Awareness of Brand Purpose is Low- New Study Reveals

Only 18% of consumers on average have awareness of the purpose-led strategies pursued by several leading brands in this space, research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science has found.

The study, entitled “Brand Purpose … Are consumers aware to care?”, was written by Victoria Tait, Virginia Beal, John Dawes and Byron Sharp from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

Why brand purpose matters

Purpose is a hotly-debated marketing topic. Connecting a brand with social and environmental good can engage consumers and bring a company together around a shared mission; at the same time, it requires long-term commitment and tangible action, not just words. More broadly, shoppers are motivated by a multiplicity of factors, from brand equity to convenience to price, and not purpose alone.

Purpose awareness is low

• • Three thousand online survey respondents in Australia, the UK and US were presented with several attributes – some purpose-related, others not – and asked to apply them to 14 brands.

• • On average, accurate recognition of brand purpose was highest in the US (22%), then the UK (18%) and Australia (14%).

• • The precise range of scores was between 5% and 52%, depending on the brand and country, indicating a high degree of variability.

The featured brands

• • The study noted these low figures were recorded despite the fact all 14 brands “have been promoting their purpose for a long time” and seen as “exemplars of purpose-led strategies”.

• • A few of the big brands in the study: sporting goods titan Nike (promoting inclusion in sport); beauty brand Dove (improving young people’s self-esteem); and Pedigree dog food (pet adoption).

• • Some of the other brands assessed were Who Gives a Crap (a toilet paper brand donating to clean water initiatives in developing economies) and Zambrero (a Mexican restaurant chain that donates meals to tackle world hunger).

Accounting for the guessing game

• • When correcting for the “estimated guessing rate”, where consumers attributed a purpose to a brand without actually knowing, awareness totals declined further.

• • One illustration: 4% of the UK panel, and 9% in the US, said outdoor brand Patagonia champions “neuroscience-led literacy”, whereas its actual purpose is to focus on environmental protection.

• • Discounting this kind of “guessing”, the study suggested, could leave the “real scores” for the 14 brands closer to an average of 9%.

Nike leads the pack

• • Nike was the exception to the wider trendline, as 52% of US consumers and 32% of their UK counterparts knew the brand “promotes diversity and inclusion of sport.”

• • That outcome, the analysis said, was “partly an artefact of Nike’s very high brand penetration”, as such brands typically enjoy higher ratings on image perception.

• • As Nike has further proved, however, these advantages do not always insulate a brand from strategic missteps that can undermine its overall position.

Lessons for marketers

• • The first implication for marketers, according to the study, was to have “realistic expectations” for consumer responses (for example, in terms of sales) – upon adopting purpose-led strategies.

• • When assessing the impact of purpose, it is also important to place it within the larger context, such as changes in advertising spend, physical availability, pricing, and so on.

• • One role of purpose, it proposed, may be eliminating possible “reasons not to buy”, especially if the purpose is both known by, and personally meaningful to, consumers.

• “If improving society and the environment is the objective, potentially the resources spent on advertising purpose might be better redirected to the cause itself – as a donation,” the study added.