Marketers around the world overwhelmingly believe ‘purpose’ needs to be part of a successful brand building strategy, according to new research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).
Marketers define purpose as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), while consumers say it starts with Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
When asked to pick a purpose leader, Procter & Gamble and competitor Unilever tied at the top with 14% of the marketers’ vote. Google and Apple also scored well with figures of 11% and 10% respectively.
Broken down by region, Apple was perceived to be the purpose leader in North America, Coca-Cola in Latin America, Unilever in Europe, Danone in Africa and the Middle East and Nestlé in Asia-Pacific.
The survey was conducted by WFA corporate members and the corporate members of its National Advertiser Associations. It was based on the responses of 828 brand marketers from 33 countries who between them account for roughly $170bn in global marketing spend.
Nearly nine out of 10 marketers (88%) who took part in the survey agreed that purpose will be increasingly important to building brands and 87% agreed that it was important for brands to have a sense of purpose.
74% also believed that having a sense of purpose is critical to hiring the best talent.
However, marketers also agreed that they were less successful in communicating purpose to consumers. Presented as part of the Global Marketer Week in Sydney, Australia, the study also highlighted the differences between what purpose means to marketers and what it means to consumers.
Comparing the results to the same research the WFA conducted in 2013, there appears to be a shift in marketers’ definition of purpose.
Interestingly, protecting and improving the environment and helping to address global issues were definitions employed by just 39% and 35% of respondents this year.
These were down significantly from 56% and 52% respectively when compared to the same research run last year among WFA members, suggesting marketers are perhaps becoming less global and ambitious and more internal, local and CRM-focused in their articulation of purpose.
As many as 65% respondents agreed that their company was fundamentally re-evaluating their corporate positioning in light of a renewed sense of purpose.
WFA Managing Director, Stephan Loerke said to M&M Global: “The study is really insightful as on one hand it shows how marketers are all aligned and believe that ‘purpose’ is important, but on the other there seems to be a certain disagreement about what purpose actually is. Worse still, consumer research suggests that most of them are out of kilter with what consumers find ‘purposeful’.”
Laura Bracher, London
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