When I wrote In Defence of Brand Purpose I wasn’t defending those two words exactly, loaded as they with all their baggage and competing definitions. I was defending the idea that business can be a powerful force for social progress.

Because the case remains urgent and clear: climate collapse, rising inequality, social fragmentation - these are existential threats to our planet and way of life as we know it. Of course we need government policy, science, NGOs, and grassroots movements to take them on. But there’s another, often-overlooked lever for change that business has unique access to: creativity.

As Zoe Scaman recently put it:

“Brands will collectively spend over $1.07 trillion on advertising this year. That's more than the GDP of 175 countries. That's cultural influence at a scale that most activists can only dream about. They employ millions of creatives, strategists, and media experts whose job is literally to shift perception and behaviour. That's an army of skilled persuaders who could be deployed toward something more meaningful than selling more shit.”

Brands are able to marshal some of the world’s best creative thinkers and put their minds to work on the enormous problems of our time. The same imagination that can dream up intergalactic worlds and make fast food brands feel like part of the national furniture, can also be pointed toward the project of creating a better future for us all.

Why should they, you might ask?

There’s both a business case and a moral case - that could well be the subject of its own post. But here’s the short version:

The business case. When done well, this kind of work unlocks real commercial value - disrupting categories, creating new revenue streams, and building long-term brand equity. An often overlooked benefit is that it also improves internal culture and performance.

The moral case: as some of the wealthiest and most influential entities in the world, businesses have a responsibility to take care of the planet and societies they profit from. And frankly, if today’s gravest threats continue to go unresolved, the system from which they profit may soon be upended.

No, of course creativity alone can’t end wars and cure diseases. But businesses can absolutely weaponise it to help save the world, in four distinct ways.

Disrupting Market Paradigms
Establishing New Norms
Unlocking Breakthrough Solutions
Imagining New Futures

1. Disrupting Market Paradigms

"Business as usual is wrecking the planet. But business unusual could just save it." — Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever.

If commerce is the engine of capitalism - and capitalism as it stands is on a collision course with ecological collapse - then building a business that disrupts an unsustainable category is one of the most powerful mechanisms for systemic change we have.

It’s a chance to rewrites the rules of value creation: to prove that profit, planetary health and a progressive mission can in fact co-exist.

But it’s not easy. In fact, it might be one of the hardest things in the world to pull off - given market leaders are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo.

The few businesses who have managed it - those I call the Progressive Disruptors - all seem to have cracked a consistent formula:

Superior or competitive product experience + progressive mission (backed up with committed action) + highly creative brand strategy = Progressive Disruption

Take the explosion of secondhand fashion. Platforms like Vinted, Vaster Collective and The Real Real have transformed it from dusty and niche to desirable and mainstream. Nearly one in four UK clothing purchases is now secondhand (per OC&C), and globally, resale is on track to hit 10% of fashion sales this year.

Vinted became France's largest clothes retailer this year not by preaching about circularity, but by making buying and selling effortless, offering unbeatable bargains, and glamorising the “pre-loved thrill” and piggy-backing off the cachet of the designer brands sold on the platform.

Who Gives A Crap disrupted toilet paper (of all things) by combining soft, sustainable materials, a serious social mission and eye-catching toilet humour. Now they’re the UK’s third-largest toilet paper brand. Not bad for a D2C upstart in a commodity category.

One to watch is NotCo, the Chilean startup using AI to mimic animal proteins, challenging the taste-sacrifice of plant-based foods. Rather than fighting Big Food from the outside, they’ve partnered with Kraft Heinz to develop plant-based alternatives across its portfolio. And their marketing is just as disruptive. In NotSoHappyAnimal, diners scanned smiling animal logos only to hear animals sing about their grim fate. Previously they used AI to visualise elderly cows, pigs or chicken, since they don’t exist in the food industry.

Progressive Disruption doesn’t just steal market share. It changes the category paradigm, forcing everyone else to evolve or risk being left behind. And in doing so, it transforms a core category of commerce for the better, whether it’s how we shop, eat or wipe our bottoms.

