C onsumers increasingly expect brands to have not just functional benefits but a social purpose. As a result, companies are taking social stands in very visible ways. Airbnb used a Super Bowl ad to publicly cement its commitment to di- versity. Tecate, based in Mexico, is in- vesting heavily in programs to reduce violence against women, and Vicks, a

P&G brand in India, supports child-adoption rights for transgender people. Brands increasingly use social purpose to guide marketing communications, inform product innovation, and steer investments toward so- cial cause programs. And that’s all well and good when it works. But missteps are common, and they can have real consequences.

Recall Starbucks’s Race Together campaign—the chain’s earnest effort to get customers talking about race relations in the United States. The program was widely criticized for its perceived lack of authentic- ity, among other reasons, and was quickly canceled. Or consider SunChips’s 2010 launch of a biodegrad- able bag. The composite material was indeed good for the environment—but the bags were so noisy they drew mockery on social media, forcing the company to pull them from the market.

Countless well-intentioned social-purpose pro- grams have consumed resources and management time only to end up in obscurity. Sometimes they backfire because the brand messages designed to pro- mote them anger or offend customers—or they sim- ply go unnoticed because they fail to resonate. Other times, managers use these initiatives solely to pursue intangible benefits such as brand affection or as a means to communicate the company’s corporate so- cial responsibility, without consideration of how they might create business value for the firm.

With the support of Sustainable Brands and the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, we’ve studied many social-purpose brand programs and have worked with close to a dozen leading brands to design growth-focused social-purpose strategies. On the basis of our research and experience, we’ve developed an approach we call “competing on social purpose” that ties a company’s most ambitious social aspirations to its most pressing growth needs. In this article, we provide a novel framework to help compa- nies find the right social purpose for their brands.

BUILDING A STRATEGY Some brands have integrated social purpose into their business models from the start: Think of Patagonia, TOMS, Warby Parker, and Seventh Generation. The societal benefit these “social purpose natives” offer is so deeply entwined with the product or service that it’s hard to see the brands’ surviving intact without it. Imagine how customers would react if TOMS abruptly

ended its one-for-one program, which donates shoes, water, or eye care to the needy for every product it sells. And what would happen to Patagonia’s brand if the company abandoned its commitment to eco- friendly manufacturing? Social purpose natives like these must be diligent stewards of their brands.

The challenges are very different for the much larger number of brands for which this article is writ- ten—a group we call “social-purpose immigrants.” These established brands have grown without a well-defined social-purpose strategy and are now seeking to develop one. Typically, they belong to firms that are good corporate citizens and are com- mitted to pro gress on environmental and social goals. However, their growth has thus far been based on superior functional performance that is unrelated to a broader social purpose.

To develop a social purpose strategy, managers should begin by identifying a set of social or environ- mental needs to which the brand can make a mean- ingful contribution. (For simplicity, we’ll use the term “social needs” to refer to both social and environ- mental concerns.) Few brands are likely to start with a blank slate—most have corporate social responsibil- ity programs under way, some of which could become relevant aspects of the brand’s value proposition. Yet focusing on only those initiatives could limit the po- tential of a purpose-driven brand strategy or divert marketing resources meant to stimulate the brand’s growth toward corporate initiatives. To create a more comprehensive set of choices, managers should ex- plore social purpose ideas in three domains: brand heritage, customer tensions, and product externalities.

Brand heritage. Of the many benefits a brand may confer, only a few are likely to have defined the brand from the start and be the core reason for its success. A look into the brand’s heritage—the most salient ben- efits the brand offers customers—can help managers identify the social needs their brands are well posi- tioned to address. For instance, since its launch, in 1957, Dove has been promoted as a beauty bar, not a soap. Enhancing beauty has always been central to its value proposition. Therefore, it makes sense that Dove focuses on social needs tied to perceptions of beauty.

Customer tensions. An unbounded exploration of social issues relevant to your customer base will most likely yield a list that’s too broad to be very helpful. To narrow your options, look at the “cultural tensions” that affect your customers and are related to your brand heritage. Such tensions, first characterized by marketing strategist Douglas Holt, refer to the conflict people often feel when their own experience conflicts with society’s prevailing ideology. Holt argues that brands can become more relevant by addressing con- sumers’ desire to resolve these tensions. Classic exam- ples include Coca-Cola’s “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial, which promoted peace and unity at the height of the Vietnam War, and Budweiser’s recent

IN BRIEF

THE EXPECTATION Consumers increasingly expect brands to have a social purpose, so many companies are taking social stands in very visible ways. Think TOMS’s one-for-one program, which donates shoes and other goods for every product sold.

THE CHALLENGE These programs can benefit society and the brand but may fizzle or actually harm the company if they’re not carefully managed.

THE STRATEGY An effective strategy creates value by strengthening a brand’s key attributes or building new adjacencies. At the same time, it mitigates the risk of negative associations and threats to stakeholder acceptance.

96  HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2017

FEATURE COMPETING ON SOCIAL PURPOSE

Super Bowl ad celebrating the immigrant story of one of its founders, which aired in the midst of a heated public debate about immigration.

