Home truths on purpose

(Or why you can’t talk about the good you purport to do until you’ve disclosed the harm you do)

Transcript of a keynote speech given to the PRCA International Summit on 23 March by Stuart Lambert, co-founder

Brand is Purpose. That’s my starting point for you today.

And Purpose and ESG – Environment, Social and Governance – are two sides of the same coin. And today I'm going to explain why.

Let's start with some basic principles.

It's 55 years since Philip Kotler, widely considered the father of modern marketing, first published his groundbreaking textbook Marketing Management, which has become the most influential marketing textbook in the world and which asserted that "a brand is the company’s promise to deliver a specific benefit that addresses a particular need of its customers". 

That hasn't changed. That will never change.

And yet it HAS changed. Everything has changed.

Let me explain.

What has changed is the world in which any brand operates. The world has become more challenging, more worrisome, more globally interconnected - and more self-aware about all these things.

And in that world it is quite simply no longer tenable for ANY company to ONLY, in Kotler’s words, “meet a need for its customer”. That transactional relationship is gone. It's dead.

Lest anyone here today question this statement, let me be blunt. According to the IPCC report published just three weeks ago, the climate crisis is worse – much worse – than even scientists dreaded. The world is heading for a breach not only of the 1.5 degree warming pathway that it has committed to achieve, but of the 2 degree pathway that begins to spell absolute disaster.

We’re talking swathes of the planet becoming uninhabitable within our children’s lifetimes.

So everything now is urgent.

Urgency is the new normal. From the impassioned invective of Greta Thunberg to climate activists' demand for “action, now,” it feels as if we live – it feels as if we work, as advisors to our clients - in the heat of the moment.

Yet here’s an insight to remember. When it comes to the climate, there is no such thing as the heat of the moment, only the heat of the past.

We live now with the consequences not actually of 'our' actions but of those of our forbears. The generations who went before us, who burned the fossilised remnants of prehistoric plants continually and increasingly over the last two hundred years. It’s the carbon accumulated over those centuries that has driven up temperatures.

Similarly, OUR actions will not determine how WE live, but whether our descendants CAN do so.

That insight is vital, because it means we have a responsibility graver than we might realise.

We are fighting not for the present, but for the future.

This is the ENVIRONMENTAL reality in which every PURPOSE surely exists, whether you like it or not. Because companies and their actions - purposeful or not - do not exist in a world somehow detached from that reality.

And the environmental crisis is only one urgent reality we face. Social justice. Diversity, equity and inclusion. Human rights. The clash of values between east and west, global north and global south.

The struggle for peace.

The world is fraught, and our actions will shape the world our children inherit.

I know I look at my kids every day and am reminded of that reality.

Companies and their actions - purposeful or not - do not exist in a world somehow detached from that reality.

The communication and marketing we undertake for those companies, our clients, does not exist in a world detached from that reality.

And the blunt truth for us as communications advisers is this: You can't communicate your way out of a problem you behaved yourself into.

We need to behave differently. Corporations – clients – need to behave differently.

And people – consumers – need to behave differently.

We need behaviour change, at scale.

But achieving the kind of change we need is hard. I believe with all my heart that it begins with Purpose. And then, as we shall see later, it requires a spirit of positivity and optimism and hope. We’ll come on to that.

But first, beginning with Purpose.

What is Purpose?

Let’s immediately acknowledge that there is a lot of nonsense and jargon spoken about Purpose. That makes it easily dismissed as woke-ism.

To do so is a mistake. A mistake that, like denying the climate crisis, looks increasingly silly and which will ultimately be self-defeating.

Purpose is, quite simply, a recognition that you the company, the brand, do not exist in a vacuum. That you are a component of society. That you have a civic responsibility, just like every single individual citizen consumer you sell to and employ.

That you have a choice: to either make our future better, or not.

Now, “better” can take many forms.

Better can be specific, aiming to drive social change in D&I through entertainment, like British broadcaster Channel 4.

Or it can be hard-edged, aimed squarely at fixing a problem, at inspiring a circular economy like American outdoor clothing brand Patagonia or at breaking our dependence on the internal combustion engine, like Tesla.

Or Better can be as simple as hopefulness. Positivity. Optimism. A company like Disney or Lego or Coca-Cola can and should be Purposeful in this way. Again, I’ll return to that idea later.

