FMCG or fast moving consumer goods sprang out of the mass industrialisation. Brands sprang up originally as a guarantee of quality. Later on as these brands needed to be promoted, we saw the foundation of the what we think of as modern marketing and advertising.
Today media and entertainment takes up an increasing amount of the household spend, as does housing, but FMCGs are a crucial part of their essential and disposable income spend.
They have nostalgia wrapped up in them, distinctive aromas, taste and packaging designs. From the smell of my Granny using so much Pledge on the TV that I was surprised it didn’t burst into flame to the taste of Cidona and texture of Boland’s Fig Roll biscuits in my mouth.
The sound of their advertising jingles was the soundtrack of my childhood. Digital advertising is largely rationale, it lacks the fluent devices that provide the centre to advertising and made FMCG advertising iconic. Fluent devices like the Peperami ‘Animal’, the M&M characters or the Cadbury Smash robots were embedded in deep marketing research. FMCG brands still sponsor the best research in marketing science.
I had the good fortune to work inhouse at Unilever and agency-side for their brands. I also managed to work on Coca-Cola and Colgate during my time in Hong Kong.
China’s Diaspora Policy under Xi Jinping – Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik – China estimates the number of people of Chinese origin outside the People’s Republic to be 60 million. Beijing considers them all to be nationals of China, regardless of their citizenship. Xi Jinping views overseas Chinese as playing an “irreplaceable role” in China’s rise as a world power. Beijing is working hard to harness overseas Chinese resources for its own goals in the fields of economics, science and technology, as well as diplomacy and soft power. Beijing also expects people of Chinese origin in Germany to deepen relations between China and Germany. But not only that: As “unofficial ambassadors”, they are also expected to spread China’s narratives to the German public, defend China’s “core interests”, and help with the transfer of knowledge and technology to China. – This explains foreign police stations to ‘help the Chinese diaspora and considers Singapore to be a ‘Chinese state’. To realise how ridiculous this sounds, imagine Ireland berating the United States for not towing the line because it is an Irish state. I was surprised at the relatively small size of the Chinese diaspora at only 60 million, Ireland claims 70 million people of Irish descent. And that’s even allowing for the fact that the Irish minority in mainland Britain is declining in number due to an ageing community. If you want to know more about the government of China and its efforts to influence the Chinese diaspora, I can recommend reading Hamilton & Ohlberg’s – The Hidden Hand.
It’s hard to believe that fast food restaurants were innovative 40 years ago. McDonald’s haven’t changed their tray designs at all. The idea of it being fast and clean doesn’t feel so fast or clean now given the small of the restaurant and greasy stainless steel counter sides.
Magic: The Slathering | Financial Times“We are downgrading Hasbro to Underperform after conducting a deep dive on the company’s Magic: The Gathering business. Hasbro is overproducing Magic cards which has propped up recent results but is destroying the long-term value of the brand. Card prices are falling, game stores are losing money, collectors are liquidating and large retailers are cutting orders.”
In 2020 Forbes magazine described Yeezy’s rise as “one of the great retail stories of the century”. Yeezy influenced and inspired a multitude of other fashion brands. Kanye West and the Yeezy brand has been a phenomenal power in street wear. West collaborated with BAPE early on his career and Yeezy took off with the famous Nike collaboration output: Air Yeezy sneakers. Adidas reached out to West, after
Adidas has a plan to sell Yeezy sneakers without Ye – Because the company owns the designs it made with Ye, it can—and it probably will—sell the shoes, chief financial officer (and interim CEO until Dec. 31) Harm Ohlmeyer said on the company’s Nov. 9 earnings call. – They can’t use the Yeezy name though. Given that Yeezy is responsible for up to 40 percent of adidas properties according to some sources, this could end up being the best of both worlds for adidas. Kanye West was unhappy for a long time with the adidas deal, so unlikely to complain, and he may yet be able to use the Yeezy brand with another sneaker maker, for instance in China.
