The true effectiveness of brand purpose

Sam Peña-Taylor

New research from effectiveness expert Peter Field uncovers the effect that brand purpose has on a brand’s overall effectiveness, establishing that among the strongest cases the benefits are outsized, the IPA’s EffWorks conference heard.

Purpose can be incredibly effective if well used, but the big problem is the extreme variations in quality among purpose-driven execution. 

It’s quite common in adland to hear criticisms of brand purpose for its woolliness, or for its bandwagon-jumping vogueishness, but new research from the effectiveness expert Peter Field, unveiled at the IPA’s EffWorks Global conference 2021, finds that purpose does have the potential to be “incredibly effective”. The problem, he observed, is that all too often it is poorly executed. 

“What these findings show is that we shouldn’t dismiss brand purpose out of hand,” said Field. “When it is...

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