2. Establishing New Norms

“The most dangerous phrase in the English language is ‘We’ve always done it this way.” — Grace Hopper

We’re deeply habituated to the way things have always been. Driving petrol cars. Buying fast fashion. Booking short-haul flights. Many of us know these choices aren’t sustainable, but stats, guilt trips, and earnest appeals rarely shift deeply ingrained behaviours.

Creativity, however, can. It has the power to make the sustainable choice feel like an upgrade, not a sacrifice.

At Onward, we like to say sustainability needs both Substance & Sparkle.

Substance is the rigour: impact stats, CO₂ savings, certifications, materials, supply chains. It’s what says “This is legit. No greenwash here.” But on its own, Substance doesn’t move the needle.

Sparkle is the stuff that makes people actually want to buy the product or change their habits. Drawing on the psychological levers of decision-making: identity, aspiration, belonging, humour and cultural relevance to rewire what we perceive as “normal” or “cool”. And sometimes that means not mentioning sustainability at all, if something else works better.

“The pull of identity, aspiration, and cultural belonging is usually way stronger than the quiet voice of “be responsible.” — Brittany Sierra, Green Behaviour.

Rimowa didn’t sell pristine refurbished suitcases through its Re-Crafted program and wang on about circularity. Instead they sold the romance of well-travelled luggage, with stickers and tags from previous owners intact, making “used” more interesting than “new”.

Trainline didn’t lead with the fact that travelling by train creates 7 times less CO₂ than plane travel. Instead they cheekily urged Britain to save the planet by using their “glorious round things”.

Reformation didn’t foreground the sustainability of their fabrics. Instead they hired Pete Davidson to poke fun at his dating history, choosing cultural cachet over carbon stats.

Then there’s what I call Subliminal Sustainability: not centring it in your storytelling and beating people over the head with it, but subtly weaving it into the fabric of your stories, usually through characters casually making sustainable choices, so it simply feels like the norm.

The gold standard for this approach is still the Designated Driver campaign of the late ‘80s. Hollywood wove the concept into 160+ shows, such as Cheers and Dallas, turning it into a household phrase and helping cut alcohol-related traffic deaths by 30%.

Could the same be done for sustainable living today? Only 2.8% of US film & TV scripts from 2016–2020 even mentioned climate. And just 6% of ads tested by Kantar in 2024-25 featured sustainable behaviours in the foreground or background of the story.

It’s certainly tougher to pull off in today’s fragmented media landscape. But imagine if Netflix, as the world’s unofficial TV network, took up the challenge. Emily from Emily in Paris hops on the Eurostar instead of flying to Rome. Jessica in Too Much gets complimented on a dress and says “Charity shop. Ten quid.” And just imagine the impact if Tik-Tok and Instagram started rewarding creators for weaving sustainable behaviours into their content.

It’s trickier in ads, where every second counts. But that’s precisely the creative challenge: How can you subliminally add those “sustainability beats” to your story in the same way you might find moments for jokes or product shots?

It could be establishing shots with solar panels on rooftops. Couples zipping around cities at night on e-bikes. Friends grabbing coffee in reusable cups.

Multiply these choices across the world’s most-watched content, and we might start to uproot old habits and normalise new, sustainable ones.

3. Unlocking Breakthrough Solutions

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” — George Lois

If generative AI has taught adland anything, it’s that their true value lies in lateral creative thinking - and knowing when an idea is breakthrough or bad/bland.

Our biggest social issues need exactly this kind of thinking. With the world’s creative firepower at their fingertips, brands can partner with NGOs and subject experts to tackle issues relevant to what they sell and/or stand for.

Some of the smartest solutions come from connecting social issues to the things people already love, getting them to engage in ways a straighter, more earnest approach never could.

Spotify’s Sounds Right incentivised artists to mix natural soundscapes into their tracks, sending a share of streaming royalties to conservation charities — with 150 million streams raising over $40 million already.

Apple & Warner Music’s Saylists made speech therapy fun for kids by swapping dull worksheets for singing along to Taylor Swift.

Deutsche Telekom’s Sea Hero Quest gamified dementia research, crowdsourcing an unparalleled 117 years of data from 4.3 million players.

In each case the brand didn’t simply cut a cheque. They tapped into creative areas people love - music and gaming - to deliver an effective solution no one saw coming.

