Purpose isn't marketing. It's what you're willing to bleed for

Here's a thought experiment.

You're at a funeral. Someone stands up and starts pitching their startup.

It could be the best startup in the world. Brilliant idea. Perfect timing for the market. Exposed to exactly the right audience.

Nobody cares. Wrong moment. Wrong place.

Context overrides stimulus. Keep this in mind. We'll come back to it.

The theatrical decade

Between 2015 and 2024, something peculiar happened to business. Brands that had functioned perfectly well without a declared purpose suddenly discovered one. Not because leadership had a genuine epiphany. Because a consulting firm, a trend report, or a nervous CMO convinced them it was now mandatory.

LinkedIn filled with rainbow logos every June. Mayonnaise brands claimed to save planets. Beer brands ventured into social commentary that puzzled their core drinkers.

Then, when the political wind shifted in 2025, most of these companies quietly dismantled everything. Not with shame. Not with explanation. They simply removed the paint and moved on.

Terry Smith, the fund manager who delivered 22% annual returns while Unilever delivered negative 0.2%, put it perfectly: "A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann's mayonnaise has clearly lost the plot. The brand has existed since 1913, so consumers have figured out its purpose: salads and sandwiches."

He's not wrong. Though as an Italian, I must note: mayo on salad? That's the real crime here. But markets, like purpose campaigns, have a way of humbling even the loudest critics. Smith's fund returned 0.8% in 2025. The index did 12.8%. Humility all around, perhaps.

Still, his point stands.

But here's what most critics miss: the problem wasn't that these brands had purpose. The problem was that they treated purpose as marketing.

Purpose isn't marketing. Purpose is strategy. And strategy, real strategy, requires sacrifice.

The say-do gap is you

I live this contradiction every day.

My wife and I chose to live without a car. Two full time jobs, two small children, no grandparents nearby to help. We did it because we decided our carbon footprint wasn't someone else's problem. Those are our actual values. Not our stated values. Our operational values. The ones that cost us something.

When I explain this to friends, highly educated people who post about climate change and attend sustainability conferences, they look through me. "Ma che bravi," they say. How nice.

Then they climb into their SUV and drive home.

I don't judge them. I understand them. Because I know what it costs to operationalise values. The missed appointments because public transport failed. The groceries carried uphill in the rain. The birthday parties we couldn't attend because they were too far.

That's what values cost when they're real.

When a company claims sustainability but ships products across oceans in containers. When they preach environmental responsibility but their executives drive luxury SUVs that could deforest half the Amazon with every acceleration. When they demand their sales team "spread the mission" but keep their targets anchored to pure revenue.

The gap between stated values and operational values isn't just visible. It's deafening.

I've seen what it takes to close that gap. In 2018, the founder of a premium pet food company transferred ownership to a nonprofit foundation. Every euro of profit now goes to protecting biodiversity. No shareholders. No exit. No return.

It wasn't a sudden decision. Eight years earlier, he'd walked away from a private equity deal worth a fortune. I know, because I was there. I had placed an anonymous ballot box at the company entrance, asking employees what they thought would be best for the company's future. A week later, I put that box on his desk. He read the messages, chose not to sell, and started asking a different question: what if the real shareholders were the animals the company existed to serve?

That's what sacrifice looks like. Not a campaign. Not a statement. A choice that can't be undone.

But here's what I learned watching that journey: even extraordinary gestures don't speak for themselves. The tragedy of most purpose isn't cynicism. It's the belief that one extraordinary gesture could replace a thousand ordinary ones.

Byron Sharp once said that one of the things that can corrupt science is good intention. Purpose research is exhibit A. Ask anyone if they prefer sustainable brands, and watch the scores soar. Then watch them buy from Shein.

Consumers aren't hypocrites. They're pragmatists. They understand, instinctively, that your purpose campaign is a startup pitch at a funeral. Wrong room. Wrong moment.

Clayton Christensen had a framework for this: Jobs to Be Done. Customers don't buy products. They "hire" them to solve a specific problem. When I'm buying mayonnaise, I'm hiring it to make my sandwich better (NOT my salad, Terry). The job isn't planetary salvation. The job is functional performance.

And no amount of purpose theatre changes what job I'm hiring you for.

What sacrifice actually looks like

Bill Bernbach said it decades ago: "A principle isn't a principle until it costs you money."

Most purpose is free. It costs nothing to change your logo for Pride month. It costs nothing to issue a statement about sustainability. It costs nothing to add a purpose slide to your investor deck.

Real purpose costs everything.

