Purpose has served many brands well. We have both advocated for it in the past. However, today, as purpose has grown in popularity, it risks being disconnected from the product. This makes brands blur together and lack meaning. We must recognize that different brands operate at different altitudes. This will determine both the brand’s strategy (the balance between positioning and purpose) and its expression (the balance of “saying” and “doing”).

The Rise of Purpose

Perhaps Jim Collins started it. After conducting a six-year study of successful companies and their less successful competitors in various industries, Collins concluded in his book Built to Last (HarperBusiness, 1994) that a sense of vision was the answer: “Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.”

Vision then migrated from the world of general business theory to the world of marketing. In his 1999 book on challenger brands, Eating the Big Fish (John Wiley & Sons), Adam Morgan posited that really strong brands were founded on beliefs. Historic campaigns, such as Apple’s “Think Different” (1997) and Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” (2004) showed the power of this idea.

Gradually, the language of marketing changed. Agencies started producing “brand manifestoes.” Campaigns were described as “movements” led by “anthem ads.” Around this time, Alex Bogusky, creative director of Crispin Porter Bogusky (arguably the most influential agency of the time), insisted that campaign ideas be presented with the press release as the proof-of-concept.

Purpose quickly entered the mainstream. It became the subject of books, articles, and conferences. In 2011, Jim Stengel, formerly chief marketing officer of Procter & Gamble, revealed the results of a multiyear study conducted with Millward Brown. It argued for the business potential of purpose-driven brands: “Those who center their business on improving people’s lives have a growth rate triple that of competitors and outperform the market by a huge margin. They dominate their categories, create new categories, and maximize profit in the long term.” The idea quickly won consensus. The Association of National Advertisers announced that “having a societal purpose will be a key competitive advantage in the future, according to 72 percent of Marketing2020 respondents.”¹

Like many big changes in marketing, the purpose-oriented revolution was driven in part by a change in media consumption. Television advertising was beginning to lose its dominance and we entered the era of “paid, owned, and earned,” in which companies could no longer rely just on paid advertising. Marketing now extended beyond traditional TV channels, and companies themselves had a social media platform to shape their brand reputations without traditional media as middlemen.

Finally, purpose succeeded because it helped recruitment and retention at a time when the “war for talent” raged—purpose appealed to millennial recruits. In addition, marketers hoped that purpose would enhance corporate reputation in the eyes of influencer elites, such as journalists, analysts, and legislators, as companies came under much greater public scrutiny.

Today, however we are arguably reaching a point of “peak purpose” and we can see difficulties with it.

The Challenges of Brand Purpose

Many purposes are very similar. This can lead to the converging of brands. If every airline in the world is bringing people together, then there will be little differentiation.

Much of this is due to “brand laddering”—the practice of pushing a brand’s positioning higher and higher up a Maslovian ladder to find higher-order benefits or to “make the brand feel bigger.” The difficulty is that the tops of all these ladders reach the same place. This explains the ubiquity of carpe diem advertising and the resulting popularity of taglines using the word “life” or “live,” such as “Live Richly,” “For Life,” “Don’t live life without it,” and so on.

Another problem with purpose is that customers can lose the connection: the top of these ladders is also a long way from the bottom. Many brand purposes have little direct link to the brand or the product. At times, it seems as if no cause is too far a stretch. Toiletry brands take on police brutality. Fast-food brands battle for net neutrality. Car brands advocate on gender roles. At its worst, this is cynical—using the cause for eyeballs. This leaves the brand vulnerable. For example, after Audi ran a Super Bowl ad advocating for equal pay for women, critics pointed out that Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen, had no female board members.

Purpose has suffered from definition creep. It started from a belief that informed the company—often through strong, charismatic founders, such as Nike’s Bill Bowerman, who set out to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” But the term is sometimes now conflated with corporate social responsibility goals or political, social, or charitable causes.

Consequently, brand purpose can often be vague and, at worst, insincere.

The Challenge of Balance

So, what’s the solution? Well, it comes in two parts: strategy and execution.

Strategically, we should accept that different brands operate at different altitudes. Some high, some lower. Some may focus on a purpose, others on a good old-fashioned positioning. (The mental space it occupies in the mind of a consumer, relative to its competition.)

In executing, today we have a far richer palette of channels to choose from than before. These include all sorts of exciting entertainments and utilities. Consequently, the brand doesn’t have to just “say” something; it can also “do” something. In other words, it can express itself with less rhetoric and more experiences.

This does not, however, mean less emotion. Clearly, emotion drives behavior. But emotion can be found in experience as well as in oratory. (Witness the quiet awe of unboxing an Apple product, the relief at the ease of finding your way with Waze, the bonhomie of bonding with Airbnb hosts, and so on.)

Nor does it mean abandoning guiding beliefs or purpose completely. Clear values force brands to stay authentic, coherent, and on track. While people certainly buy into brands that share their beliefs (such as Nike), they also buy a lot from practical brands that do not shout theirs (such as Uber, Amazon, and—admittedly—McDonald’s).

The McDonald’s Culture, Product, and Brand

At McDonald’s, we are trying to develop a way of marketing that is rooted in the product, the restaurant experience, and the company.

Part of what caused us to reassess the role of purpose was the McDonald’s culture. This is a very practical company, averse to pomposity. The key focus is serving hot, tasty food quickly, conveniently, and inexpensively. It is also, as our CEO is fond of saying, the “most democratic brand in the world.” Or, as our founder Ray Kroc aptly put it, “We didn’t invent the hamburger. We just took it more seriously than anyone else.”

At first, we thought this down-to-earth attitude was a weakness, but we now see it as a strength. Others agree. In a recent article on corporate mission statements, the Economist noted that, “The danger is that, by aiming to inspire, firms produce pious platitudes instead,” and went on to assert, “The best statements are short and describe the business in a way that customers and employees can understand and appreciate. McDonald’s is admirably succinct: ‘To be our customers’ favorite place and way to eat and drink’ . . . not the stuff of inspiring oratory. But such clear, direct statements at least create the impression that the company knows what it is doing.”²

So, while we debated identifying a very high-order purpose, we realized this would not be true to the spirit of the brand or the culture.

That is not to imply a lack of responsibility. We recognize that people care more today about the companies with which they do business. And McDonald’s takes its duties seriously. We recently announced our Scale for Good program, which embraces our responsibilities (and opportunities) to act on the most pressing social and environmental challenges in the world today. We do this through our own actions, but also by collaborating with millions of customers, employees, franchisees, suppliers, and other partners (hence, “scale”). The program’s pillars are climate action, beef sustainability, packaging and recycling, commitment to families, and youth opportunity.

And McDonald’s cares. We give to and facilitate giving to one of the most enduring and well-known philanthropies, the Ronald McDonald House Charities, which keeps the families of sick children together during prolonged hospital treatment.

Trust is also important. Our markets make big efforts to communicate the truth about how our food is sourced and produced. For example, the “Our Food, Your Questions” campaign in our Canadian markets took real consumer questions and made a series of video shorts shot from inside food production facilities to answer them candidly.

While all of these—responsibilities, philanthropy, and trustworthiness—are vital and play specific roles within the marketing, they do not dictate its overall theme and style. What does then?

Summary

Brands operate at different altitudes depending on the roles they play in people’s lives and the culture of the companies. This should lead to a different balance of purpose and positioning.

Silvia Lagnado is an executive vice president and the global chief marketing officer at McDonald’s. Earlier in her career she worked at Bacardi Limited and Unilever, where she led the introduction of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign.

Colin Mitchell is the global vice president at McDonald’s. Prior to joining McDonald’s, he was worldwide head of planning at WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather.

Notes