Ali Riddell, Associate Director & Head of Business Development:

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” — William Bruce Cameron 

There is more ‘purpose’ driving everyone (and by extension, brands and their marketing) than there has ever been before. Conscientious consumers, particularly younger demographics, who are growing in purchasing power and influence in the corporate world as well as the consumer one, demand that brands stand for something beyond profit. What follows is companies rushing to showcase their social responsibility credentials, often stumbling into pitfalls of misleading reporting, consumer scepticism, and competitive scrutiny, regardless of their intentions.

With Marketing Week boldly declaring 2025 the “post purpose” world, where brand activism is increasingly scrutinised for both authenticity and effectiveness, the pressure to demonstrate measurable impact has never been greater. Brands can no longer simply claim purpose credentials, they must prove their initiatives deliver tangible results or risk being left behind as consumer behaviour swings from the aspirational to the pragmatic due to a tumultuous political environment and confounding factors like cost of living crises. 

So amidst all of this, a critical question emerges: how do we actually measure whether “doing good” is making a difference?

Traditional marketing metrics will only ever tell part of the story when measuring purpose initiatives. Reliable vanity metrics might be able to tell you how many people have seen or are aware of your purpose initiative, but that is not enough to capture genuine impact. Brands need to respond to this measurement gap by developing more sophisticated approaches that demonstrate real world change.

It is often the case that measurement of purpose driven activities, is relegated to annual CSR reports and sporadic impact stories. But the current landscape demands a more rigorous and continuous approach to demonstrating value and creating a system which uses both a qualitative and quantitative framework. 

Building an effective measurement strategy for purpose initiatives requires brands to track, capture and effectively interpret three key elements:

1. Societal impact: What tangible difference is your initiative making? This requires establishing baseline measurements before campaigns begin and tracking specific outcomes, whether that’s carbon reduction, community beneficiaries, or policy changes influenced throughout the course of the work, if we don’t know where we started there’s no value in knowing where we ended up. 
2. Brand impact: How is purpose work influencing perceptions, loyalty, and customer behaviour? Measuring shifts in consideration and trust indicators, and willingness to advocate are all crucial here. 
3. Business impact: How do purpose initiatives contribute to business objectives? Tracking  employee retention, supplier relationships, risk mitigation benefits, and long-term value creation can all come into play, depending on the focus of the activity. 

And it is only by connecting these dimensions that an impactful communications plan can be developed to tell a truly complete story. Knowing which data to collect and having the wherewithal to track it effectively is also only ever the first step. Real value lies in transforming numbers into actionable insights, offering a roadmap to what is coming next and enabling the continuous refinement of an approach.

It’s crucial to remember when approaching it that today’s consumers can instantly detect inauthenticity. They demand evidence of impact, not just values statements. This makes measurement critical: without robust data demonstrating real change, purpose initiatives risk being dismissed as a type of “washing” while providing no business value, and as global regulatory scrutiny of ESG claims intensifies, the stakes for unsubstantiated claims have never been higher.

Purpose driven brands need to challenge themselves to go beyond comfortable metrics and embrace more challenging questions: Are we genuinely making a difference? How do we know? What would more significant impact look like?

By answering these questions with rigorous measurement approaches, brands can ensure their purpose work delivers meaningful value, creates a distinct competitive advantage, and delivers the opportunity to communicate about it in a way which is not only credible, but also compelling.