Product externalities. Finally, examine your product’s or industry’s externalities—the indirect costs borne or benefits gained by a third party as a result of your products’ manufacture or use. For in- stance, the food and beverage industry has been crit- icized for the contribution of some of its products to the increasing rates of childhood obesity. It has also faced concerns about negative health effects resulting from companies’ use of artificial ingredients and other chemicals in their products. Panera Bread’s decision to position its offerings as “clean food”—made with- out “artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, or colors from artificial sources”—is a direct response to a social need created by industry externalities.

Although a company may build a sound social- purpose strategy that focuses on just one domain, ide- ally this exercise yields opportunities at the intersection of all three. Consider Airbnb’s WeAccept social purpose strategy. The company’s brand heritage is built on pro- viding an open and inclusive platform, but in recent years concerns about race discrimination have once again risen to the forefront of cultural tension in the United States. Recently, Airbnb has faced allegations of racial discrimination by some of its members—a serious externality produced by its service.

PARE THE LIST After considering social purpose ideas in the three domains, managers should pare the list to three or four social needs, and propose strategies for each, to be evaluated as final candidates for the brand’s social purpose.

To guide the prioritization and selection process, managers should gauge how the social purpose idea both generates business value and minimizes the com- pany’s exposure to risk. An effective social-purpose strategy creates value by strengthening a brand’s key at- tributes or building new adjacencies. At the same time, it mitigates the risk of negative associations among consumers and threats to stakeholder acceptance.

Brand attributes. Managers often consider the fit between the social need and the brand as a criterion for evaluating social purpose strategies. However, good fit isn’t enough. They should also consider how social purpose can create value by strengthening (or creating) brand attributes relevant to consumer choice in a given industry.

We define brand attributes as characteristics manag- ers instill in a product or service, including features and benefits as well as personality or reputation supported through marketing communications. A restaurant, for example, might use sustainably sourced ingredients (a feature), which can reinforce a perception of great taste (a benefit), and through marketing communications,

promote a reputation for environ- mental consciousness (the brand personality).

When choosing among possible social-purpose strategies, manag- ers need to understand how each option affects key brand attributes. Consider the case of Vaseline. By 2014, when Kathleen Dunlop be- came global brand director, the product was at risk of becoming a commodity in the United States. To grow, it needed to find new ways to remind existing customers of its core attributes while educating a younger generation.

Dunlop and her team deter- mined that the answer to this busi- ness problem lay in the brand’s tagline “the healing power of Vaseline,” which c aptures its core attribute. Asking “Where is our healing power most urgently needed?” the team began the pro- cess of developing a social purpose strategy for the brand. Through interviews with medical profes- sionals at the Centers for Disease Control, Doctors Without B s, and the UN Refugee Agency, the team learned that Vaseline jelly was an indispensable part of emergency first-aid kits. In refugee camps, for instance, minor but common skin conditions such as cracking and blistering could become dangerous and debilitating. Petroleum jelly, and Vaseline in particular, was often a first line of care.

With this insight, the team crys- tallized a social purpose strategy around skin care for the most vul- nerable—people living in poverty or emergency conditions—and in 2015 the Vaseline Healing Project was born. In partnership with the non- profit Direct Relief, the proj ect aims to reach 5 million people by 2020.

The Healing Proj ect was not a CSR or public relations initiative; it was designed to connect business goals with societal needs. The resulting campaign was tested alongside other tra- ditional marketing programs designed to differen- tiate the brand. The initiative outperformed all the alternatives and achieved its objectives in its first full year, helping Dunlop build a stronger business case for it and persuade the managers responsible for the brand’s P&L to invest marketing resources behind it.

OBSTACLES TO COMPETING ON PURPOSE Three characteristics of purpose-driven growth make it particularly challenging for managers.

It’s hard to change course. Once a social purpose is chosen, changing course is difficult and ill-advised, because success depends on the legitimacy of the brand’s claim. Shifting or inconsistent claims may raise doubts about the firm’s integrity or commitment. Specific programs can and should evolve, of course, and successful brands continually innovate. But the underlying purpose should remain constant. Dove has pursued its Real Beauty cause for more than a decade. Patagonia has advocated for environmental protection since its founding, in 1973. Starbucks has consistently worked to promote social justice. Although an unswerving purpose is critical to success, this constraint can be frustrating to managers in an era characterized by agility and constant experimentation.

It’s tough to gauge market potential. Proponents of social purpose initiatives often argue that the programs can help the business grow. And they can—but not without a carefully crafted strategy. Too often, strategies are based on projections of business impacts that are oversimplified or flawed. Even among customer segments that support a brand’s social purpose, for example, individual consumers may take purpose into account to varying degrees when making product choices. In addition, the size of the customer segments inspired by a brand’s social mission may vary significantly by product category, purchase occasion, and geography. Finally, data on the importance of societal benefits is often drawn from consumer surveys—as opposed to actual customer behavior—which may overstate true purchase intentions. Taken together, these factors can lead to unreliable estimates of market demand and growth.

It’s easy to get distracted. Many purpose- driven brand initiatives have been launched with enthusiasm only to vanish without a ripple. One reason is that the appeal of “doing well by doing good” can distract managers from a brand’s primary business needs. These nonstrategic programs can take on a life of their own, tempting managers to expand and dilute the focus of their brand purpose and split their attention in ways that don’t help growth. Or, concerned about potential controversy, managers may distance the program from the brand’s other business activities, giving rise to shell initiatives that have no real presence in the brand’s value chain.

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