Opinion | How China Lost America – The New York Times – interesting piece by Thomas Friedman – the big take out for me is that China thinkers don’t realise that Xi Jinping doesn’t care due to his Marxist dialectic world view. Read also: The Return of Red China: Xi Jinping Brings Back Marxism – China is now breaking from decades of political, economic, and foreign-policy pragmatism and accommodationism. Xi’s China is assertive. He is less subtle than his predecessors, and his ideological blueprint for the future is now hiding in plain sight. The question for all is whether his plans will prevail or generate their own political antibodies, both at home and abroad, that begin to actively resist Xi’s vision for China and the world. But then again, as a practicing Marxist dialectician, Xi Jinping is probably already anticipating that response—and preparing whatever countermeasures may then be warranted – Kevin Rudd on China
Consumer behaviour
PR emails: I said yes to every single one for a day. Oof. | Slate – Could it be possible that the publicists are on to something? Is the daily flood of hopeless pitches actually a secret window into American ingenuity, optimism, and desperation—not to mention a very interesting line of scientifically tested sex toys?
Really interesting commentary on how Adidas designed the mesh used in the 4DFWD running shoe that provides a similar energy transfer to the carbon fibre shank in Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% shoes that completely changed long distance running
Great video on how additive manufacturing’s unique properties can result in innovation. This heat exchange was printed from laser sintered aluminium alloy powder. The weight savings and increased thermal efficiency figures claimed are very impressive. The problem is using this technology at scale, or will it be niche like carbon fibre fabrication is now?
Some machines combine CNC milling machines with additive manufacturing capability, this hybrid expertise makes a lot of sense.
The US used shell companies during the Cold War to secure titanium from Russia. Now it seems that Russia has done similar things with electronics components for its smart weapons obtained from US manufacturers.
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, legal theorist and political theorist. The common narrative around him is that he came up with the legal principles that justified most of Nazi Germany’s greatest excesses. His work has also been used to justify the Xi-era legal system in China with legal thinking leaning heavily on the work that Carl Schmitt did. But there is more to the Schmitt story than that.
Conservative state theory
While the current Communist Party of China thinkers see Schmitt as a like mind, the German legal system and Schmitt’s legal system would have appealed to China from the founding of modern China with the monarchy being deposed, through warlord era though to the leadership of the Kuomintang. Germany had consolidated into a modern nation and built an empire in a relatively short space of time thanks to its legal system and a conservative state theory.
Cautionary tale of the Weimar Republic
Post World War One, the Weimar Republic put checks and balances on the government through the courts, which was seen as a negative given the relative performance of the country. Into this political change came Carl Schmitt. Ryan Mitchell does a good job at bringing Carl Schmitt’s story to life and talk through his relevance to China through the years.
Moving forward to Xi-era China, the Weimar Republic that Carl Schmitt lived in looks like a living nightmare in the the same way that German Empire looked like an exemplar. Secondly, socialism didn’t provide an appropriate legal system for Communist China, so they adapted the German system that the Kuomintang had used previously with Chinese socialist characteristics that Hitler would have approved of.
Carl Schmitt comes across as a more complex figure than he has been recently portrayed.
Consumer behaviour
How to make friends as an adult | The Face – really interesting that The Face felt that they had to write this article. I made some of my long term friends in London during my late 20s and early 30s. Many of the readers will also have friends from college or university as well. It implies that they aren’t socialising at house parties, going to concerts, club nights or bars. Work also seems to be a spartan supply of friendships.
