Two years ago, I wrote an article for Creative Review titled ‘Is this the end for brand purpose?’ Like most articles with a rhetorical title, the answer turned out to be ‘no’ – brand purpose hasn’t exactly disappeared. But it has definitely taken a kicking of late.

Every day, new examples spring up of brands talking a good purpose game and being found wanting – Gillette fighting toxic masculinity while charging more for women’s razors; the gender pay controversy at that firm whose name you can’t remember who did Fearless Girl; and ‘digital gangsters’ Facebook selling data and spreading fake news while talking proudly of building communities.

Faced with examples like these (as with Pepsi, Dove, McDonald’s and Heineken two years ago), the response of many brand purpose advocates is to double down. Rather than seeing these as evidence of the fundamental incoherency of brand purpose, they are taken as examples of purpose ‘done wrong’ – surface-level marketing, rather than organisation-level purpose. Many still insist that the best way to run a successful business and brand is to put purpose at the heart of everything and ‘start with why’.

No evidence is ever adduced for this – it’s an article of faith. Whatever flimsy data has been offered in the past has been roundly debunked, but it makes no difference. The cynical reading is that it’s hard to get people to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it. But it is possible to take a more generous view.

While the brand purpose movement has its share of shallow careerists, there are many serious and smart people invested in it who are well intentioned and have a persistent sense that there is a ‘there’ there. They don’t want to buy into a purely reductionist view of business being about making a fast buck, and they believe brands can be tools for doing social good, not just oiling the wheels of consumerism.

On both fronts, they’re right. When the bath water of brand purpose drains away, it will be important to check that the baby is still there. Businesses and brands do have the power to make a positive difference in society. Sometimes that can in turn lead to a positive feedback loop for their own businesses. Selling products and services can indeed work better when we tell stories that are about more than just selling products and services.

Bear in mind, brand purpose people, I will be asking you to meet me halfway as we get to the end of this article. But you’re right about other things too. One area where I fundamentally agree with you is this: if you’re branding anything from a local bakery to a multinational razor company, it helps to think about the bigger ‘why’ that lies behind the product you’re selling. Putting the tortured word game of brand purpose to one side, let’s accept that you would like to sell more bread or razors. In order to do that, it helps to think about why people buy those things. A local bakery can be a focal point in a community that makes customers feel good. A good-quality razor can be a welcome addition to someone’s morning ritual – it might even help them feel more confident.

This is all true – it’s what in the old days would have been framed as ‘features and benefits’. The high street location is the feature; the sense of community is the benefit. The quality of the razor is the feature; the sense of confidence is the benefit. Sell the sizzle, not the sausage. These days, we sell the purpose, not the sausage. But it’s still about sausages. In many cases of ‘brand purpose’, this is all people are talking about – recognising the wider role your product plays in the customer’s life.

At some point along the line, this conventional thinking got reframed as ‘purpose’. My reading of history is that brand purpose seriously took off after the crash of 2008, when the reputation of business in general took a massive hit. Someone understandably thought that, in order to rehabilitate themselves, businesses should talk more about the positive role they play in society – employing people, supporting communities, bringing useful goods and services into people’s lives.

All this made sense and still does. The fatal error (or, if you make your living from this stuff, the genius spin) was to frame it around purpose. This is more than a semantic distinction. Even in the sour atmosphere of 2008, consumers were ready to buy the idea that businesses are not all bad – even the banks. You don’t have to look far for examples of businesses playing a useful role in society, from your local baker to the manufacturing plants that hold entire northern towns together.

The moment you make the further claim that the purpose of these businesses is to do good things, consumers call bullshit.

To varying degrees, we can all buy this argument because it’s demonstrably true. But the moment you make the further claim that the purpose of these businesses is to do good things, consumers call bullshit. Because it is bullshit. There is no need to go that extra step, and that step is everything that’s wrong with the last decade of marketing. The only people who benefit from the extra step are the charlatans at the vanguard of the movement, who have to look like they have a new and exciting angle (an angle which also happens to flatter the corporate people buying the conference tickets and books).

