executive insights SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
5 Reasons Brands Need a
Higher Purpose
It’s not enough to have a value statement, brands must
advance a cause that will resonate with employees, customers
and investors
BY DAVID AAKER
 daaker@prophet.com
M
ilton Friedman famously said
that the “social responsibility
of business is to increase
profits.” To many observers that is the
accepted paradigm.
With few exceptions, most businesses
throughout the world take a different
view. Just look at the missions and
value statements in annual reports.
In most cases, firms have a social or
environmental purpose alongside their
mission of creating and marketing a
functional offering and increasing sales
and profits.
Walmart, for example, has an offering-
driven purpose to “Save people money
so they can live better.” The firm also
has a second purpose: “to use Walmart’s
strengths to support and improve the
social and environmental systems to
increase economic opportunity, enhance
sustainability and strengthen local
communities.” Toward that end, Walmart
has dozens of programs that aim to make
its operation run on renewable energy,
influence suppliers to make products
and packaging more sustainable and
encourage 2.6 million associates to
directly help communities.
Why have higher-purpose objectives
and programs gotten so much traction?
There are five reasons.
1 Employees need a higher purpose.
They need a reason to come to work
besides increasing sales and profits
and getting a paycheck. They want
to respect and admire their firm and
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have meaning in their lives. A higher
purpose can address these needs and
represent an energizing common goal
that leads to more productive and
committed employees.
Many millennials, in particular, are
looking for meaning in their working
world as well as their personal life.
They are interested in working for an
organization that will leave society and
the environment better off because of its
policies and programs. It is not hard to
imagine that by 2020, when millennials
become 51% of the workforce, a higher
purpose will become an even greater
imperative.
2 Customers want to have a
relationship with brands that
share the values reflected in an
organizational higher purpose.
Even if that group is relatively small, it
can still mean the difference between
struggling and financial success. In
addition, a small committed group can
have an effect well beyond its numbers
by reaching out to others to tell the
organizational story and reaffirm
the value proposition. Further, those
customers who voice support for a
brand’s higher purpose but do not
change their short-term buying choices
may still be influenced in the long
run, especially when new products are
introduced or the brand runs into a
negative public relations issue.
A higher purpose is increasingly
important to customers because it
can provide self-expressive benefits.
Sharing a higher purpose with a brand
or organization is a way to affirm a
person’s values and passions. Driving
a Prius, with its unique design, affirms
a desire to combat global warming.
Avoiding brands or organizations seen
as contrary to a personal self-image
is part of the same motivation. Being
connected with exploitive off-shore
manufacturing is often a brand issue to
a meaningful segment.
The challenge is to get credit for
social or environmental programs. That
involves having meaningful programs
that connect and inspire but also getting
communication breakthroughs that make
the programs come alive for the target
segment. This is not easy because of the
tendency to view such programs as self-
serving, without substance and with
claims too similar to other firms.
3 There can be a tangible positive
effect on profits from a higher-
purpose program.
One profit kick can come from
energy savings. Walmart decided to
undertake its ambitious environmental
program around 2005, which affected
the stores, products carried and
logistics. One early finding was a
surprise: the “do-gooder” energy
programs actually saved money.
Expanding markets present another
opportunity. Unilever points out that
increasing the health and economic
status from developing nations creates
meaningful markets for their products.
Businesses have enormous advantages
over government-led solutions with
insights in local conditions, assets and
their ability to manage programs and
implement quickly.
Social and environmental programs can
create energy and visibility not otherwise
achievable to brands. Consider the Always
#LikeAGirl video where the image of
running or throwing like a girl was shown
to be very unlike the self-image of 11-year-
old girls. The video, designed to help the
self-esteem of those making the transition
into womanhood, got more than 80 million
views. No product advertising campaign
could do that.
6/16/17 10:43 AM

Higher-purpose programs can reduce
the risk of catastrophic damage to the
environmental, social and economic
framework in which we live. Objectively,
such an achievement should be a plus
for long-term business profitability.
4 The stock market rewards social
and environmental programs.
According to the Global Sustainability
Investment Alliance’s 2016 review, $8.7
trillion was invested in the U.S. at the
beginning of 2016 with sustainability
and social impact criteria involved,
up 33% from only two years prior.
That number represents 22% of all
investment assets in professional
management in the U.S. It is not clear
whether there is a need to turn against
the stock market to have a social or
environmental higher purpose.
5 Social and environmental
programs are right from a moral
and ethical perspective.
Salesforce’s Marc Benioff says, “All
businesses can and should help make
the world a better place.” Unilever’s
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SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
CEO Paul Polman notes that, because
of the limits of capitalism, we have
partly created an unsustainable set
of problems, which include global
warming, resource depletion and an
increasing gap between the rich and
poor. The Unilever business model calls
on the firm to be an active contributor
in finding solutions and makes the
needs of citizens and communities carry
the same weight as the demands of
shareholders.
The ethical rationale usually comes
from getting close to problems. If
you see devastation caused by global
warming, children dying or receiving
inadequate education, and your firm
can do something about it within your
business model, why would you not act?
In the face of this logic and firm
behavior, we saw the specter of Brazilian
private equity group 3G Capital, which
owns Kraft Heinz—whose strategy
was summarized by Fortune as “buy,
squeeze, repeat”—rebuffed in its effort
to buy Unilever.
Unilever is a shining light with its
executive insights
embrace of a social and environmental
purpose for all its brands. Its vision
was launched in 2010 under the
umbrella USLP (Unilever Sustainable
Living Plan). The firm has specific
environmental goals, such as cutting
its environmental footprint in half,
getting people access to safe water,
increasing the use of renewable energy
and stopping all hazardous waste going
to landfills. Social programs abound at
Unilever. Consider the Dove programs
to raise the self-esteem of girls and
women and Lifebuoy’s program to get
1 billion people to change their hand-
washing habits to reduce infant deaths
throughout the world, which they are
half way toward realizing.
What would 3G’s strategy do to
Unilever? m
DAVID AAKER is vice chairman of
Prophet, the author of Aaker on Branding
and a member of the NYAMA Marketing
Hall of Fame.
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