HSBC strains reach breaking point | Financial Times – Last week, a row between HSBC and its largest shareholder, Chinese insurance group Ping An, spilled into the public arena after Michael Huang, chair of the insurer’s asset management unit, told the Financial Times the bank should break itself up and be “far more aggressive” in its cost-cutting. The extraordinary dust-up, brewing in private for several years, according to people close to the bank, first came to light in the spring when it emerged that Ping An had told HSBC management they should pursue a break-up. HSBC has largely sat on its hands in the interim, fuelling growing frustration at Ping An. “The global finance model that once dominated and shaped the global financial industry in the last century is no longer competitive,” Huang told the Financial Times. “Just divesting a few small markets or businesses” would not be enough to address the challenges. He urged the bank to “adopt an open attitude by studying the relevant suggestions carefully and prudently [ . . .] rather than attempting to simply bypass and reject them”. Ouch
Ireland
‘There’s not many left now’: census shines spotlight on Britain’s dwindling Irish community | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian – The Irish came in waves that started in the 19th century and continued through the Great Depression, the post-war boom, the swinging 60s, the Thatcher era and into the 21st century, one of the great migrations. Many were unskilled labourers, or navvies; others were plumbers, teachers, nurses, dentists, writers and entertainers. Some became famous – Oscar Wilde, Fiona Shaw, Graham Norton – or had children who became famous – Shane MacGowan, Morrissey, Piers Morgan. However, last week brought confirmation that the Irish community, for so long Britain’s biggest source of immigration, is withering. Census figures showed the number of Irish-born people living in England and Wales last year numbered 324,670, a fall of 80,000, or 20%, from a decade ago, when they numbered 407,357. The UK’s Office for National Statistics says this is a long-term trend that started in 1961, when the Irish-born population peaked at 683,000, more than double the current number. Once the biggest group of those born outside the UK, the Irish are now fifth behind India, Poland, Pakistan and Romania
The relationship between word count and engagement | Chartbeat Blog – Our analysis shows that up to almost 4,000 words, the longer article, the more engaging it will be. If your articles are falling short of the benchmarks we’ve shared, a real-time optimization tool like our Heads Up Display can show you how far readers are scrolling and give you an opportunity to make changes at the point of exit. Beyond 4,000 words, variability in engaged time grows, but that doesn’t mean there’s a ceiling. As we see with our year-end list of the most engaging stories, unique topics can require more depth than daily reporting. This doesn’t mean you should shy away from covering them. It just means you’ll need to devote more attention to optimizing these pages for engaged time.
Airbnb Says Its Focus on Brand Marketing Instead of Search Is Working – WSJ – Airbnb Inc. said its strategy of slashing advertising spending, investing in brand marketing and lessening its reliance on search-engine marketing is continuing to pay off. Its marketing spending is now low enough that it doesn’t anticipate drastic reductions even if economic headwinds worsen next year, it said.– some really interesting feedback that implies Google has lost its position as the front door of the web despite dominance in both mobile and desktop browsers
Apple’s hope for record quarterly sales damped by Zhengzhou restrictions – Apple continues to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models, and expects lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than previously anticipated, adding that customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products. Apple said it is working closely with our supplier to return to normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker. According to Barclays’ research notes, the COVID outbreak in Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant, which accounts for 70% of worldwide iPhone production, is estimated to affect the output of 10-12 million iPhone Pro models for the fourth quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank Securities said in a research note that according to Apple’s 10-K document filed on October 28, the company had manufacturing purchase obligations of US$71.1 billion for the third quarter, up 65% annually and 30% quarterly – a sign leading Deutsche Bank Securities to believe that Apple forecasts better iPhone growth than last year. Manufacturing purchase obligations represent non-cancelable purchase orders of components ahead of unit sales and typically covers periods up to 150 days
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism have an interesting article on Indian hackers who work in the ‘hack-for-hire’ industry: Inside The Global Hack-For-Hire Industry. Indian hackers are typically used because their clients are unlikely to be prosecuted under their home country laws like the UK Computer Misuse Act. Indian hackers have gone after British journalists, businesses, NGOs and even politicians. Jay Solomon, a former journalist with the Wall Street Journal accused a US legal firm of using Indian hackers to steal emails between him and one of his sources. This was bundled up in a dossier used by the law firm to get Solomon fired from his job as a journalist.
Business technology origins of blackhat hacking services
India is known for its enterprise technology work. Most bank computing systems and telecoms billing systems in the UK are managed by Indian technologists out of India. The Indian hacker for hire business sprang out of a company called Appin that looked to sell clients services to help secure those services. Other companies engaged in cybersecurity for corporate clients also provide Indian hackers and tools for offensive computer work. Ethical hacking at the firm was the main business, but a lucrative sideline was blackout Indian hackers working for the highest bidder.
