#84: The problem with purpose
A Q&A with author and creative writer Nick Asbury
Nick Asbury’s
Substack has been an inbox staple of mine for a couple of years. Nick is a creative writer for branding and design, and his newsletter muses on many of my favourite topics: copywriting, poetry, advertising, design, language, and, crucially, purpose. As some of you know, I started my career in advertising. And like many of my fellow millennials in the agency world, I struggled with its supposed lack of purpose. I wanted my work to result in positive societal impact, and I wasn’t sure commercial advertising was the best way to get there. After four years, I left the industry.Nick has a different perspective on corporate purpose from most people I know. He’s sceptical of it, fiercely so, and has been on a mission to challenge it publicly for years. His upcoming book, The Road to Hell: How purposeful business leads to bad marketing and a worse world. And how human creativity is the way out, will tie together years of his thinking and writing on the subject.
The first time I read Nick’s thoughts on purpose, I was dismissive: I thought they were unproductively cynical. I no longer feel that way. Hopefully, this Q&A will explain why.
You’ve been on a public mission against corporate purpose since 2021. What triggered the scepticism?
I actually wrote my first critique of purpose in 2017, in an article for Creative Review titled Is this the end for brand purpose? As the title suggests, the movement had already been around for a while before that, and in retrospect, it was just getting started—the subsequent intensification of purpose is what prompted me to return to the fray in 2021.
In the context of business and marketing ethics, I’d been uncomfortable with the word ‘purpose’ since first coming across it in the early 2010s. It always seemed clear to me that the Purpose movement was a response to the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting Occupy Wall Street movement, which represented a growing backlash against corporate power.
The idea was to reposition business not as the enemy of progressive causes but as their most powerful ally. And the claim was that the best businesses were driven not just by the profit motive, but by a higher social purpose that was the true motivation for everything they did. This ‘do well by doing good’ mantra was fuelled by books, including Simon Sinek’s Start With Why and Jim Stengel’s Grow, which were based on remarkably flimsy evidence.
As I see it, this movement led to a wave of preachy, morally grandstanding advertising throughout the 2010s and early 2020s—which came to dominate the marketing industry and its awards shows. Worse than that, it led many businesses into a dangerous form of moral delusion. The reality of businesses and markets is that doing the right thing often comes at a cost—as captured in Bill Bernbach’s phrase, ‘A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something’. And doing the right thing at scale usually involves systemic intervention from government and regulators rather than relying on the professed good intentions of businesses.
The easy part of my argument is that purpose is bogus when it’s treated as a superficial marketing exercise or ‘purpose washing’ to burnish the reputation of a business. Even most purpose advocates agree with that, and their response is that purpose is only effective when it’s authentic and business-deep.
The more challenging part of my argument is that purpose will always struggle to be authentic and business-deep because it’s fundamentally flawed as a concept. Certainly, in the case of public companies, it’s impossible to reconcile your duty to shareholders with the professed social agenda of company managers. In the end, it’s not your money you’re putting on the line, and you have no right to channel it into any other purpose than shareholder interest. To that extent, purpose will always be inauthentic when it comes to consequential calls.
None of this means companies should stop thinking about ethics and social responsibility. My argument is that they should think about these things even harder—by abandoning the comforting delusions of purpose and engaging with the tougher trade-offs that will always be involved. Businesses can serve society best by concentrating on their core activities, treating staff and suppliers with respect (which means respecting their humanity and autonomy rather than imposing a corporate purpose from above), paying their fair share of tax, and creating marketing that respects, entertains and charms audiences, rather than patronising or shouting at them.
I think this has been a real societal problem in recent years, and it’s not because we need to do purpose better—it’s because we need to stop forcing these issues into a purpose framework that doesn’t fit.
Last year, I interviewed former Lib Dem politician Polly MacKenzie who had recently been appointed Chief Social Purpose Officer at the University of Arts London. You had also learned of her new role and criticised arts institutions adopting purpose. I asked Polly what she thought of your perspective, and she said the following:
“I am a lot more optimistic about politics than Nick is, but that’s probably because I define it very differently. Everything is political if it seeks impact or influence on others, and most of our activities do. Craft, imagination, talent, humanity, transcendence—all these things Nick wants to celebrate have (in my view) the same purpose: human wellbeing*, sometimes solely for the individual who’s doing the craft, the imagining, the art, the humanity or the transcending. But very often for those around them, too—the audience, by which I mean those who experience the outputs, the innovations, the emotions of the art as it is produced. That moment when work has impact on other people is political. It’s making the world better, person by person.”
