Brand Purpose Isn't Dead. It's Just a Bit Dirty. Here's How to Fix It.

Brand purpose has become one of the most divisive topics in strategy. Some people swear by it. Others think it's performative nonsense. I think both sides are partly right, and the confusion comes down to three mistakes that keep getting repeated.

Most brand purpose statements fail for the same three reasons: they aren't authentic, they aren't coherent with the rest of the brand strategy, and they aren't committed to beyond a launch campaign. Fix those three things and you have a tool that drives employee engagement, customer experience, product innovation and profit. Brand purpose isn't dead. It's just a bit dirty.

Surely brand purpose is dead now?

No. It's not dead, it's just dirty. What has tarnished its reputation is the version where an agency writes a 60-second film about saving the world that bears no resemblance to the day-to-day direction of the company. Purpose shouldn't be greenwashing, disconnected from how a business operates or how they make money. Done properly it should contribute to meaningful business performance.

Why purpose has drifted

Purpose is the reason why something is created or exists. And it needs to be grounded in what the company actually does.

People have forgotten this definition and haven't stayed grounded. They've been told by consultants and agencies that purpose equals social mission, and they've stopped asking whether the statement also explains why customers should buy anything.

Sometimes the work to create one has been led by advertising agencies looking for a "campaign for good," not by strategists building a long-term direction for the brand. The IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) defined purpose as "the reason a commercial brand exists beyond maximising profit." That "beyond" word is the problem. Unless you're a non-profit, your purpose must include how you continue to serve buyers to make money. Purpose should help to drive profit, not stand apart from it.

Why purpose is still valuable

But just because some people have got it wrong doesn't mean it has no value. It's just that its source of value has been misunderstood. Purpose might not work well as a customer-focused marketing campaign, but it is key for employee engagement.

The data is hard to ignore. Gallup found that employees with a strong sense of purpose at work are 5.6 times as likely to be engaged in their jobs. And engaged employees outperform disengaged employees by 22% in profitability and 21% in productivity. Higher engagement also leads to lower turnover: 25% better in high-turnover organisations, 65% in low-turnover ones.

A strong sense of purpose has been shown to give employees more meaning in their day-to-day work, help employees feel more professionally and personally fulfilled and improve transformation and innovation efforts. It sets a clear direction that aligns people and leads to results.

Here's what the wider research tells us:

• According to a 2026 CECP study, companies who have integrated their purpose into operations have 2x higher nominal revenue, lower voluntary turnover (6.3% vs 8.1%) and 2.2x more community investment.
• 89% of employees say they want purpose in their lives, and 70% say their sense of purpose is largely defined by work (McKinsey).
• 83% of employees say having a sense of purpose gives them meaning in their day-to-day work (PwC study of 1,500+ employees and 500 leaders across 39 industries).
• 84% of executives agree their transformation efforts will be more successful when integrated with purpose (HBR).
• Purpose-driven companies report 30% higher levels of innovation (Deloitte Insights).
• Purpose-driven companies benefit from greater global expansion (66% vs 48%), more product launches (56% vs 33%) and greater success in major transformation efforts (52% vs 16%) compared to non-purpose-driven peers (HBR/EY).

Nick Liddell, in his book You Are A Fish, puts this last operational benefit well: purpose gives you the ability to adapt to change by defining yourself in terms that aren't limited to what you happen to sell at any point in time.

Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla puts the payoff simply:

If you stay true to your purpose and it is very clear to every person in the company, there is a clear direction, a compass, a star telling everyone where you're going. That unites the organisation, creates cohesiveness, and brings results.

Purpose done right isn't a PR exercise. It's an operating principle that aligns and engages employees. The problem isn't purpose. It's bad purpose.

"It's too late for us. Brand purpose is dead in my organisation."

I already hear you saying, "It's too late. My client or CEO doesn't like the word purpose. They think it sounds like BS."

Not a problem. Change the label.

The point of defining a purpose is not to have something called a purpose. It's to define an ambitious reason why you exist that inspires people to come to work everyday and aligns your team around a direction that helps guide future decisions.

Call it a mission. Microsoft do. Call it a vision like IKEA do. Don't get hung up on the label. It's why in my brand strategy approach I ignore the labels and just focus on the 4 questions you need to answer. "WHY do you exist?" is one of them.

Don't shirk answering the question. Focus on answering it in the right way for your client or company with a label that fits the culture.

So how do you get to a good one? Let's look at what goes wrong to understand how to get it right.

Purpose Problem 1: Authenticity

The first reason purpose statements fail is when they're not true. If you're not in business to save the planet, solve racial inequality or protect the whales, don't pretend this is your sole reason for being. Customers, employees and journalists spot it, and the backlash is rightfully damaging.

The Business Roundtable had a more grounded definition in their Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, signed by 181 CEOs, who committed to lead their companies for the benefit of "customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders." Note the order. Customers and employees first. Communities next.