Favourable environment
Presumably the same factors that favour software programming and technology services in India also favour these blackhat Indian hackers:
Plentiful volume of talented software engineers
Relatively low cost compared to their counterparts elsewhere
Global connections via a diaspora for firms providing Indian hackers for hire
Lax or loosely enforced regulations
‘Clusters’ of talent similar to the US Silicon Valley, notably Gurugram
It’s interesting that much of the demand for Indian hackers has come from the Gulf states. Indian hackers have also worked on behalf of foreign governments including Cambodia, Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey – all of this government work was carried out with the approval and sometimes behest of the Indian government. Indian hackers working for Pakistan, with Indian government approval! For western corporate intelligence employees, who are clients of these firms, they’ve done foolish things like endorse the Indian hackers and their firms on LinkedIn.
China Gender Law: Country Tells Women to ‘Respect Family Values’ – Bloomberg – An amendment to the Women’s Rights and Interests Protection Law passed by the nation’s top legislative body on Sunday introduced a list of moral standards for women to observe. …“China is attempting to use laws to regulate and discipline women,” said Xiaowen Liang, a New York-based feminist and lawyer. “Why do you only need women to observe family values? What kind of family values are we talking about? These are very vague ideas.” – inching towards A Handmaiden’s Tale with Chinese socialist characteristics
Biden froze out China’s ambassador. He may regret that. – POLITICO – A Washington, D.C.-based diplomat familiar with Qin’s relations with the administration said Beijing’s apparent unresponsiveness to Qin fueled skepticism about his influence back home. “There were one or two issues where the U.S. wanted his help on some things, but he just wasn’t able to do it — he didn’t seem to be totally in the loop,” the diplomat said, declining to name the issues… “Somebody got this wrong in our system — either [Qin] was more influential than we appreciated and we should have known that or he somehow snuck onto the Central Committee without us understanding that was possible,” said the former administration official. “But either way, if we’d known what we know now, we probably would have operated a bit differently and put in a little bit more energy in trying to build some trust with him.” – To be fair to the Biden Administration, I think lots of people in the PRC system were also surprised with Qin’s selection for the Central Committee and likely promotion to be Foreign Minister. And even they thought it might happen, would being nicer to him change any of the fundamental policies? And how could they have managed the optics of giving Qin more access to US officials than Amb. Burns gets to PRC officials?
Coronavirus: Hong Kong allows restaurants and bars to stay open all night, but step ‘too little, too late’, industry leaders warn | South China Morning Post – Residents have grown used to eating dinner earlier and cooking at home during the pandemic, industry leaders say. If this habit sticks it has negative implications for food services and entertainment, but positive opportunities for FMCG, food delivery and media sectors. When I lived in Hong Kong, one thing that I noticed was the ‘insomniac’ nature of the city with late night restaurants and take-outs together with late night mall shopping all of which added to the city’s ‘Blade Runner’ vibe
China stops publishing data metrics of vast domestic apps market amid declining internet service revenue, faltering economy | South China Morning Post – The Chinese government has stopped reporting data metrics of domestic apps for the last three months without explanation, which makes it difficult for outside analysts to assess the health of this industry in the world’s largest internet and smartphone market. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), one of the government agencies responsible for regulating apps, started omitting this market segment’s data metrics from its monthly reports from July, according to the latest information on its website
Everything you need to know about Spam — Quartz Weekly Obsession — Quartz – “Spam became iconic in Asia because it was a taste of America without being in America. It’s like drinking Coke. While you can’t afford to travel to America, you can eat and drink America or enjoy a little piece of America in your life.” — Ayalla Ruvio, consumer behavior researcher and professor in the department of marketing at Michigan State University
Germany
Business As Usual: German Companies Ignore Major Risks in China – DER SPIEGEL – The doctrine of “transformation through trade,” to which Germany adhered for decades, was exposed as an illusion by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a truth that even Germany’s president accepts. “We must become less vulnerable and reduce one-sided dependencies,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier told public broadcaster ARD, “and that applies to China in particular.”Germany has seen trade with the People’s Republic quadruple since 2005, but during that same period, China has developed into a full-blown dictatorship. The West’s hopes for further market-economy reforms have been dashed. President Xi Jinping, who had his power cemented last week at the 20th Party Congress, is fully committed to a state-controlled economy. “Henceforth: Marx gets precedence over the markets,” says Jörg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China – worthwhile reading in conjunction with: We don’t want to decouple from China, but can’t be overreliant – POLITICO – this op-ed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz is embarrassing
For senior marketers who came up with a Jack Welsh influenced shareholder value focus, brand purpose was a seductive concept for otherwise empty and meaningless careers that could even be considered ‘bullshit jobs‘. Brand purpose campaigns are not coming from the need of consumers mostly but from the desire of marketeers to do something good of their day, of achieving something more than just selling a humdrum product.