*You can’t have human wellbeing without planetary wellbeing.
How would you respond to this?
Yes, it was great to read that response to my post—thanks for continuing the conversation. I should tell readers that the main impetus for my post was the claim that arts institutions need to adopt a purpose agenda because the younger generation is more purposeful than ever. And without wanting to personalise the issue, the irony is that this supposedly politically aware generation seems unaware that their Chief Social Purpose Officer (MacKenzie’s position at UAL) was one of the key architects of the tuition fees u-turn that led to mass student protests as little as 14 years ago. I don’t mean that as a ‘gotcha’, but I think the irony is meaningful when you look at the wider issue of art vs politics.
It’s fashionable these days to make the claim that everything is political. All art is political, all floristry is political, all astronomy is political, all business is political. With any field of human endeavour, you can make this argument that it all ultimately connects to human wellbeing and therefore falls into the realm of politics. But I think it’s a seductive language game that ends up having serious consequences. Once you subsume all human activity into the political, you necessarily end up judging it by the political agenda it serves—and it’s no coincidence that you end up with former politicians running arts institutions (as with Polly MacKenzie and UAL Vice Chancellor James Purnell).
Warm-sounding words like ‘human wellbeing’ hide contested realities: whose idea of human wellbeing is the right one? Whose idea of ‘making the world better, person by person’ is the right one? Those are things we argue about in politics, and there are no settled answers. But there are other questions. What is love? What is life? How does it feel to live as a flawed human being? What are our best impulses and darkest thoughts? What connections are possible between people with different politics? What craft are we pursuing? What represents excellence in that craft? These are all questions of art and creativity, and they’re deeper than politics.
The way I see it, corporate purpose is the incursion of corporations into the political realm. And ‘all art is political’ is the incursion of politics into every realm. Both are acts of hubris, and they need to be resisted.
And quickly on, ‘You can’t have human wellbeing without planetary wellbeing’—I think that’s a truism that doesn’t really lead anywhere. It’s meant to signal that everyone, including all artists and creators, should centre climate and sustainability in everything they do or be accused of not ‘making the world better, person by person.’ So rather than painting the next masterpiece, you should glue yourself to an old one. But it’s possible to care deeply about human and planetary wellbeing while also caring about things like artistic freedom and human rights over corporate rights—all the things that get obscured by the purpose agenda. And it’s possible to agree on the climate reality but disagree hugely on the appropriate response.
You’re just about to publish your book on purpose. Tell us about how it builds on the past three years of newsletter writing.
Thanks for asking! It’s called The Road to Hell and has an extended subtitle: ‘How purposeful business leads to bad marketing and a worse world. And how human creativity is the way out.’
Broadly, it sets out the case in five parts: What is purpose? Where did it come from? How does it lead to worse marketing? How does it lead to worse societal outcomes? And what’s the alternative?
Along the way, it covers cases including Dove, Patagonia, Cadbury, Bud Light and WeWork. The final ‘What’s the alternative?’ section is more than a footnote—it makes a case for humanity, humility, and humour as alternatives to the hubris of corporate-centric purpose. And it advocates cognitive empathy (also known as perspective taking) and creativity as the two main skills that advertising and design agencies should centre in their work.
The book builds on arguments I’ve made in previous Substack posts. I’m hoping it acts as a concise and persuasive case against purpose and for rescuing and redirecting some of the good intentions behind it.
What has surprised you the most about writing this book? What has it taught you about yourself?
Given that it’s an anti-purpose book, it may surprise people to learn that the whole thing has deepened my appreciation of purpose in a personal, non-business context. I believe we all have a yearning for a purpose in life, and it’s fascinating to ponder whether existence itself has a purpose. But this makes it all the more important not to let corporations and brands co-opt the P-word and distort it.
I’ve also realised that, rather than ‘starting with why’, much of human endeavour (and especially creative endeavour) is about ending with it. I wrote the book in order to find out why I was writing it. That’s often the case with creativity—you need an open mindset in order to explore things that may not initially make sense but just feel right. Purpose imposes a closed mindset from the start, and I think that gets you into trouble.
In the past decade, we’ve seen the politicisation of corporations and the corporatisation of politics. I think we need to do everything we can to untangle that mess.
What’s the ultimate future you’re striving towards?
