogy could not be more appropriate here: we are but the tip of a very, very large system that operates in the darkness of a vast Ocean. Acknowledging that we have very little impact on what happens under the water is extremely hard and a massive hit to our very large collective ego, but it's also a crucial first step to redemption. Wanting to make the world a better place is something I've yearned for all my life, as have many of you, there's nothing wrong with that. The mistake we made was to believe that we could bring change by infusing Purpose in campaigns for Corporations that under the metaphorical waves act nothing but Purposefully.
Paying employees and contractors fair wages, ensuring there is no gender or racial discrimination in the workplace, using environmentally friendly manufacturing techniques, paying a fair amount of taxes, not designing products to be obsolete in two years, and the list goes on. These are things that have real, quantifiable and demonstrable impact on the World and on Society. Creating ads that highlight societal issues for brands that don't walk the walk is putting lipstick on a very ugly and polluting pig. It's the only thing we can control, I get it, but it doesn't make it any more impactful than posting an AI generated image of Rafah, as my friend Luca Vergano points out in his latest piece.
I suppose that I've come to be closer to Nick's position than I was when I also believed we could make a difference with our work. Painting the tip rainbow, green, or black is pointless if the rest of the giant Iceberg is not.
So where do we go from here? We take a serious look at what we truly have agency over as an industry. Representation in ads, who we spend media budgets with, ad fraud, data privacy, the impact of AI on our work and workforce, and much more. We do the work, the real and hard work, and we focus on what we can actually change. It probably won't win awards, but awards are rarely, if ever, a good reason to do something.