Look at e.l.f. Beauty. Twenty-four consecutive quarters of net sales growth and market share gains. A board that's 67% female and 44% diverse. Every single employee holds equity. Fair Trade certified.

Their CMO Kory Marchisotto explains it simply: the starting point isn't purpose. It's ethos. If you don't have a codified ethos, do not pass go. Then that ethos shapes your purpose. Then purpose motivates your people. Then people drive performance.

The sequence matters. And every step costs something.

e.l.f. doesn't sell cosmetics. They democratise access. That's not a tagline. That's a business model. The purpose is inseparable from the product. The equity programme costs money. The Fair Trade certification costs money. Building a diverse board means looking beyond the usual networks. That takes time and intention.

That's what sacrifice looks like.

Patagonia works the same way. They design products that last decades, which means customers buy less frequently, which means lower revenue per customer. They use recycled materials that cost more. They run repair programmes that cannibalise new sales. They tell customers to buy less.

Every decision costs them something. That's why it's credible.

Now compare this to the brands that pivoted to purpose as a marketing tactic. No supply chain changes. No pricing sacrifices. No internal metric adjustments. Just communication.

Peter Field's analysis for the IPA told the whole story: purpose campaigns, on average, deliver fewer business effects than traditional ones. But here's the nuance the headlines missed. The well-executed minority dramatically outperforms. The poorly-executed majority is a disaster. The difference? The winners aligned purpose to product. The losers bolted it on.

That's not a defence of purpose marketing. That's an indictment of it. The data proves that purpose only works when it's structural. When it's decoration, it's worse than doing nothing.

The test you don't want to take

Here's how to know if you have real purpose or expensive decoration.

Ask yourself: would you make these operational choices if nobody could see them?

If you could cut all the costly decisions and tell the same story, would you still operate the same way?

If the answer is no, you're doing purpose marketing. Stop. You're wasting money and eroding trust. Customers see the gap, even if you don't. Make a good product and compete on quality. That's respectable. That's honest.

If the answer is yes, you might have something real.

But there's a harder test.

What have you actually sacrificed?

Not what have you communicated. Not what values you've declared. What have you given up? What customers have you walked away from? What revenue have you left on the table? What margins have you accepted losing?

If your sales team still has pure revenue targets while you preach sustainability, you're asking them to be missionaries with merchant quotas. They'll navigate. They'll game the metrics. They'll report what looks good while optimising for what gets measured.

Real purpose means changing what gets measured. It might mean selling less. It means accepting trade-offs. Real trade-offs. Explicit exclusions. Things you won't do.

If you can't name those sacrifices, you don't have purpose. You have a PowerPoint deck.

Back to the funeral

Remember the thought experiment?

Context overrides stimulus. The funeral isn't the place for your pitch. The consumer isn't hiring your product for what you're selling.

This is what happened to purpose over the last decade. Brands took functional products and projected values onto them that didn't match the context. They asked mayonnaise to save the planet. They asked beer to lead social movements. They asked cosmetics to solve societal inequality.

Wrong room. Wrong moment. Wrong audience.

The brands that actually work are the ones where you can't tell where the product ends and the purpose begins. Where the sacrifice is structural, not cosmetic. Where the cost is visible in the operations, not just the communications.

Crayola doesn't lecture you about inspiring children. They make products that inspire children, and that's their purpose. The product is the proof.

Purpose isn't a fifth P to add to your marketing mix. It's not a campaign. It's not something the brand team develops while operations continues unchanged.

Purpose is a strategic choice about what you're willing to sacrifice.

The question isn't whether your brand has a purpose.

The question is what you've bled for.

And if you can't answer that, your customers already have.

Sources and References

Terry Smith, Fundsmith (January 2022): Criticism of Unilever's purpose obsession, including the Hellmann's quote. Marketing Week | Food Navigator

Peter Field, IPA (October 2021): Analysis demonstrating that purpose campaigns underperform traditional campaigns on long-term business effects, with strong exceptions for well-executed cases. IPA | Marketing Week | The Drum

The CMO Podcast (May 2025): "Is Brand Purpose Dead—or More Alive Than Ever?" with Kory Marchisotto (e.l.f. Beauty), Mark Ritson, Lisa Materazzo (Ford), and Sara Carter (adam&eveDDB). Spotify | Apple Podcasts

e.l.f. Beauty: 24 consecutive quarters of growth. Board 67% female, 44% diverse. All employees hold equity. Fair Trade certified.

Bill Bernbach: "A principle isn't a principle until it costs you money." Barry Popik

Clayton M. Christensen, Jobs to Be Done: Harvard Business Review