I’m interested in a more human-centric and less corporate-centric approach to business ethics. In her recent book Higher Ground, Alison Taylor makes the case for human rights as a framework through which to view corporate ethics, and I think there’s a lot in that. For one thing, it leads you to respect the autonomy of your workers, all of whom have their own purposes in life. And it leads you to focus on issues that you can tangibly affect (supply chains, working conditions, etc.) rather than talking vaguely about changing society.
I’d also like more separation of politics and business. In the past decade, we’ve seen the politicisation of corporations and the corporatisation of politics. I think we need to do everything we can to untangle that mess—get big money out of politics, revive the civic and non-profit realms, let business do its thing within the rules society sets. But make sure the power relationship is that way round: society should be reshaping businesses, not business reshaping society.
And get back to celebrating creativity for its own sake—rather than the political agenda it serves. Make ads that amuse, entertain, charm, and respect people. There’s nothing wrong with marketing things people want and running a successful business as a result. Equally, you can use creativity to sell charitable, political, and non-profit causes. But if you’re going to shout about it, make the charity the hero, not the corporate partner.
How can the tech and non-profit sectors come closer together?
I’ve been fascinated by the turmoil at OpenAI, which began as a non-profit but finds itself increasingly drawn to the for-profit realm. That issue was at the heart of the drama when Sam Altman was ousted by the board, who represented the non-profit side and were concerned about his commercial focus. Altman was subsequently reinstated while most of the board left, and now there’s the saga of Elon Musk suing OpenAI for (as he sees it) betraying its original non-profit mission.
It’s a great distillation of the purpose debate because you have this tension between idealism at the outset (developing this powerful technology in a socially responsible way) and the need for private investment and drive towards commercial dominance that is always likely to take over.
I can see Altman’s point—you need venture capital and can’t rely on philanthropy to fund all of the innovation. But I can see also how the non-profit board would have huge misgivings about how this shapes the way a powerful technology will develop in future.
It’s a broad answer to your question, but I think there’s a big conversation to be had about how tech innovation can take place at scale within the non-profit realm—because otherwise, we’re heading for a world where a handful of large corporations control the AI on which we increasingly rely.
Which three books or other media have impacted you most and why?
James O’Toole’s The Enlightened Capitalists: Cautionary Tales of Business Pioneers Who Tried to Do Well by Doing Good is great on the history of business and the attempt to do good.
Robert Wright’s
and podcast is particularly good on AI, US foreign policy, and cognitive empathy.Philip Furia’s The Poets of Tin Pan Alley. When I’m not banging on about purpose, I’m a creative writer, poet, and occasional songwriter. I love this study of the lyricists of the Tin Pan Alley era.
More questions for Nick? Tweet (X?) him at @asburyandasbury or subscribe to his Substack
. I’d also start the conversation on purpose here, too. What’s your take?Thanks so much for reading!
Lauren
Thanks so much for being part of this, Nick!
There’s much I agree with, especially the observation that brand purpose defaults to earnest, preachy, self-righteous and/or cloying sentimental creative work. For me Nick’s broader criticism’s of purpose could be wrapped up in one word, ‘managerialism’, a set of soft power beliefs attitudes & values to use the organization to influence society as opposed to responding to people’s needs & desires, and it also looks to me like a lot of the heat is a corporate management power struggle between progressive and conservative perspectives.
Nick sides with shareholder primacy, echoing Friedman, but without discussing ‘stakeholder governance’ or whether corporations do have broader social aims, beyond being nicer and paying their taxes, which of course they are actually doing even when exploiting all the legal loopholes. Having broader social aims in communities used not to be remotely controversial before the Reagan/Thatcher administrations, which also ushered in the era of asset stripping and off shoring. The ‘purpose clause’ can be traced all the way back to early corporate law, purpose certainly predates Occupy, although modern iterations B-corps and benefit corporations establishment falls either side of the ‘08 financial crisis. There’s a tributary of purpose that sprang from the early ecological movement. Nick is critical of these voluntary organizations because they can be gamed and can lead to noble cause corruption, true, but any system can and will be gamed by a minority, therefore the issue becomes one of oversight and governance but not necessarily a return to the drawing board.
I do think there is a much harder genuine purpose within the system of money, markets and providing goods and services that is being ignored, where entrepreneurs are attempting to figure out, operationalize and popularize businesses that are circular in consumption, regenerative in production, cooperative in ownership, and so on, but this is an uphill struggle in a financial system where MBA types preach ‘alpha returns’ and citizens passively underwrite finance capital.