The Feed
When your purpose message deviates from your commercial message, both suffer. Integrating the two builds trust, sharpens relevance, and lifts a brand's commercial potential.
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Segregated commercial and purpose messaging says something to your audiences.
If your sustainability or impact page is separated from your homepage. If your purpose posts are disconnected from your social strategy. Or if your earned media withholds your purpose from your message.
It communicates a brand flaw that may be costing you.
You may be presenting a brand undermined by two distinct representations. Two disconnected versions of who you are, what you prioritize, and why you exist.
Two versions that, the further apart they sit, combine to undermine your brand's credibility.
"Two versions that, the further apart they sit, combine to undermine your brand's credibility."
Let's look at who searches for a brand's specific sustainability and purpose information. You will most likely find two dominant groups that, even when combined, represent a minority of your potential audience.
First, the advocates. The already converted. Those versed in or connected to purpose work who want to engage with dense specialist detail. Then the skeptics, who arrive ready to take aim, looking for flaws and inconsistencies.
In the United States, Yale's Fall 2025 tracking claims the environmentally "Alarmed" represent 25% and the "Dismissive" 11% of US audiences. Despite the fact that the Alarmed group has more than doubled since 2015, these poles currently represent a third of the people you need to reach. The remaining majority are currently more likely to receive a commercial-only message. This audience is your missing middle, and they represent an opportunity.
They do not read the full impact report, proactively search your commitments, or use this information to make their brand judgments. They meet brands where they present their product, and they require creativity, craft, and substance to be reached.
"The missing middle is the very audience that will deliver the circular economy"
This missing middle is the very audience that will deliver the circular economy. They are the people whose intentions will dictate the scale and longevity of real change. Yet they are regularly ignored by purpose messaging that is preoccupied with compliance audiences.
Your purpose can reach them when it is presented creatively, and intertwined with your commercial message.
But this can be easier said than done.
If you have tried to move your purpose message toward your consumer channel, you may have met some resistance. Brand gatekeepers are not being obstructive. In their mind, they are just being commercially prudent.
It's an understandable perspective. A brand's message can be crowded, and every addition dilutes it, potentially confuses it, and introduces risk if done badly. Research proves this out. A review in Psychology & Marketing synthesizing 94 studies found that product and service sustainability messaging can produce anxiety, guilt, shame, regret, and reduced enjoyment. The exact opposite of what marketers need to inspire.
But this outlines a need for purpose marketing to be done better, not for it to retreat and hide.
Retreat is what is happening. GlobeScan's tracking across 31 markets found that in 2025, only 36 percent of consumers reported seeing any sustainability messaging from brands, down from 49 percent two years earlier. ITV and System1 studied 1,000 British television ads that aired between 2020 and 2023 and found only 8 percent carried an environmental message.
This is the problem HOWL was built to solve. It leverages sharp creativity and real audience insight to make brand and campaign presentations relevant, trustworthy, consistent, authentic, and inspiring. Never preachy, implausible, or controlling.
"This outlines a need for purpose marketing to be done better, not for it to retreat and hide."
The same ITV and System1 study showed that TV ads carrying an environmental message performed in line with the national average, and that their success rested heavily on their execution rather than their message. An emphasis on hope over fear proved important. Happiness and surprise moved behavior. Dread stalled it.
There are brands that prove that this can be done.
Tide reformulated its detergent so that it could genuinely clean in cold water, then sold the message on household savings rather than carbon. North American cold loads rose from 48 percent in 2020 to 57 percent in 2023. DP World asked why frozen food ships at minus 18°C, challenged the lack of scientific basis for the standard, and built a coalition around a move to minus 15°C, which was adopted by roughly 60 percent of the container shipping industry. IKEA buys back used furniture for store credit and resells it, so the circular act and the commercial transaction are united.
Strip these examples back, and a blueprint for success emerges. Each starts with a flawed default that needs to be challenged. Each then changes something in the business, so a better version becomes available. Creativity draws the audience toward the opportunity by making it relevant and inspiring without judgment, and by introducing the solution. The message leads with a benefit the audience already wants, and is distributed where target audiences already are.
Purpose and sustainability messaging must be crafted to both work with and enhance effective commercial messaging. It must deliver impact and sales, as well as compliance. Failure on any front is failure for the brand.
Success is built on trust: substantive claims, consistency at every touch-point, and relevance for your whole audience rather than the fringes. It means reassuring brand managers about the commercial value that purpose can help realize. It also requires powerful creativity.
HOWL was created for brands that want to achieve this success.
If your purpose message is bypassing your missing middle, come and talk to us.
Paul Newton is an EVP and leads integrated strategy for both HOWL and Antenna Group, delivering on the agency's mission to promote sustainability, purpose, and impact. In his role, he manages a diverse team of creatives, technologists, and project managers to deliver innovative brand and campaign solutions that help clients inspire positive environmental or societal impact, and reach their commercial potential. He also leads the agency's innovation and IP and is the architect of both THE READ and the Conscious Compass, a 360 brand diagnostic.
