The Dove global marketing lead, who is the jury president for the social purpose categories at The Drum Award Festival this year, explains the dos and don’ts of creating purposeful campaigns. Firdaous El Honsali a judge at The Drum Awards Festival 2024 / Dove “If you are looking for PR, you are doing purpose wrong,” says Firdaous El Honsali, vice-president for Dove global and North America. Sitting down with a publication that publishes brand purpose stories, El Honsali says that marketers getting a campaign in The Drum isn’t a marker of success.
“If your metric is the PR you created out of it, then that doesn’t say a lot. Then, you’ll be stuck in a position where you need something new every time to drive more PR.” The newness, she says, instead needs to come from the execution rather than purpose itself.
“Whatever social impact you commit to needs to be constant; it’s your awareness campaigns that should deliver PR.” Brands should be measuring the impact on peoples lives or on the planet. So, how many kids did you encourage to play sports? How many hectares of forest did you restore? This should then be benchmarked to make sure the impact is significant enough.
It’s El Honsali’s personal and professional mission to prove the business case for brand purpose . She is taking it upon herself to share the expertise learned at Dove, not just in setting purpose but from execution through to the right metrics to measure. When it comes to social purpose, El.