In essence it is the same drive that motivated the apochrical question from Steve Jobs to future Apple CEO John Sculley
Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?
John Sculley recalling Steve Jobs pitch on a documentary profile of Jobs that was part of the Bloomberg Game Changers series.
In recent years over 90 percent of Cannes Lions winners were found to focus on brand purpose. In 2016, the Singapore office of advertising agency Grey created a fake brand purpose campaign for Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) designed to dupe consumers and award judges. The I Sea app was supposed to crowdsource help to spot refugees, but it was built on fake data.
Brand promise
Historically the focus has been on the brand promise – the idea of what a consumer can expect from the product or service. An example of this would be First Direct – a branchless bank providing its services by telephone and internet instead. It is a retail bank division of HSBC that was founded back in 1989.
Brand purpose, goes way beyond brand promise and is is the brand’s reason for being beyond making money, sales or profit – it’s a framework that guides business decisions and thought processes. A brand purpose is supposed to connect with consumers at a more emotional level. It is why the brand exists and should guide the brand’s mission that differentiates it from others.
By 2014 you had marketing royalty like David Aaker endorsing brand purpose, or as he called it Higher Purpose. It was further popularised in management by the 2017 publication of The Guiding Purpose Strategy: A Navigational Code for Growth is a book by Markus Kramer and Tofig Huseynzade. Kramer and Huseynzade looked at purpose at an organisational level and how it should be brought to life through brand management.
Corporate and social responsibility (CSR) is not brand purpose
It is distinct from earlier concepts like CSR or corporate responsibility as US organisations often prefer to say. The easiest way to demonstrate this is by example. One of my first clients was Verizon Wireless the US mobile carrier. They used to donate pre-used cellphones, together with free services to charitable organisations like women’s shelters in the New Jersey area where they were headquartered. While they meant well, this clearly wasn’t the key focus of their business, but did make use of edge effects brought about by customers upgrading their phones.
I helped them template this activity in markets were they had an international presence at the time:
Czech Republic
Greece
Indonesia
Italy
Mexico
Slovakia
The role of CSR can be for many reasons:
Being a good corporate citizen
Being closer to the community to better understand the environment
The act as a counterweight to negate negative effects of having the business in the area. A classic example of this would be education and health clinics for communities where there is oil drilling
Is brand purpose effective?
We know that purpose lead marketing is 30% less effective than non purpose campaigns according to Peter Field, so purpose shouldn’t be seen as a money making decision. In fact, being prepared to forgo money if necessary is a hygiene factor in a brad purpose. Ethical behaviour won’t necessarily generate revenue.
Brand purpose is most likely to demonstrate effectiveness internally, where it can get people to do more for a company they believe in and matches a set of internalised values. Internal altruism and work life are aligned – they aren’t working in a bullshit job.
Risk management
Business risk management has a number of challenges with brand purpose. The moral challenges and perceived required speed of reaction poses problems for brand purpose risk.
Glocal nature of purpose
There have been a procession of (foreign) multinational companies that have committed costly perceived slights in China. Western businesses such as Nike have generally erred on the side of a Chinese brand purpose for profit and a perceived lower risk of reaction from western customers. For example Nike Withdraws Products After Brand Partner Vexed China for Supporting HK | Jing Daily or how western brands responded to China’s Xinjiang boycotts including concealing past corporate statements or flip-flopping like Fila, H&M and Hugo Boss.
TL;DR – brands are most afraid of offending: Chinese consumers > western consumers > developing world consumers – though this may change with de-globalisation.
