The lifespan of buzzwords at Cannes is always interesting to recall: think NFTs and the Metaverse circa 2021. Not words you’ll ever hear on the Croisette or in the Palais these days.
Purpose is another one, with the ad industry currently having something of an existential crisis over what was only recently the topic du jour. Inside the judging rooms, purpose-based campaigns are very much still winning. But outside, the winds of change – fanned by geopolitics, nationalism, financial hardship and inflation – are blowing in a different direction.
PR maestro Richard Edelman tackled this subject head on in a panel chaired by Bloomberg and ex-BBC broadcaster Mishal Husain at Cannes, together with Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the UN, and former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, now chairman of JUST Capital.
Edelman’s point is that purpose is evolving and has shifted from “we to me.”
“Make me feel good, make me feel stable, make me feel secure, give me hope for the future and give me quality facts,” he explained. “That’s the new job for brands.”
In other words, with nationalism and unemployment on the rise and people worried about their future, consumers turn to brands to make them feel good, stable and reassured. With growing scepticism over media and experts, brands have even become, he said, a “refuge.”
However, whereas a few years ago it was all about brands virtue signalling or reaching out to worthy causes in an edgy or controversial way, their new brief is more personal: to serve “me, my family, my job, my community, my future.”
While this might make consumers sound like a bunch of navel-gazing narcissists, that doesn’t mean there’s no role for purpose though. Silence on issues, he warned, is not an option. “Do not put your head down and assume the storm will pass.”
Haley (who knows a thing or two about politics formerly served under Trump) went further and warned brands off being political altogether: “When they feel like getting political, they can turn on the television and get more politics than they ever want. They don’t want that from brands.”
But Schulman made the point that brands also need to be truthful about the world with people and their employees – particularly when it comes to the march of AI and the job losses that will ensue. They need to define reality, he said – and that is “a difficult task.”
We’ve seen a few campaigns winning so far at Cannes that seem to illustrate this evolution of purpose – Penny’s Price Packs, for example, by Serviceplan, is a campaign that emblazoned prices in massive type on packets of staple foods in Germany. That’s a campaign built around the cost of living crisis, but one that isn’t political.
Edelman also cited eBay’s second-hand clothing business and Dove’s ongoing Real Beauty campaign as examples of campaigns that have purpose but not politics.
So perhaps we’ll see purpose return as a buzzword – repurposed, even? Or maybe we just have to wait until the political winds blow another way, because, as Haley said, business has to be flexible and “it’s important not to have knee jerk reactions, because the news in the morning is not the news at night.”
Alexandra Jardine is head of creative strategy at Persuasion Communications. She is the former creativity editor of Ad Age.