Whichever way your Purpose aims to make the world “better”, it amounts to the same simple principle.

Purpose is the good you purport to do in the world. Whether that is reminding people that if they have a body, they can be an athlete, like Nike, or making the world's information available to everyone, everywhere, like Google.

But you cannot talk about the good you purport to do in the world without first acknowledging the impact you have on the world, in terms of the environment, in terms of labour relations, in terms of how you treat your supply chain, in terms of equity and inclusion, in terms of whether or not you stand against corruption.

And that is ESG.

ESG - Environment, Social, Governance - is not an abstract concept with relevance only to investors.

It is a simple idea based on even simpler absolute principles.

Those are honesty, transparency, disclosure.

Be honest about the harm you do, where you do it. Be honest that your operations have a footprint on the world. Do not hide that fact. Be transparent about it. And disclose the facts. Accept your duty to gather your own factual data, and report it.

Honest. Transparency. Disclosure.

These are - surely, SURELY - inarguable.

Imagine for a moment attempting to argue that point.

Imagine defending the opposite. Dishonesty. Concealment. Opaqueness.

Many companies still do this. Of course they do. But this is why capitalism, for all its faults, remains our best hope. Because the capital markets - the "owners" of every public company - demand honesty. They demand transparency and they demand disclosure. 

So, you cannot talk about Purpose without first doing the hard stuff. Doing the work required to first make yourself a better business, or at least show how you're GOING to make yourself a better business. Otherwise you have no credibility as a company. No credibility as a brand.

This is what being a conscious company means. This is what being a company with a conscience means.

Standing for something, when you are in a position to credibly do so.

This is not a burden. It is a responsibility, sure. But not a burden.

It's being part of the solution, not part of the problem.

It is therefore also an opportunity.

An opportunity to lead. An opportunity to grow and to exist in 50 years and be seen by your customers and your employees and your investors and your political stakeholders as a case study in leadership and resourcefulness and human ingenuity.

It is to be a beacon of optimism and hope in a dark world.

But grasping that opportunity is hard.

And sadly – worryingly – many companies have not yet truly begun.

I’m here to give you the hard truths on this, so that you can go and better advise your clients and internal teams about the hard work ahead. The necessary, vital work ahead.

Any company that wants to exist in a meaningful way in another 50 years has to have a Purpose, whether they like it or not.

Why? Because investors are demanding it. In that timeframe, access to capital will simply not, I believe and we believe at Blurred, be possible for a company that has not addressed its Environmental and Social footprint on the world, and connected that to a Purpose for betterment, and done so with substance, in a way that will convince investors that that company has a role in the world.

Just this week, major new research from Said Business School, University of Oxford laid bare the state of corporate purpose. The researchers interviewed 49 asset managers with a total of more than $19 trillion under management, 26 asset owners, and 33 companies with average revenues of $45 billion in 15 countries.

They uncovered why anyone who sees a purpose revolution in progress needs to get their eyes tested.

The simple and consistent message from institutional investors is that they don’t see purpose being practiced in the companies they invest in. Investors think companies are not taking it seriously.

They think communications about it are shallow and flimsy, lacking substance and lacking any mechanisms for accountability. That’s a direct quote.

Investors are looking for corporate purpose to drive board discussions: “If a board is actually focussed on purpose as we want,” said one investor, “then 80% of the board discussion should be about the magic triangle: purpose, long-term strategic goals and culture. 20% is reserved for compliance. But today, 80% is about compliance, leaving 20% for the rest.”

The most serious impediment to investor engagement with boards about purpose is that they are not talking the same language. The concerns of asset managers are driven by the concerns of their clients—asset owners—about environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Engagement on ESG has grown appreciably as the positive relationship between ESG and financial performance has become clear. But corporate purpose is not yet seen as being integral to this relationship.

That needs to change.

Companies must talk the language of ESG to their investors. They must also be able to connect that language to their Purpose, so they can motivate their own employees, inspire their supply chain, and assure their customers they are a force for betterment in the world.

At Blurred we call this connection ESGP. Purpose and ESG. Two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other.

Investors are taking matters into their own hands. Increasingly, we are seeing that investors now draft their own purpose statements, which they call “Statement of Investment Beliefs” or “Statement of Investment Values”. These statements set out for themselves and for the companies in which they invest how ESG and values and Purpose are connected.

