Purpose, Politics & Pandemic: What Next for Brands in 2021

Hanna Chalmers and Nicola Davies

One year ago, the Financial Times led their editorial with a video entitled, ‘Why Capitalism Needs to be Reset in 2020.’

As we near the end of a tumultuous, era-defining year, other industry voices are joining the FT in arguing that there is a business imperative to become more socially responsible. Ben Page, Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI reported that this year saw a sharp increase in expectations of business leaders to speak out on social and political issues (up from 62% to 68% YoY). Along the same lines, Marketing Prof Scott Galloway recently said that, “Capitalism fails unless it rests on a foundation of empathy and love,” and last week the president of the Market Research Society, Jan Gooding wrote, “We are entering an age when every brand should be doing something to create a better, fairer society.”

This all stands in stark contrast to the backlash against the very notion of ‘brand purpose’, which took hold before the pandemic. As Mark Ritson commented in 2019,

“Patently, the whole concept of brand purpose is moronic. I do not want Starbucks telling me about race relations and world peace -– I want it to serve me a decent coffee in pleasant locations.”

How quickly this sentiment has aged.  Read on…

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