War and Purpose

On the business response to the war in Ukraine, the blank map of purpose, the ethics of sanctions, and the limits of conscious consumerism.

Hello again. For anyone new here, I’m a writer of poetry, downbeat diaries, branding and advertising projects, articles for Creative Review and The Guardian, and books about design. Thoughts on Writing uses language as a way into wider cultural and political issues. Image above from here.

This post tackles the business response to the events in Ukraine and the role of advertising, branding and purpose within that (purpose being the prevailing idea that businesses should be driven by a social purpose beyond profit). It may not surprise you to hear that I criticise some of the big players, including Unilever and HSBC. But before getting into all that, I want to express one level on which I’m sympathetic to every business caught up in this.

As well as economic entities and abstract brands, businesses are collections of human beings, spanning borders, ethnicities and social classes. And this reality hits home when war breaks out. I can imagine the Unilevers and HSBCs of this world scrambling to protect their employees, suppliers and customers in Ukraine—and wrestling with the implications for their counterparts in Russia. This is all urgent crisis response work, where there are no doubt many people working behind the scenes to sort things out. I have great admiration for the people who do that. And it reminds me of one of the things I like best about businesses and brands: the way they transcend borders and create points of connection between people.

I also have a disclaimer: I’m a writer of the kinds of things listed at the top of this post, which means I’m not an economist or political pundit. Nevertheless, I think it’s good to take an interest in how your profession fits into the wider global picture, and to question some of the stories we tell ourselves in the industry. At some point, I may retreat from all this and concentrate on creativity, ideas, poetry, song, humour—all the good stuff. But for now I will continue my stint on the Substack front line.

1. Some surprising research

So this is an odd place to start, given that I’ve criticised the IPA and its research in the past. But they recently released some solid polling data, from a survey of 2,000 UK adults conducted by Opinium from 18-22 March 2022 (a few weeks into the war).

The headline is IPA research reveals consumer support of brand response to Ukraine invasion. But the findings are stranger than the headline suggests. According to the poll, 60% of adults want brands to stop doing business in Russia—a figure you might expect to be higher, given the impression of near-unanimity on Twitter. And the age breakdown is surprising: 81% of over-55s say brands should stop doing business in Russia, but only 33% of 18-34 year olds.

Less surprisingly, only 15% of adults want brands to reflect the crisis in their advertising campaigns. Again, this number falls in the younger age group, where it’s only 11%. On a separate question, only 23% of 18-34 year olds support brands even ‘speaking publicly’ about their position on the war.

All of which means the IPA headline could equally have read: IPA research reveals young people don’t support brand response to Ukraine invasion.

Like all good readers of opinion poll data, I see this as supporting the position I previously held: namely, that people instinctively recoil when brands fold social issues into their advertising and public communications. As I’ve argued before, it’s primarily a question of taste: however subtly and sincerely you do it, it just feels wrong to have a whiff of commerce around any important social issue, let alone a war. Yet brands have been lured into believing the opposite, often by people who insist this is what Gen-Z demands. The reality is that the young are as sceptical of advertising as they have always been. As boomer Bob Dylan once sang: Advertising signs, they con / you into thinking you’re the one / that can do what’s never been done / that can win what’s never been won / Meantime life outside goes on all around you.

2. Purpose comes of age

The opinion poll surprised me, because there has been a generally positive narrative around the business response to the war. Some commentators have seen it as the coming-of-age of Purpose: a test case that proves the influential role that businesses can play in the world.

I agree with the second half of that sentiment. The role of sanctions in the West’s response has been a reminder of the economic, cultural and symbolic power that businesses hold. But it’s worth noting that most of the corporate retreat has been imposed from outside, either as a legal consequence of the sanctions, or through the practical impossibility of continuing to operate amid the suspension of SWIFT and other financial restrictions. Businesses naturally seek to gain some branding benefit by reframing it as a voluntary act of self-sacrifice. It’s possible to be sceptical of those claims, while still welcoming the action itself.

There has also been the upward pressure of consumer activism. Uniqlo initially announced it was keeping its 49 Russian stores open, explaining that “Clothing is a necessity of life… the people of Russia have the same right to live as we do.” After a Twitter backlash, it announced the closure of all stores. Brands from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola came under similar pressure.

But the unprecedented scale of the corporate withdrawal makes it possible to argue that something else is going on. Beyond the downward pressure from government, and the upward pressure from consumers, maybe there is some inner motivation of purpose that drives businesses to go beyond what is required by sanctions or necessity.

It’s a claim worth taking seriously. But if it were true, you would expect to see some correlation, albeit imprecise and hazy, between the most purposeful businesses and those leading the withdrawal from Russia. The trouble is, the only correlation that exists seems to run in the opposite direction.

The three examples that follow aren’t straw men. Unilever, Danone and HSBC have all committed themselves to something deeper than short-term purpose-wash. Unilever has long been the heavyweight player, aligning each of its brands around a purposeful core. Danone has written purpose into its legal status as an enterprise à mission: it is hardly possible to be more committed to organisation-level purpose. And HSBC recently featured on the Guardian podcast as an exemplar of a purposeful business.

