In his recent article in The Guardian, Our industry must reckon with how we’ve trivialised activism by turning it into comms strategy, Eugene Healey’s surfaced tensions many of us in the marketing and branding world have been grappling with for years. Purpose, he argues, has too often been reduced to performance—values packaged into communications strategies, then abandoned when conditions shift. In some cases, he’s right. And the public reaction—ranging from skepticism and disillusionment to outrage and political backlash—has been warrnated in some instances.
Still, this is not the end of brand purpose. It’s the end of a chapter.
The performative chapter—where many brands stepped into what felt like the next big trend with campaigns and taglines before doing the harder internal work—is closing. And in its place, we now have the opportunity to write something more coherent, more courageous and more enduring.
What Purpose Is—and Isn’t
Because purpose, when understood and applied correctly, is not the problem. It’s a discipline. A lens for strategy. A throughline that connects what a brand says with what it does—and how it makes people feel.
At its core, purpose is the reason a business exists at its highest level—anchored in a deeper human truth that extends to a social mission and, when most effective, unfolds alongside evolving expectations. It’s not static. And it’s not reserved for those who start perfectly or fully.
In fact, the path to purpose can begin anywhere: a cause marketing campaign, a stand taken, a philanthropic initiative, an employee-led program. What matters is whether the commitment is superficial—or if it deepens. Whether what begins as a moment is allowed to become a mindset. That’s the real test—not how a brand begins to embrace purpose, but rather whether it’s willing to evolve and allow that purpose to unfold over time.
Progress Isn’t a Tradeoff
Healey’s insight that “social progress has been offered as a substitute for economic progress” points to a deeper cultural failure. At its worst, this tradeoff has led consumers to feel they are being asked to pay more for less—while hearing stories about justice, equity, or climate action. And it has allowed critics to position brand purpose as elitist or naive, divorced from people’s real needs and experiences.
But this tradeoff is false. Social and economic progress were never meant to compete. When purpose is integrated—when it shapes product innovation, employee engagement, supply chains, and partnerships—it creates mutual reinforcement. IKEA’s collaboration with Shelter UK is one such example. By training employees as “Life at Home Experts” to support housing stability and funding rights workers, the company advances its purpose while addressing a systemic issue tied directly to its brand identity. This is not purpose as veneer. It’s purpose as architecture.
The issue isn’t that brands tried to do good. It’s that too many prioritized the external expression of purpose before doing the internal, structural work that sustains it. And in today’s polarized climate, when backlash came, some retreated, revealing the gap between aspiration and action.
Backlash Is Born from Betrayal, Not Belief
Trust is never permanent—not even when it’s been earned. It’s cultivated over time and can unravel quickly when actions and intentions drift out of alignment.
As the language of stakeholder capitalism and doing good became a central focus for brand storytelling, many businesses moved quickly to align with causes or movements—some from a genuine desire to contribute, others out of a belief that it was necessary to respond to shifting consumer expectations. But intent alone isn’t enough. Inconsistent execution—especially when paired with rising prices, diminished product quality, or internal cultures that don’t reflect external commitments—quickly erodes credibility.
Many consumers genuinely believed their choices would drive change, and then uncovered the same companies continuing practices that contributed to the very problems they claimed to be addressing. Employees were asked to rally around values they didn’t see embedded in leadership, policies, or operations. The mismatch between promise and practice didn’t simply lead to disappointment—it bred cynicism. And as cynicism spread, it became fertile ground for backlash.
Recent examples highlight the point. Bud Light’s brief collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, followed by public backpedaling, showed how quickly brands can lose credibility when they appear to stand for something only until it becomes inconvenient. Target’s decision shortly after to pull Pride merchandise following political pressure sparked criticism from both supporters and opponents, eroding trust and dampening store traffic. In hindsight, that moment may have foreshadowed its more recent decision to scale back internal DEI commitments—revealing not a lack of values, but a growing unwillingness to hold firm to them under pressure. For a brand long seen as a leader in inclusion, this pattern has raised real questions about consistency and courage. And Target is far from alone—many DEI programs have quietly disappeared under similar pressures, further deepening public skepticism about the sincerity of corporate commitments.
These moments aren’t rejections of progress—they’re rejections of inconsistency. People still expect brands to play a role in society. And some brands have done so with clarity and resilience. Patagonia, for example, has long held an activist stance embedded into its entire business model—environmental stewardship is more than a message, and a mandate. And Costco, without fanfare, has maintained its DEI commitments throughout the backlash era, illustrating that quiet consistency often builds stronger trust than bold reversals. At a time when Target lost an estimated five million store visits following its Pride controversy, Costco saw foot traffic rise—further evidence that consistency and credibility matter not just morally, but commercially.
Credibility requires more than optics. It demands alignment—and asks for coherence.
There’s No Single Entry Point—But There Must Be Progress
Some brands have understood this from the beginning. Nike’s support of Colin Kaepernick sparked polarized reactions, but it wasn’t a departure from its long-held positioning around athletic courage and empowerment. The campaign wasn’t a stunt—it was the continuation of a brand identity consistently reinforced across products, partnerships, and messaging.
Other brands have used a single initiative to set a deeper purpose journey in motion. KitchenAid’s A Woman’s Place campaign aligned its values with its products in a way that felt authentic and inclusive—not because it made a statement, but because it stayed within the brand’s lane and helped expand it. Sephora’s commitment to the Fifteen Percent Pledge followed a similar arc: what began as a public commitment evolved into supply chain shifts and operational changes that backed the brand’s stated values.
Stepping onto the pathway to purpose can begin anywhere. But continuing down it requires courage, consistency, and a willingness to face into complexity—especially in a time when every brand action can become politicized.
The Opportunity Ahead
We’ve entered a more discerning era. One in which words carry risk, audiences are fragmented, and brands are increasingly caught between competing pressures. But the answer is not to retreat. The answer is coherence.
This moment invites us to return to what purpose was always meant to be: not a campaign, not a trend, but a unifying principle—a filter for decision-making, a framework for value creation, and a way of doing business that aligns short-term actions with long-term contribution.
If the performative chapter of purpose is closing, perhaps we now have the chance to begin again—with humility, structure, and deeper commitment. Not to prove virtue, but to practice values. Not to react, but to lead. Not to posture, but to act—decisively, and in alignment with what matters most.