Plenty of the world's most valuable and fastest-growing brands get this right. And almost every single one of the world's most valuable brands have an answer to why they exist. Strong articulations of purpose work for customers, employees and society, and each is grounded in what the company actually sells.

• Microsoft: To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
• Meta: To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.
• Corinthia: To uplift the lives of every one of our guests, colleagues and communities.
• Disney: To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.
• Liquid Death: To make people laugh and get more of them to drink more healthy beverages more often, all while helping to kill plastic pollution.

Note what none of these do. None of them lead with a social mission disconnected from the product. Microsoft's empowerment is delivered through software. Liquid Death's anti-plastic platform is delivered through selling canned water with a sense of humour. There's a through-line from the product to the purpose. I teach this as a laddering exercise in Brand Strategy Academy that builds from what you do to why you do it.

When writing a purpose, don't start with WHY. Start with WHAT (regardless of what you might hear elsewhere).

Microsoft's purpose works because it's rooted in what they sell. It works for customers, because it describes what their products do. It works for employees, because it gives Satya Nadella a platform for his growth mindset culture. And it works for society, with initiatives that have reached 30 million learners through their global skills programme and contributed $1.9 billion in discounted technology to non-profits.

Nick Asbury in his book The Road to Hell makes the case for humility over self-importance in purpose work:

"Purpose asks you to start with why, define your higher societal mission, then lead the global conversation. Humility asks you to take it down a notch. It's about being grounded and in touch with reality." 

Purpose Problem 2: Coherence

The second reason purpose statements fail is they sit on top of a messy pile of other strategy artefacts and contradict half of them. The previous CEO wrote a purpose in 2024. The new one wants a "brand vision." Marketing wrote a brand promise in 2022. HR did the values in 2018. Innovation has its own North Star. You're not looking at a brand strategy. You are looking at a graveyard of PowerPoint slides.

As Richard Rumelt writes in Good Strategy, Bad Strategy:

"A good strategy doesn't just draw on existing strength. It creates strength through the coherence of its design. Most organisations don't do this. They pursue multiple objectives that are unconnected with one another or, worse, that conflict with one another."

What I teach in Brand Strategy Academy: don't layer a new purpose on top of the existing mess. Answer your four questions together. Make sure things like your values (WHO you say you are and how you do things) back up WHAT you say you do and WHY you say you exist. Answer the questions in the right order. Have the difficult conversation around the need to build a cohesive, consistent brand and that to do this you have to accept that strategy is sacrifice. Write it up as one cohesive brand strategy. Then retire the rest. If that sounds like heresy in your organisation, it's exactly why your current strategy isn't working hard enough.

Purpose Problem 3: Commitment

The third reason purpose statements fail is nobody acts on them after they're launched. In PwC's Putting Purpose to Work survey, 79% of business leaders agreed purpose is central to success. But only 34% of the same people were using it as a guidepost for decisions.

That gap is where purpose-washing accusations come from. When nothing inside the organisation changes, employees get immediately cynical and customers eventually notice. The About Us page says one thing and the experience says another. You loop straight back to Problem 1, which is that the purpose no longer looks authentic, because in practice it isn't.

The 2026 edition of Corporate Purpose: Driving Business Value highlights that while 92% of S&P Global 1200 companies now have a purpose statement, the true competitive advantage lies in purpose-driven systems, where purpose is hardwired into governance, incentives, and operations.

What I teach in Brand Strategy Academy: treat a new purpose and brand strategy as the start of a long-term journey, not a finished project. Have your first year implementation plan in place before you launch any strategy and keep building on it every year. Build it into recruitment questions, performance reviews, innovation briefs, bonus structures, the whole customer and employee experience. If none of those change, the purpose will be purposeless.

How to write a brand purpose that actually works

Three rules, in order:

1. Make it authentic. If you're a for-profit business, ground it in what you do and how you make profit. Serve customers, employees and broader communities you can help in one sentence. You don't have to call it a purpose. Label it with something that fits the company culture or leadership style and just focus on answering the question well.
2. Make it coherent. Replace the graveyard of older strategy artefacts. Don't just add another layer into an incoherent brand pyramid.
3. Commit to it. Understand it's a long-term direction. Build it into the customer and employee experience and start from the inside: how you hire, reward, measure and take decisions.

A purpose that's grounded in what you actually sell, honest about the people and communities you can serve, and acted on every day, is a purpose that can start to do the job of helping to strengthen a business. Call it a why, a mission, a purpose, a north star or your monkey's uncle. The label doesn't matter. Answering it well does.

These are the kinds of strategic distinctions that separate someone who can talk about brand strategy from someone who can actually sell and deliver it. If you want a clear, practical framework for building brand strategies with confidence, Brand Strategy Academy walks you through the entire process step by step. You can get started for just $89/month.

Or if you're not ready for that yet, grab my free mini-course Brand Strategy in 7 Simple Steps and start building your confidence today.