Michael Campion: So moral purpose. So many brands these days have realized that their moral purpose is just as important as their responsibility to shareholders. It's an integral part of what they do. They've got to walk the talk, so to speak. So talk to me about how brands can dance with moral purpose in an authentic way.

Bob Sheard: Yeah, I think it's really important to understand some of the drivers behind the consumer groups. So Generation X, very much driven by the accumulation of things and the status that comes with that. I think Generation Y, it's about the accumulation of experiences and the value that comes with that. And Generation Z, it's more about the accumulation of content and the identity that comes with that. So very much if you take the sort of Generation Z and Generation Y's shift towards the more spiritual and less material, if you take the accelerating effect of the crises, like the credit crisis, the climate crisis, cost of living crisis, if you take the accelerating effect of COVID, then what comes out of that is a different shape of values where the consumer wants to feel valued. It wants a brand to value them. It wants a brand to make them feel part of something. It wants a brand to make them feel both individual and feel part of something. So that's really shaped a shift and that shifted a brand's focus.

They should be now thinking as much about their values as the value they create. They should be thinking about moral purpose as much as market purpose. They should be thinking about communal gain as much as commercial gain, so that they can be future proof for these shift towards a more responsible, sustainable future. So, in that context, we end up looking at purpose in three different ways. We look at the standard vision, but then we look at well, okay, if that's our vision, within that vision, what's our moral purpose? So, for example, we have a client based in America that cultivates meat from blood plasma. It's an innovator and its moral purpose is simply this we kill. Humanity kills 1.5 billion cows on Earth a year, which is a lot of souls, and much of that meat is wasted and much of that meat is unaffordable for those that need it most on Earth. So what they've been able to do is create a cultivated meat and the whole idea, the moral purpose is meat, but without the death. So a moral purpose in terms of our relationship with animals that we see our liars reflected in each other, but also creating a food source that's affordable to those on Earth that can't afford it presently.

We have another client that's on the other side of America, in California, which is called Higher Ground, very much driven by Montessorian principles, but they think that education is a lifelong process, from infancy right the way through to old age. So they built a digital platform that allows everybody to move through the stages of maturing in life but get access to universal global education. So their moral purpose is to give people universally global agency. And then, finally, you can see Patagonia. Their moral purpose is to live in balance with nature and, having announced that they now place their company into a trust and with the line that Earth is their only shareholder, which is a genius line that shapes their moral purpose.

Michael Campion: I think a lot of what we see in the market now is what could be termed virtue signaling or greenwashing, and I think consumers or not just consumers I think human beings are incredibly sensitive and savvy and they realize when brands are borrowing purpose as opposed to it genuinely emanating from within. And I notice it the most, I think, when big banks talk about how much they care about the planet and about your children and we kind of know it's not true, it rings hollow. So if, if purpose, if a moral purpose or higher purpose doesn't authentically resonate or doesn't authentically emanate from a brand, is it better for them not to even talk about it at all, to not try and be something then not?

Bob Sheard: We see it a lot in the private equity world, where there is such a lot of noise around ESG environmental, social and governmental impacts and you tend to see a lot of retrospective harvesting of good news stories within a bank's portfolio and then they are curated to look like the sum of their ESG policy. And it's very frustrating because an ESG policy should be the outcome of their investment strategy. It should be the outcome of the moral purpose and market purpose. It shouldn't be retrospectively fitted and that's what we see when you look at exactly what you described. Human nature bends towards truth. We arc towards truth. It's a central north star for us. It's as powerful as gravity. So any brands that are building a moral purpose, whether they're banks, whether they're outdoor brands, automotive, whatever they're from the simple sense check is that when all is lost, we define and judge a person and the brand not on what they say but on what they do. We define it by their actions. So if they're going to wash with a strong sense of moral purpose, they need to make sure that their actions support any statements they make, and that's the sequencing that they should do act first, say later.

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