Purpose Under Pressure: 5 Shifts That Changed Brands in 2025

2025 was a complicated year for purpose-driven brands.

The environment that once supported CSR, DEI, sustainability, and social impact work became more polarized, with these programs facing heightened political and public scrutiny in the US. 

In Canada, organizations are navigating tighter budgets, rising costs, and higher expectations for transparency and equity. Generally, consumers are more skeptical, interest-holders more vocal, and the issues brands are expected to engage with are more complex.

We believe demand for purpose hasn’t necessarily disappeared, it’s intensified. And in 2025, purpose stopped being a differentiator and became a strategic imperative. As we move into 2026, five shifts are reshaping what it means to lead with purpose in a credible and durable way.

#1 Trust and Transparency Have Become Competitive Advantages

As CSR, DEI, and ESG came under sustained public and political attack, particularly in the US, trust emerged as a clear differentiator for purpose-driven brands. Audiences are less interested in perfection and more focused on honesty, consistency, and proof.

Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows trust remains a key driver of brand loyalty, especially in polarized environments. Benevity’s State of Corporate Purpose report reinforces that silence carries risk. When organizations step back from communicating impact, trust erodes internally and externally.

That dynamic played out clearly in 2025.

• Procter & Gamble faced a class-action lawsuit over Charmin’s environmental claims , alleging the brand misled consumers by marketing the product as sustainable while sourcing from old-growth forests.
• Patagonia took a different approach. In its Work in Progress report , the company openly documented where it was falling short on regenerative agriculture and supply-chain goals — strengthening trust rather than weakening it, and reinforcing Patagonia’s long-standing credibility.
• Indigenous-owned beauty brand Cheekbone Beauty continues to embed purpose into how the business operates, pairing transparent sustainability reporting with long-term commitments to Indigenous community investment, responsible sourcing, and accountable growth. As founder Jenn Harper puts it, “Our goal is to become a global example of how brands can do good while doing well,” reinforcing credibility through consistency rather than one-off initiatives.

#2 Purpose Is a Business Strategy, Not a Brand Position

In 2025, many leaders stopped treating purpose as a communications territory and began embedding it into operations, talent strategy, partnerships, and long-term planning.

With 88% of leaders saying purpose strategies are contributing directly to business resilience, particularly in talent retention and customer trust — it’s clear purpose work is expanding beyond CSR teams into cross-functional roles. Impact initiatives are increasingly expected to connect to outcomes and KPIs, not just values statements.

Some brands are already demonstrating what this looks like in practice.

• Interface’s recent Impact Report shows how purpose shapes operations through regenerative manufacturing, climate commitments, and long-term systems change. This work builds on Interface’s Factory as a Forest philosophy, treating manufacturing facilities as regenerative systems rather than extractive ones, and positioning purpose as a core business strategy.
• Danone continued strengthening its sustainability-linked executive compensation model, tying leadership pay to environmental and social performance metrics, embedding purpose in governance rather than brand alone.

#3 Values-Based Audiences Expect Alignment, Not Aspirations

Even as DEI and ESG face backlash in the US, audiences have not lowered their expectations. They have become more discerning about alignment across an organization.

Research consistently shows that people are willing to change purchasing behaviour in favour of brands that reflect their values. At the same time, superficial or inconsistent purpose claims are being called out faster and more publicly, particularly around greenwashing and labour practices.

• In 2025, Arc’teryx drew global criticism after sponsoring a fireworks display on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau that damaged ecologically sensitive grasslands. The incident prompted broader scrutiny of the brand’s environmental claims, including inconsistencies around PFAS-free messaging across markets.
• Tim Hortons continues to frame itself as iconically Canadian, but that positioning has been called into question more frequently over the past year. There’s renewed attention on the brand’s ownership and economic footprint that has prompted consumers to reconsider what “Canadian” actually means when it comes to supporting local businesses.

#4 Community Expectations Are Reshaping Brand Strength

With rising activism, interest-holder pressure, and increased visibility into corporate behaviour, purpose-driven brands can no longer operate as broadcasters. They are expected to operate as collaborators.

Consumer activism continues to influence brand behaviour, often more powerfully than traditional marketing. Communities expect involvement, dialogue, and shared ownership, not surface-level engagement.

• Indigenous retailer Aaniin has used community-focused pop-ups at CF Toronto Eaton Centre over the past two years to centre Indigenous makers and entrepreneurs, demonstrating how brand strength can be built by redistributing visibility and economic opportunity rather than leading with a single brand narrative.
• Ben & Jerry’s maintained its outspoken positions on social and humanitarian issues in 2025, even as tensions with parent company Unilever escalated. Being sidelined internally reinforced the brand’s credibility externally, strengthening trust with a community that values consistency over corporate comfort.

#5 Executing Purpose Is Becoming More Complex

Executing purpose is not straightforward. Brands face heightened expectations around ethics, representation, AI use, content integrity, and measurable outcomes. The EU’s Green Claims Directive forced brands across multiple sectors to retract or revise environmental claims, raising the bar globally for evidence-based sustainability communication.

In Canada, misalignment carried visible consequences.

• Loblaw emphasized affordability amid inflation, but strong profits and continued price pressure sharpened public frustration, fuelling renewed consumer activism and boycott calls.
• WestJet’s labour disputes and service disruptions clashed with its community-first brand positioning, showing how operational strain can undermine purpose-led narratives.
• The Banking on Climate Chaos 2025 report placed major Canadian banks among the world’s largest fossil fuel financiers, while 2025 reporting showed several institutions scaling back climate targets, exiting net-zero alliances, or limiting disclosure. Together, these shifts have sharpened public scrutiny of the gap between how banks speak about sustainability and CSR publicly and what is happening behind the scenes.

What this means heading into 2026

These shifts point to a clear reality for brands leading with purpose. Purpose is no longer something that lives comfortably in messaging, campaigns, or values statements. 

It’s being tested in operations, governance, labour practices, pricing decisions, partnerships, and public accountability. Interest-holders are paying closer attention, regulators are raising the bar, and contradictions between narrative and lived experience are being surfaced faster and more publicly.

The brands that are holding trust are demonstrating clarity, consistency, and a willingness to be honest about trade-offs, gaps, and progress. They treat purpose as a discipline that shapes decisions, not a positioning layer applied after the fact.

As 2026 approaches, the work ahead isn’t about saying more. It’s about aligning more, between values and behaviour, ambition and reality, internal systems and external expression.