So let’s take a look at each one: not necessarily as a critique of the businesses themselves, but as a critique of purpose, which is proving to be a blank map as they navigate the storm.

3. Unilever and binary thinking

There is a radio play to be written about the recent talks between Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, and Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever.

On one side, you have Alan Jope—successor to Paul Polman, earnest advocate of Purpose, and recipient of a 42% pay rise last year, raising his pay to 70 times that of the median Unilever UK employee. In response to the Ukraine invasion, his company put out a statement saying they have suspended all imports and exports of products into and out of Russia, and stopped all media and advertising spend. However, they continue to supply “everyday essential food and hygiene products made in Russia to people in the country”.

That seems morally defensible. Yes, it means Unilever is still contributing significantly to the economic life of Russia, but it has to be balanced with not punishing the wrong people by withdrawing essential items. (For now, let’s set aside the fact that the Wall Street Journal reports Unilever and others are applying a broad definition of ‘essential’, which extends to include ice-cream and make-up brands like Little Fairy—Unilever’s cosmetics brand for children.)

On the other side, you have Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador at a time when his country needs all the help it can get. On exiting the meeting with Jope, his conclusion was uncompromising: “They have to pull out right now because the world is now painted in black and white, or blood red and white, and there are unfortunately no shades of it.”

For once, it is critics of Unilever making binary moral statements, and Unilever cast in the role of ‘Well, it’s complicated’.

4. Danone and demagogues

As at Unilever, so at Danone.

The outbreak of war caused a moral crisis for an already beleaguered company that undertakes 6% of its business in Russia. The Times reports on Volodymyr Zelensky’s virtual tour of western governments, in which he reserved particular ire for the French corporate sector, accusing it of financing the “murder and rape of women and children”.

Like Unilever, Danone put out a statement saying it has suspended Russian imports and exports, as well as all advertising and consumer promotions. But again, the day-to-day business continues, in the face of appeals from the Ukrainian government. Talking to the Financial Times, Danone CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique expressed similar sentiments to Alan Jope at Unilever: “It is very easy to get drawn into black-and-white thinking and demagogic positions, but in the end our reputation is about our behaviour.”

Three years ago, his predecessor Emmanuel Faber was urging brands to Be bold or die. If Danone is opposed to black-and-white thinking, it is a late convert.

5. HSBC conflicted

HSBC is an especially interesting case, as it tries to balance its Together we thrive transnational brand positioning with the ground-level reality that 46% of its pre-tax earnings come from China and Hong Kong.

The Financial Times reports that the bank has repeatedly edited its own analysts’ research publications to remove any reference to the invasion of Ukraine as a ‘war’. This has been condemned as an act of corporate cowardice, but it’s just about possible to have sympathy for a business caught in the tides of geopolitical turmoil.

That said, it’s a lot harder to maintain your patience when you encounter the purpose-driven brand communications that HSBC continues to project to the world. For years, it has been parachuting into British towns and patronising them with their own worst clichés. Maybe it’s too dark an irony, but you have to wonder how You are part of something far, far bigger would play in Kyiv or Taiwan right now.

6. The North Star and the fog of war

With all three examples—Unilever, Danone and HSBC—it’s easy to crow: Not so purposeful now, are you! But the truth is that corporate ethics aren’t black and white and many of the trade-offs are genuinely difficult. Yes, HSBC should speak out, but how might that affect its 200 staff in Russia, or all of its staff in Beijing? And yes, Unilever and Danone have dragged their heels, but they’ve also taken significant action, along with many other businesses.

For now, my question is: how is purpose helping? In the fog of war, most businesses are fumbling their way around based on rough cost-benefit calculations. Uniqlo might initially see more benefit in staying in Russia, but if the reputational cost suddenly rises, then it makes more sense to protect the global brand. Most businesses have made similar calculations.

The word ‘calculation’ makes it sound like a morality-free zone. But there is a form of morality coursing through the system: moral outrage is what drives the upward pressure from consumer activism (though that pressure can be fickle) and likewise the diplomatic pressure from Ukrainian ambassadors. And the sanctions themselves are the acts of governments responding to moral imperatives, for which they’re ultimately answerable to voters. So, while businesses are acting in their own self-interest, there is a public interest at play in the equation.

And the point is, Unilever, Danone and HSBC are doing exactly the same thing: reading the room and doing their best to balance short and long-term interests. Invoking purpose adds nothing to their calculations. If Danone’s purpose is to “bring health through food to as many people as possible”, should it stay in Russia or not? If Unilever’s purpose is to “make sustainable living commonplace”, whose sustainable living matters most at any given time? If HSBC’s purpose is to “open up a world of opportunity”, could that ever involve curtailing its own opportunities? One of the problems with stakeholder capitalism is that it gives corporations unlimited freedom to decide which stakeholders’ interests matter most at any given time, and unlimited scope to interpret those interests from a distance, without ever asking the stakeholders themselves.

