Purpose, when it comes to brands, is a strange thing. When it works well, and the brand can truly attest to having a reason for existing and working beyond the product, purpose can catapult a brand to earned media adulation and broad positive sentiment. For Heineken, its tagline, if not its purpose, is to ‘open your world’. This has placed the brand in the firing line of certain critics, who argue that that brands overstate – to the point of self-delusion – their role in people’s lives.
Heineken, however, is more sober. “We’re not there to change the...