But companies should not be letting investors do this for them. My clients, your clients, should be taking ownership of their own ESGP narrative.

Again, that is not a burden. I want to reiterate this point: it is an opportunity.

It is an opportunity for companies to fully leverage their scale to benefit society. If they do so, the impact can be extraordinary. The power of purpose was evident as the world fought the urgent threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a number of companies doubling down on their purpose, at the very time stakeholders needed it the most.

It’s an opportunity.

But, grasping the opportunity is hard.

Here's how to do it.

Understand yourself. Learn about your own footprint, or your client’s footprint. Gather the data.

Address your areas of weakness, and your areas of strength. Give yourself a better story to tell...and then and only then think about telling it.

Connect your Purpose to your E, S and G.

Practically, this means firstly connecting what are likely to still be very disparate parts of the business. Ask yourself, does my Corporate Affairs Director work hand in hand with my CMO? Does my advertising agency understand what's happening on the investor relations side of the business? Is that context informing our actions and our creative?

If the answer is no, then you haven't yet begun.

I’m very aware that these home truths on Purpose are challenging. I’m very conscious that I’ve set this speech against a difficult context: the context of the climate crisis, which is real and worrying.

I make no apologies for that, because I think frankly that to turn a blind eye to that context is a failure of our role as advisers to businesses.

But it is also true that it can feel overwhelming. That we can feel too small to make a difference.

It’s easy to feel hopeless and helpless.

So I want to finish this speech today by talking about the importance of optimism and positivity and hope, as ingredients of Purpose. Or rather, as ingredients for HOW Purpose should be brought to life, through communication and storytelling and brand campaigns.

Among the most common questions we at Blurred are asked by brands is this: how do we encourage our consumers to make the behavioural changes needed for us to deliver our sustainability targets? How do we use our Purpose, in the form of influence and behaviour change campaigns, to deliver that better future through our value chain?

How indeed?

To answer that, I turn to the apocryphal story that tells of a visit President JFK made to NASA’s HQ during the determined moonshot Apollo programme in the 60s. According to the story, as he walked the corridors, JFK asked a janitor, who was busy mopping the floors, why he was working so late.

“Mr President,” came the sincere reply. “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

We need to all be that janitor. We need to understand that our small actions can and do make a difference, so long as millions of other people do the same. 

And we need to believe that other people are, like us, listening and responding.

That’s the trick. And that’s the answer I give to any brand asking that question I posed: think about how you can show people that they are not acting alone. Think about how you can help your customer truly believe that your other customers are all taking action, are all taking part. 

Every Purpose brief must begin by affirming this truth: we can all make a difference. And if we all - individual citizens and corporations - do that then we will collectively make the difference.

Brands need to be honest – there’s no hiding from the parlous state of the world – but they don’t need to be downbeat, or to hide their positive personality out of misplaced fear of looking like they’re not taking the climate crisis seriously. We need more positivity, not less. More personality, not less. More humour, not less. More optimism. More belief – in one another, in our capacity to solve problems, in the fact that there are solutions to the challenges we’ve created for ourselves.

Brands that remain positive and optimistic in tone about the solutions and demonstrate how people can genuinely help, and continue to reinforce that message by showcasing the difference being made, are the ones that will get these briefs right.

But it must begin with sincerity and credibility of Purpose.

As terrible as the Covid pandemic has been, it has proven one powerful thing: that when things really are urgent, infinite money can be found to do the seemingly impossible. In this case, creating a brand new vaccine from scratch within a year.

As sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson brilliantly dramatizes in his 2020 novel The Ministry For The Future, which I recommend everybody reads, governments and banks will act, when they are forced to. And they are being forced to, now, slowly.

We can speed that up as individuals by demonstrating not just public demand for action, but the existence of a consumer market for Purposeful, Purpose-driven brands that understand their ESG risks and are providing solutions.

We can speed that up as communications advisers by helping our teams and our clients be honest about the harm they do. And by helping them understand the responsibility and opportunity they have to do better, with Purpose.

In conclusion: if we can make sure Purpose is a force for betterment in the world, if we can ground that Purpose in a transparent and honest understanding of ESG issues, if we can make the work we do for our companies and our clients solution-focused, and if we can do so with a spirit of optimism and belief, then we can help solve the problems we all face.

Having a true, credible Purpose is the beginning.

The hard work starts now.

Thank you.