I repeat: this is more than a semantic difference. It plants a seed of dishonesty at the root of any brand that has ever used this way of thinking. This is why so many businesses spend so long agonising over what their purpose is – they know the real answer is startlingly mundane (selling bread and razors). But they know they’re meant to have another answer, even if it feels weird and contorted trying to work out what it is.

That seed of dishonesty grows into a Pepsi ad, a Gillette ad and a Dove ad. To switch metaphors, these ads are the smoke and brand purpose is the raging dumpster fire. They all came about not because someone got brand purpose wrong, but because they followed its logic perfectly – they bought into the idea that their brands are driven by something bigger, then they went out and told the world about it, and the world laughed and pointed.

There is no need for it to be this way. Ask a business to define its purpose and you will get lots of furrowed brows. Ask them to define what emotional and functional benefits they bring to people’s lives and you will get lots of good answers. Ask them what elements of their business they might do differently in order to be better corporate citizens and you’ll get lots of great ideas.

Here’s where we should turn and say ‘hi’ to the elephant over in the corner of the brand purpose room. The elephant is called Incentives. Ever since 2008, there has been endless talk of purpose and zero talk of incentives – the true driver of human behaviour, especially when humans are organised into collective endeavours like businesses and brands.

One of the most damaging misconceptions at the heart of brand purpose is the idea that businesses and brands are driven from behind, by a foundational purpose that drives them forwards into the future. The real story is different and more interesting – if you want to change behaviour in any human organisation, then you need to look forwards at how the incentives are aligned. No amount of purpose will change behaviour in Facebook if all the incentives, at an individual and corporate level, are aligned towards stock options and market monopoly.

Serious people have suggested that Facebook should restructure itself as a not-for-profit – the most radical way in which a business can realign its incentives. If a sufficiently advanced AI was put in charge of Facebook and instructed to make every corporate decision on the basis of Facebook’s stated brand purpose (“to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”), then going non-profit would be its first move. Either that or it would dissolve the company altogether. I’m not suggesting all companies should become non-profits, but if you’re interested in a world where brands and businesses do societal good, then it’s not crazy to look at the fundamentals.

But you don’t have to rewrite the incentives in order to do good. You just have to recognise they exist. Rather than this strained talk of ‘brand purpose’, how refreshing it would be to hear business people talk about the ongoing tension between succeeding in a competitive market and trying to do the right thing as a company. Recognising that the tension exists is the first step towards doing good. The simple intellectual honesty of it is hugely liberating.

The whole project of brand purpose has been to play down that tension or deny that it exists – ‘doing good is good business’ is the central mantra. As a school of thought, brand purpose has been an enabler of Zuckerberg and the wider Silicon Valley mindset, where everyone is convinced they are doing good and takes their own success as evidence of their good intent.

Brand purpose has been an enabler of Zuckerberg and the wider Silicon Valley mindset, where everyone is convinced they are doing good.

So what am I saying should happen? Well, first I’m acknowledging some good has come from brand purpose. At its best, it has shone a brighter light on the role that business and brands play in society. And it has focused the conversation, albeit imperfectly, around the worthwhile idea of how businesses might contribute positively to the world.

All that can be salvaged when brand purpose goes. But it has to go. While thinking about all this, I was reminded by fellow writer Tom Sharp of a quote by T.S. Eliot. Read this and see if it reminds you of anything: “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

Most people in most branding departments of most businesses are not evil villains trying to do harm. Many are serious about wanting to do good in the world. I would love to see that energy channelled into a proper conversation about how businesses and brands really work, and how behaviour really changes.

None of us are smart enough to have all the answers – but the baseline should be some level of intellectual honesty. Brand purpose has never made a good argument for itself. It’s a bad conceptual framework for thinking about businesses and brands. Let’s detach the word purpose from the conversation about how businesses and brands can do good in the world – who knows what good it might do.

Nick Asbury is a writer at Asbury & Asbury, author of the Perpetual Disappointments Diary, and scribbler of realtime poetry on Instagram; @nickasbury