And while purpose does nothing to help those decisions, it does a lot to complicate them. If you build moral virtue into the fabric of your brand, then you’re especially vulnerable when war breaks out and difficult realities start to hit home. Unilever, Danone and HSBC would be facing tough questions in any event, but purpose raises the stakes: it’s not so much a North Star as an unforgiving spotlight.

7. Conscious consumerism and ‘customer purpose’

If Purpose can’t take the credit for the business withdrawal, there could still a silver lining for believers in the cause. An emerging school of thought in the Purpose world quietly concedes the point about business purpose being delusional, but instead pushes the idea of ‘customer purpose’. So it’s not about elevating your company as the moral hero, driven by its own internal ‘why’. Instead, it involves looking outwards and casting yourself as the enabler of your customers’ purpose.

It’s an appealing framing that ties in with the idea of conscious consumerism: the proposition that we should all use our purchasing power to influence societal, political and environmental outcomes. One interpretation of recent events is to see it as the arrival of this customer purpose idea. Rather than acting on their own initiative, businesses are reacting to upward pressure from conscious consumers, all of whom are demanding greater accountability from the brands they support.

This theory is hard to square with the IPA research cited above, which suggests people (and especially young people) are actively against brands speaking out about the war, and perhaps even against the sanctions themselves. But setting that aside, it is plausible to envisage a world in which the collective will of consumers, expressed through global corporations, has some power to shape events—perhaps even to topple Putin himself. For many, that is the rationale for the sanctions: the hope that they might ultimately be a driver for regime change.

8. Don’t follow me, I’m lost too

I know something about conscious consumers, because I try to be one myself. But I also know I wander around in a semi-conscious haze most of the time. And while I broadly see the necessity of businesses withdrawing from Russia—and would think harshly of those that don’t—I also shift uneasily when I think about the inconsistencies. If the war in Ukraine creates a moral imperative to boycott Russia, does the seven-year war in Yemen create the same imperative to distance ourselves from Saudi Arabia? And don’t we seem to be doing the opposite right now?

There is also the question of unintended consequences. The more we use business as an instrument of political power, the more fragmented the world becomes. Russia and China will already be looking at setting up their own alternatives to SWIFT and finding alternative trading currencies to the dollar. Maybe this is a weapon we can only use once. And it is one that will be used against us too: Western brands have already been subject to boycotts in China for clearing their throats about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

More troublingly, I wonder if sanctions work in the way we intend. Do they turn Russians against their government, or lead to a rally-round-the-flag effect? Do they contribute to the exodus of exactly the liberal, middle-class Russians on whom the future might depend? And how hard is it to judge any of this when conflicting reports come out about businesses not even doing what they claim to have done? This thread suggests many businesses are communicating their withdrawal to Russian customers as a temporary blip, or not withdrawing at all, with McDonald’s franchises still operating in the east.

But then I think of South Africa—sanctions worked there, didn’t they? It remains the go-to case for sanctions contributing to political change. But even there, the sanctions movement started in 1959 and was only ever a secondary causal factor, a long way behind Mandela and the school protests. And the key difference was that, among white South Africans, South Africa at least resembled a democracy. So changing the mindsets of white South African voters was a lever worth pulling. It’s hard to believe the same is true in Russia. With enough pressure—collapsing their economy and driving them into poverty—we presumably hope to push Russians into rising up against their own government. But how moral is it to do that, when they might be walking in vain toward a hail of bullets?

I’m not sure of the answers, or how to influence them on my next Tesco trip. But I suspect that consumerism isn’t the best way to channel the will of people like me. I would rather express it through charitable donations, letters to my MP, and ultimately through the ballot box, where we have set up systems of checks and balances that aggregate the will of everyone into more deliberative forms of action. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s good enough to have fought wars over.

9. The good kind of globalisation

My main aim in this post has been to question the idea that global corporate activism and conscious consumerism represent a magical weapon that we can use to win wars cleanly. If anything, recent events have been a reminder of the persistent reality of nation states, with tanks trundling over borders like ghosts from the 20th century—and of the need for effective international institutions. They are also a stark reminder of how ephemeral and unreal our notion of ‘brands’ can be. Peek behind the curtain and you see a complex web of franchises and supply chains over which we layer a Burger King logo and treat it like a coherent actor possessed of a moral purpose. The truth is, it can barely control what happens within its own domain.

Brands won’t be our saviours, and that’s a good thing. But one day I will write a post about what I like about them: the way they add colour to the world and give us these shared points of contact—the familiar glow of a logo shining down some distant high street, promising something reliable and welcoming. On a deeper philosophical level, I see them as outriders for the long-term transnational project that I hope will one day come to fruition: the formation of a cohesive, heterogeneous global society where wars no longer have a reason to happen.

In the meantime, I will end with a nod to Banda, the Ukrainian ad agency who are doing their best to stay operational. They were responsible for this 2014 ad for the Ukrainian armed forces, which is remarkably humane for an army recruitment ad—more powerful for acknowledging that no one really wants to be doing this. May it all be over soon.