Meanwhile, we’re on the brink of a Cambrian explosion of AI-led creativity, with brands already finding ingenious ways to leverage it for good.

Last year O2’s Daisy, an AI-powered granny, intentionally wasted phone scammers’ time with endless waffle, and Orange’s Safer Phone used AI to censor dangerous content on French teens’ phones.

Whether it’s tapping into popular culture or harnessing the latest tech, brands - with their unmatched creative resources and reach - are uniquely placed to unlock new solutions to some of our biggest problems.

4. Imagining New Futures

“We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” — Buckminster Fuller

Our biggest obstacle to a better future might be imagination itself. Most people’s mental models of tomorrow are vague, dystopian, or just more of today.

But if we can see a better world - and really feel it, and imagine our place in it - we can believe that it is possible, and begin the hard, exhilarating work of making it real.

That’s where creativity comes in. Especially storytelling, which can take abstract, utopian ideas and render them as future worlds that feel lived-in, exciting, and entirely possible.

The UN’s recent Turning Over A New Leaf report sketched out a stunning vision of a world realigned with nature - where cities hum with biodiversity and economies are designed around care and compassion. As Eberle, one of its contributors, put it:

“The real value of the report is showing us that it’s totally achievable. After all, what was made can be unmade. Ideas once considered idealistic can become realistic. Unshackled from entrenched social constructs, utopian futures don’t have to be so, well, utopian.”

They quote, Dr. Christie Manning, a psychologist who specialises in climate action:

“What is psychologically helpful is to have a vision and to be able to imagine something that is not rooted in the here and now of all the things that are wrong, but to imagine ways that the world could be that would be healthy, happy, and joyful”

Yet reading the report, I couldn’t help think what a shame it lives only as a PDF.

We desperately need culture to pick it up and run with it. We need filmmakers, game designers, ad creatives and artists to make such a future tangible and felt.

Because otherwise we’re drowning in dystopia. This year alone brought new seasons of Squid Game 2, The Last Of Us and Severance. It’s understandable as conflict makes for compelling drama. But what if the next big mainstream hit, say Emily in Paris, was set in the lust, decarbonised city the UN imagines? Same messy relationships, same high fashion - just set against a different kind of aspirational backdrop. Suddenly such a future doesn’t seem so alien or improbable to a mainstream audience.

A few glimmers of this are already out there.

We need more games like Terra Nil where players restore barren wastelands into rich ecosystems, teaching regenerative design through play. We need more ads like Chobani’s “Dear Alice” that renders eco-cities of the future in gorgeous animation, bringing to life a grandmother’s letter to her granddaughter.

Businesses themselves can be vessels for a better future. Tony’s Chocolonely was founded by journalists horrified by child labour on cocoa farms in West Africa. Their business exists to prove a exploitation-free chocolate industry is possible - from their supply chain and legal structure to their unequally-sized bars meant to symbolise an industry still unequally divided.

Brands can also jolt us awake with stark visions of the future if we stay on our current course. The WWF used AI to imagine two parallel futures for UK nature - one flourishing, the other devastated. Frozen Planet II and EastEnders reimagined its iconic London map intro with a flooding Thames, forcing the general public to confront how climate change could soon render their own backyard unliveable. Bordeaux 2050 wine and Fat Tire’s Torched Earth Ale gave us a bitter taste of what our favourite booze could become under climate breakdown.

So whether painting a vivid vision of a better future - or issuing a warning about the one we’re hurtling toward - brands can help stretch our sense of the possible, and galvanise us into action today.

In Summary

This piece is a call to businesses everywhere to use your unmatched access to the very best of human creativity to help create a better world. Sometimes this will directly drive commercial value. Other times, like seeding sustainable choices into content, it won’t. But as mentioned in the moral case in the intro, I believe if businesses can afford to spend millions to influence people to buy a little more, they also have a responsibility to use a fraction of that influence to make the world they operate in a little better.

It’s also a call to the creative industries: to push for more projects and briefs that will have a positive impact, and to look for hidden opportunities within the purely commercial ones that land on your desk. Because I can’t think of a more meaningful use of our creative talents than helping to produce a future that is better than the present we find ourselves in.