Bringing a knife to a gun flight
The Unilever board have been pummelled by shareholder reactions to its brand purpose driven approach
Unilever seems to be labouring under the weight of a management which is obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business. The most obvious manifestation of this is the public spat it has become embroiled in over the refusal to supply Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the West Bank. However, we think there are far more ludicrous examples which illustrate the problem. A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot. The Hellmann’s brand has existed since 1913 so we would guess that by now consumers have figured out its purpose (spoiler alert — salads and sandwiches).
Fundsmith is one of the top ten largest shareholders in Unilever at the time. This then set the tone for activist investor Nelson Peltz to secure a seat on the company board
Having a position
Having a position is a risk in itself. Some brands notably Dunkin Donuts Refuses to Get Woke: ‘We Are Not Starbucks’ just focus on their brand promise. They keep consumer expectations realistically low. Contrast this with Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s who took a position on the Palestine question and the invasion of Ukraine. In the case of Israel, Ben & Jerry’s independent board has taken Unilever to court over an attempt to stop sales inside Israel.
Purposeful consumer behaviour
Consumers generally have good intentions. They mostly consider themselves charitable, an example of the Lake Wobegon effect named after the fictional town featured on the US radio show A Prairie Home Companion. In reality, only 20-25 percent of consumers donate to charity. Consumers green tendencies seem to vary with the state of economy according to longitudinal research conducted by Gallup, regardless of their generation. Price is still the key consideration for consumers, but brand purpose can increased the perceived benefit for a consumer when considering similarly priced products.
Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Garrison Keillor
Purpose is perceived as being of key importance to consumers because of misinterpretation of of market research and poor research design such as making a false association between the correlation of successful brands and assuming purpose as the causality.
Consumers don’t think every issue have the same weight, they are likely to feel more personally connected to health, economic and societal issues. Political, business or legal issues of brand companies are considered to be ‘hygiene’ factors.
Purpose-washing
One of the key challenges with brand purpose is that many brands have approached in a superficial manner at best. Superficiality might be one of perspective, for instance, Nike supported Colin Kaepernick and other progressive causes, but also funded right-wing Republican Party politicians. Progressive leaning consumers may feel betrayed or gaslit.
Les Binet of Adam and Eve outlined a good test of brand purpose
Purpose bullshit detector. Ok, you have a brilliant new purpose drive marketing initiative.
1) Would you still do it if you couldn’t publicise it?
2) Would you still do it if reduced your long term profits?
If the answer to either question is no, then it’s not purpose driven.
Purpose-washing isn’t new and can see its roots in the ‘greenwashing’ of the mid-1980s where companies claimed ‘green behaviours’ that were designed to cut costs, or create the illusion of caring for the environment.
Brand purpose examples
Brand purpose examples become difficult. Patagonia would be amongst the first brands that would be used as an example. It’s an unusual company that inspired other brands like Warby Parker and Toms. Things start to fall down when you look at large corporates.
PepsiCo tried to pivot towards nutrition as a brand strategy and purpose focus in the early 2010s under then CEO Indra Nooyi, yet still relies on sugar filled drinks for its business.
I worked at Unilever on Family Brands, what people in the UK would know as Flora margarine, when the company mandated that every brand had to ‘find its brand purpose’. Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ success sparked a change over at Unilever.
Dove’s brand vision / purpose is interesting because it came out of a consumer insight. After surveying 3,000 women across 10 countries the brand team found only 4% considered themselves beautiful. Further research found that a majority of girls had anxiety about how they looked.
We believe beauty should be a source of confidence, and not anxiety. That’s why we are here to help women everywhere develop a positive relationship with the way they look, helping them raise their self-esteem and realise their full potential.
Note that while Dove has a successful men’s range of products, men and boys self esteem or confidence isn’t a concern of Dove’s brand purpose despite academic research suggesting similar issues.
Then CEO Paul Polman focused Unilever on its Sustainable Living Plan and brand purpose was at the centre of it.
Those that didn’t have one were to be sold off. We focused the flora relaunch around being ‘Powered by Plants’. The reality is that I was working on a product known by different brands in much of the 23 or so countries that it was sold in. In the UK, there was the health aspects of Flora versus butter and the vegan credentials. In Kenya and other parts of Africa it was about nutrition for children in the family and the superior shelf life compared to butter. Despite its brand purpose, yellow fats were perceived to be a lower growth sector and the business spun off to Upfield. Money trumped purpose, although Polman has continued to advocate for a change in business practices with his book Net Positive.
