Brands don’t need a purpose but they do need to be responsible
The retreat from brand purpose shouldn’t mean that brands have absolved themselves of all responsibility for the effect that their work has on consumers.
· Marketing WeekBy Andrew Geoghegan 5 Oct 2026 7:02 am
There is something uncomfortable about the way brands moved on from ‘brand purpose’ so readily in the last few years, coinciding with a political environment in which diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) frameworks became contentious.
This notable shift is despite the ongoing work of bodies such as the WFA, ISBA, and the Unstereotype Alliance to help advertisers navigate a world in which marketing responsibly is harder than ever, including the new questions posed by generative AI.
A decade ago, brands were expected to stand for something bigger than the products they sold. Being clear on a brand’s role in society became a major part of the marketing conversation, along with sustainability and DEI. Though a lot of it was undoubtedly worthy, poorly executed, and lacking in substance, it did reflect marketers trying to make sense of the role their brands played in the world.
The pendulum has swung towards effectiveness, AI, creators, and media efficiency. Though the shift may have been necessary, there is a danger that marketers have become less curious about what their brands contribute to the world around them – perhaps we should aspire to make a positive rather than a neutral contribution, and certainly not ignore the issues.
The influence of brands on our consumers has arguably never been greater, and we should not confuse the limitations of ‘brand purpose’ with the more fundamental question of what responsibilities come with having a brand in the first place.
Brands don’t have to save the world – a packet of crisps can just be a packet of crisps. However, as soon as a company decides to present this bag of crisps to millions of people, deciding who sees it and what it says, there are consequences; a brand simply showing up creates responsibility. The fact that that responsibility has become more complicated and polemical does not mean we can ignore it.
Former Dove CMO: Time to move on from ‘ideologically tainted’ purpose debateTake social media. Consumers have been trained to sacrifice significant amounts of their time on platforms which are in effect advertising channels monetising attention. It presents an extraordinary opportunity for brands to interact with their audiences, but in an environment where a personalised algorithm blurs advertising and entertainment with misleading and harmful content.
Many audiences, not just children, struggle to distinguish between content and commercial material – everyone to a degree is selling something. Spearheaded by Australia, governments are now belatedly trying to impose some boundaries on an ecosystem that developed with little governance.
In Britain, the government is implementing restrictions on social media access for under-16s, and Ofcom has strengthened requirements around children’s safety and age assurance, while forty-eight US states have just reached a settlement with Meta. Despite this, few brands are vocal about how they are navigating these waters.
It’s convenient to say this is an issue for the platforms and governments to resolve. Brands are not responsible for everything that happens on social media, but nor are they bystanders given advertising budgets fund the system. Brands must ask more difficult questions than whether a campaign can reach the audience with the right investment. Here are some questions curious marketers should be asking:
Firstly, who are we influencing? Just because we can target someone does not mean we should. Content suitable for an adult may not be so for a child or universally so for adults. Relevance is not the same as appropriateness – especially when it comes to things such as financial and psychological vulnerability, body image, and other areas where brand influence can be greater than the media plan suggests. These are not new considerations for marketers, but decades long discussions are currently not as front of mind as they should be.
Secondly, where are we putting our money? Media effectiveness cannot simply be a question of reach, frequency and cost. The environment in which a brand appears matters too. If marketers care about the quality of the media ecosystem, we need to behave as though we do when allocating budgets. That does not mean abandoning scale or efficiency. It means recognising that buying attention shapes the environments in which that attention is generated, potentially funding and promoting harmful political, societal, and ideological viewpoints.
There are some encouraging examples. Nestlé and Unilever have put restrictions around marketing to children and the environments in which their brands can appear. Dove has used its considerable reach to address the impact of social media beauty culture through initiatives such as #DetoxYourFeed. The alcohol industry imposes strict guidelines on itself recognising the limitations which would otherwise be placed on its ability to advertise and puts significant spend behind zero alcohol initiatives as we see with Heineken and Guinness. These are practical expressions of responsibility reflecting issues pertinent to their categories.
The third question is what are we putting into culture? Marketing doesn’t merely reflect culture; it contributes to it. The stereotypes we repeat, the people we exclude, the behaviours we normalise and the standards we promote all accumulate. This is not an argument for turning every brand into a political statement, but to take creative judgement seriously.
The fourth is does what we say match what we do? This is where much of the criticism of purpose was justified. A purpose statement cannot compensate for business behaviour that contradicts it. Responsible marketing starts with the uncomfortable discipline of making sure the promise and the reality are consistent.
And finally, what happens when the environment changes? Perhaps this is the most important question of all. If a brand says it believes in something only while it is politically fashionable, it’s not part of its authentic DNA. The retreat from DEI and ESG commitments in some businesses has demonstrated how quickly corporate conviction becomes pragmatism when the political weather changes.
Public companies have legitimate responsibilities to shareholders. But adapting every expression of corporate belief to whichever cultural position currently feels safest is not responsibility.
The answer isn’t to return to the age of purpose statements, nor to turn every brand into an activist organisation. It is to recognise that responsible marketing is a more demanding discipline. It requires judgement about audiences, contexts, platforms, culture, creative work and business behaviour.
Most importantly, it requires marketers to accept that we have agency over the world our brands operate in, and we cannot be silent, leaving it to the bodies responsible for governance. It’s not enough to ask what our brand stands for, but also what responsibilities follow on from that. I think it’s a conversation which we should never have stopped having.