There was a time in advertising when all you needed to do was tell audiences that your product functions better than the competitor’s and you’d succeed. This might be a slight exaggeration, but the principle holds.

All ads were infomercials. Cigarettes were endorsed by “throat specialists,” packaging was about being “moisture-proof” and having a “special vacuum cleaning process” involved in keeping the mighty “dust and germs” from your precious, creamy, cancer-Twinkies. 

It took way too long for doctors to deem cigarettes to be not-so-healthy. Eventually, when they did, it really made marketing a challenge for cigarette companies. The answer to health concerns was “filtered” cigs; yes, this was the future. 

However, Leo Burnett concluded that maybe these filters aren’t all that useful. Which is a fair assumption if you look at what their ads claimed in the past. To ensure longevity in the market, they avoided mentioning any health-related information in their commercials. And thus, lifestyle marketing was born in the form of a cowboy called the Marlboro Man. 

Revolutionary at the time, commercials weren’t about scientific benefits, but rather about how products make you feel. Advertisers started to realise that people tend to connect more to their own emotions in comparison to throwing facts at them. Today, every major brand makes use of lifestyle branding. Nike echoes “Just do it”, go ahead and break the boundaries of what’s thought to be possible, instead of reciting the technology that goes into their shoes. Cushioning and flexibility actually doesn’t matter, feeling like you’re a winner does. Yes, in some cases balance is required and functionality matters, but people need to relate and understand what a brand stands for in order to buy into a brand with more than just their money. Now, more so than ever. Multiple studies were done by clever people (which I don’t care to recite or quote like cigarette companies did to ensure a healthy cigarette) state that there is a growing urge for consumers to support brands that care about the world around them.

We’re in a time of culling plastic and issues around equality have entered mainstream discourse, brands are listening and they’re joining in because they know dammed well it works in selling their jeans, their groceries and their skin products. Luckily we’re also in a time where we’ve realised the internet isn’t always truthful and we’ve been lied to over and over again. Consumers aren’t blindly playing along. As soon as a brand is seen as dishonest disingenuous, the public is there to fault them on it. (Remember that Pepsi commercial that got all the hate in the world?) So brands aren’t only expected to stand for something, but they’re also expected to follow through.

In the past, the ideal brand would exuberate purpose internally, externally and whatever could be in between, for every breathing moment. That was hardly the case and it never really mattered. Today, however, it does matter.

I’d argue that advertising has evolved from being largely functional, to be emotive - and now we’re in an age of purpose and standing for something, but also acting on it. (I’ll let a more qualified ad-junkie think of a buzz word, like “activistising”)

Take Patagonia as an example, they “no longer produce co-branded garments for companies that don’t share Patagonia’s environmental ethos” - literally saying no to tons of cash and resulting in untold numbers of fintech employees wandering around practically incognito without their sleeveless fleece jackets. They stand for something and they act on it; pissing off some people, sure, but really winning over the hearts of many more.

I’ll leave you with this: maybe it’s worth considering people mindfully choose not to buy the ‘best’ or most functional products, but rather the products that make them feel good -  and in our current socio-political climate, nothing makes people feel better about themselves than feeling like they’re making the world a better place.