Speaking at the Festival of Marketing: The Year Ahead today (18 October), Sharp, director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and long-time critic of brand purpose, argued that from a branding perspective, if a company goes down this route “it’s just so easy to copy”.

“As a marketer I worry that it leads to the sort of advertising a 12-year-old kid would come up with in a high school assignment. ‘Buy this brand because it will help children in Africa’. If all brands do that it’s very boring and not creative. It’s not branding,” said Sharp.

Many years ago, he predicted that private label products – goods created by one company to be sold and branded by another – would eventually pick off and replace the most simply differentiated brands.

At first, that meant those brands that were differentiated by being the cheapest in their category. Then, it was those brands differentiating themselves on being organic, or sold on being British.

“That’s just so easy to pick up,” he said.

So, if the marketing community succeeds in teaching consumers they should only buy brands that donate to charity or are seen as doing good for the world, private labels can easily take that over as well.

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