Unilever has stumbled with its brand purpose focus, being too focused on it for active investors and insufficiently focused on it in the eyes of other stakeholders, including company insiders.
The pharmaceutical industry is beset with conflicting views regarding brand purpose. The companies will view their products has having a live changing or life saving brand purpose, where as external views will be more concerned about predatory pricing and the non-inclusive access that is a side effect. For instance, one in five people with diabetes in the US have rationed their insulin usage due to high costs.
Secondly you had lifestyle medicines, notably Pfizer’s Viagra, but still no breakthrough AIDS vaccine. Finally there was the exploitative nature of Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson providing opioids for pain relief that drove a crisis in addiction.
Many commentators would cite Nike but the examples are problematic:
Their FlyEase design approach that enables disabled people to participate in sports, is a great example of accessible design. But disabled customers have found them hard to obtain as they flew off the shelf. Accessible design benefits able-bodied consumers too
Plus size activewear could be just about capitalising on the obesity epidemic, rather than truly inclusive sports participation
Supporting Colin Kaepernick and taking the knee for racial justice is at odds with other Nike behaviours including the nature of their supply chain. While anti-sweatshop campaign dented Nike’s reputation in the 1990s, it still has appalling labour conditions today.
Brand purpose thinking from academia and the advertising industry
Articles like this one in AdAge have helped to drive the brand purpose movement: Gen Z doesn’t want to buy your brand, they want to join it | AdAge – This group isn’t waiting for brands to lead on issues. Instead, they’re leading. Since movements rarely come with a business case or cost-benefit analysis, marketers must consider how they can partner with Gen Z to become more involved and deliver on the promise of purpose (paywall)
Brands take note: The purpose of purpose is purpose – Most of the data used to support the case for brand purpose is verbal, spoken data which lays itself open to the ‘intention-action gap’ that exists between what people say they will do and what actually transpires. That gap is particularly large with topics like brand purpose because social desirability bias leads respondents to, knowingly or unknowingly, overclaim the importance of purpose in their purchase decisions in order to look less like a wanker. But there is a bigger, more pressing question now being asked of brand purpose. As we enter a recession, we know – from bitter past experience – that customers will change their behaviour in the tricky months ahead. In May, Kantar was already showing a significant proportion of the market (albeit, again, with spoken rather than derived data) switching to lower priced options. Such moves are not a uniform downgrade of every brand for a cheaper alternative. In order to justify the continued purchase of some premium brands that are deemed different and meaningful enough to retain their place, customers trade down on weaker, less essential fare – Mark Ritson takes a pragmatic view on brand purpose in this Marketing Week op-ed. Meanwhile Byron Sharp over at the Ehrensberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science has even greater concern about brand purpose: Purpose could be ‘the death of brands’, warns Byron Sharp
The Future of Purpose – TrendWatching – Trendwatching’s take fits in with Richard Shotton’s view …in 2020, consumers will embrace businesses that BREAK the CODE of the brand DNA or their entire industry in the name of a more ethical or sustainable consumerism.
Think a superband that doesn’t tour, a fashion magazine with no photoshoots, or an airline that tells passengers to fly less (see innovation examples below).
Yes, this is a highly actionable trend, and a tactical chance to prove to consumers that you really get the scale of the challenge ahead. But it’s being driven by deep shifts in the nature of status, innovation and transparency…
Unconsumed Status. Status has always been a key driver of consumption behaviors. But via rising awareness of social and environmental damages, the nature of consumer status is changing radically. That means rising numbers fulfilling their status quest by seeking out new brands and new modes of consumption that reimagine, or even invert, old attitudes and priorities.
Clean Slate Mindset. Today, purpose-driven insurgents can become mega-brands that shake the mainstream faster than ever. Tesla is rewriting the rules of automotive; Impossible Burger those of meat. That’s driving expectations across all industries that legacy codes can and must be rewritten in the name of a better consumerism.
