Does purpose marketing cut it?

Today we start a new year in a more resolute age. People want to change the world, even when a shave is as close as they can get.

Gillette is grooming men, with or without razors. It brought the year's sharpest marketing idea with the 2019 Super Bowl ad blitz, and its most hotly debated.

Gillette's literal breakthrough, disrupting a morning shaving scene, was a parade of bullies, hecklers and sexists. Men in the Gillette ad take stock of these fools on the march, look at themselves in the shaving mirror and place themselves in the scene, interruptors taking back the power. Setting the jerks straight. Teaching their children. Being mature. "It's only by challenging ourselves that we can get closer to our best," the script concludes.

What's going on here? Procter & Gamble is still selling razors—it's always good for grooming products to use the word "closer," no matter the context. What confounded many viewers was the pitch to young men, and for that matter young women, as they sort out their new roles in the #MeToo experience.

Gillette's 2-minute spot, too pricey for Super Bowl airing, made a bold (and yet awkward) offer to set them straight not just with shaving, but also with those other adult things. It's betting that the way to a man's heart is through what he can stomach. Welcome to purpose marketing.

P&G brands are all in on purpose. P&G's feminine hygiene product Always made a Gillette-style pivot on the phrase "like a girl." Tide introduced a plant-based detergent, and Dawn washed oil-slick ducklings. Still, most household goods makers seemed to nap while P&G stayed woke.

Taken from the top

As a business reporter turned marketer I've been listening closely to a year's buzz about purpose. Certainly some of it was just creatives being creative, latching onto yet another trend. Yet the direction often came from the top. The Conference Board, a group of North American CEOs, adopted a statement on corporate governance that declared that companies were not simply in the business of making money. They also have commitments to their employees, communities, suppliers and customers.

Business leaders weren't united in widening their focus from shareholder value. A more contentious CEO letter called for senators to act against gun violence. Jamie Dimon, Conference Board chairman and JPMorgan Chase CEO, was noticeably absent from the statement, as were Apple, Facebook, Google and other corporate leaders. Yet Apple and Microsoft at yearend were comfortable joining labor unions in a pledge to follow the Paris climate accords, eco-politics notwithstanding. Amazon had an earlier plan for net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

It's an old-fashioned idea to think of the company transcending money. Pre-industrial farmers and merchants were tied to their communities, and close to their employees. Adam Smith, 18th century prophet of profit, saw success as the reward for "industry, prudence, and circumspection." Post-World War II management guru Peter Drucker said business had a purpose to create and keep a customer, but a responsibility to the community. We like to think that businesses do well to care about their customers' happiness; it's why we watch "Miracle on 34th Street" every Christmas.

The Conference Board's stand on purpose built on its longtime Marshall Plan approach to economic development. The more a corporation requires the ascent of the government, the more it sees social responsibility as a matter of enlightened self-interest. Companies with a monopoly or military past—utilities, fossil fuels, chemicals—were early corporate branders. DuPont's "Better Living Through Chemistry" slogan was 20th-century woke-washing, launched while the Senate was probing the explosives industry as World War I "merchants of death."

Purposeful steps

A new interest in purpose emerged as tech upstarts started to stake a claim to corporate power. Google told workers "don't be evil" (at least until recently) and Facebook pledged to "make the world more open and connected." Global concerns were growing among old-line companies as well, which instituted governance systems to get a handle on the risks of supply chain corruption, environmental hazards and labor abuses.

The change is that the public is more purpose-driven. We care more intensely care about how business should make the world a better place, and about the role we play in making companies reflect their values. The change plays out in the job market: Engineers and other scarce talents can afford to be choosy, and it's hard to recruit for the devil. Nonprofits make up for scant pay with their devotion to service. What worker doesn't want to make a difference? In consumer goods, a clear purpose has become a more potent brand differentiator. Consumers attuned to corporate values would prefer to buy from companies that treat workers fairly and mind their carbon footprint, maybe enough to justify a price difference.

Companies do try to price the value of the halo effect. The stock market, trading on fresh news, sometimes makes this too easy. Colin Kaepernick's Nike ad deal was easily scored by the apparel maker's 2018 share price run-up. Buying decisions are complicated, but companies do try to measure their purpose campaigns in sales growth. Procter & Gamble CEO David Taylor defended Gillette's #MeToo ad at the company's annual meeting by insisting that the the brand got not only a millennial brand boost, but also a sales bump for the quarter.

For the most part, purpose ROI analyses tend to suggest that companies that build purpose into their management process see better results than those who aren't as, well, purposeful. Like other goals, what gets measured gets managed, and a business with multiple approaches to value goes from strength to strength. Consumers, for their part, are buying the complete value package. Some respond to a relentless Walmart focus on price, others to a Target-like embrace of style, service and customer experience. I know which store gets me in a shopping mood. Like price, purpose may be only one piece of a puzzle, but the big picture matters. This year's Super Bowl likely will have many more Gillette-style statements of purpose, if only because we're watching for them.