On Brand Purpose and Finding Your ‘Why’
We tend to focus on the ‘what.’ What is my niche, what is my offer? But an equally important question is ‘why.’
What you offer is a straightforward fact: “I offer editorial photography,” or “I offer organic skincare.” It’s informational, but it doesn’t help an audience understand why they should choose you.
Your ‘why’ is your purpose, or the reason your brand exists (if you’d like to explore the foundations of brand purpose, you can begin with Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, Start With Why.)
An example of a brand with purpose is Kye Intimates. Their About page expresses their purpose as: “Balancing softness with functionality, and romance with modernity […] guided by the belief that what we wear should deepen our connection—to ourselves, to one another and to the world we move through.” It’s a lovely statement in itself, treating intimate clothing as something that connects us to ourselves, to our bodies, and to the wider world.
Kye’s focus is on sustainability and offering items that are long-lasting, made for people who want to form memories around and have an emotional connection to the pieces they buy, and their purpose is visible through their processes and practices. The pieces are handmade in a local, female-owned factory, created from deadstock materials, shipped in minimal and recycled packaging, and samples are donated to I Support the Girls, an organization that distributes essential items to homeless women.
Kye Intimates, About page.
That being said, not every brand’s purpose needs to come from ethics or sustainability, and it doesn’t always need to be grand or world-changing. It can be formed from something personal you’ve seen or noticed. Good Girl Snacks say: “The trends online following ‘hot girl walks’, ‘girl dinners’ etc. are used as adjectives to describe tapping into female energy […] We wanted to do the same with our snacks […] we want them to make you happy. We invite everyone and anyone to tap into the hot girl energy we know you all harness.” They wanted to lean into a particular playful, feminine feeling and made that it visible throughout their brand, from conversational copy to bold colors, illustrations, and scroll-based animations. If you don’t have a grand plan, consider what small, everyday experiences feel meaningful to you that you’d like to share through your brand.
Good Girl Snacks, About page.
There are a few caveats to consider when working on building purpose in your brand:
Purpose should be truthful and anchored in what you believe. Don’t claim to be a purpose-led, ethical, or radical brand if that isn’t what you are. A disconnect between a brand’s words and its reality is often worse than not having a why at all.
It should be visible. Saying ‘I believe in sustainability’ is forgettable because thousands of business can say the same. Claiming ethics isn’t a big differentiator anymore: being ethical should be the baseline for a brand in 2026. If your purpose is truly rooted in sustainability, it needs to be visible in your products, offers, and marketing. In essence, it needs to be part of your brand world and identity. Audiences are looking for brands that stand by what they believe in.
It should be part of your brand’s emotional world. Les Binet and Peter Field’s study of the IPA Effectiveness Databank found that emotional campaigns are more likely to drive business growth, and that brand building means creating associations and mental bonds that encourage audiences to choose your brand. Purpose is an important part of this, but it isn’t the whole picture, and I recommend considering it alongside your brand’s wider emotional world and narrative.
Finding Your Brand Purpose
There are several ways of thinking about purpose, but a good starting point is the Brand Ikigai framework. Ikigai is a Japanese concept often translated as “reason for being,” and the Brand Ikigai framework takes the form of a Venn diagram with four overlapping circles that represent:
1. What you love
What parts of life and work do you enjoy the most?
2. What you’re good at
What do people come to you for?
What skills do you possess?
3. What the world needs
What problems exist in the world that you can help solve?
What are people seeking when they come to you? What feeling do you want to evoke in your audience?
4. What you can be paid for
Where is there demand for your skills and abilities?
The middle of these four areas is where you can find your brand purpose: something that feels meaningful to you and suited to your skill set, while being viable as a business and having a positive effect on your audience.
This is not to say that your purpose will be immediately clear. You may need to revisit and rework your answers until your purpose emerges, and you may notice gaps and tensions, or struggle to find an interweaving purpose at all. That’s normal. Sometimes you need more experiences, new skills, or to speak to more people to be able to write down your answers, and purpose doesn’t need to be set in stone before launching a business. However, this is where I recommend working with a brand strategist. It can be really difficult to look at yourself and your own work and draw out the ideas behind it, and a second pair of eyes can offer you a fresh perspective connected to your wider strategy.
Making Your Brand Purpose Visible
Once you’ve found your purpose, the next step is to make it visible in your brand:
Talk about it
Weave your purpose into your website copy, social media posts, and campaigns (Oatly does a fantastic job at this).
Feature it in your offers
LoveShackFancy was created to “celebrate love and revel in the beauty of a flower-filled, rose-colored world,” and this outlook is evident in their products and product pages, where they describe the romance of each piece.
Reflect it in your images
Returning to the example of Kye Intimates, their imagery is sensual yet grounded, showing skin and women in natural, grounded poses, reflecting the brand’s connection to the body.
Use it to build campaigns
Patagonia’s Don’t Buy This Jacket campaign was an incredibly memorable piece of marketing where the brand it flipped it’s purpose into something provocative, asking consumers whether they needed to buy the jacket, calling attention to sustainability and fast fashion. Patagonia’s approach shows that purpose isn’t just about creating belonging. It can also help you take up a position in the market, showing what you are for and what you are against.
Patagonia’s Don’t Buy This Jacket advertisement, published in The New York Times on November 25, 2011. Image via Patagonia.
Show, don’t tell is good to keep in mind here. You should talk about your purpose, but it should also be felt. Your offers, story, and visuals all contribute to your brand’s emotional world and positioning.
Hi, I’m Hannah Shaw. I’m a designer, strategist, and curator at Studio Founded, a full-service creative studio creating brand worlds that invite dialogue and desire. If you’d like to discuss building your brand together, you can reach out to me here.
