5 Minutes with … Barry Walker
Head of purpose transformation at Wunderman Thompson Australia, Barry Walker, is a seasoned strategist with a remarkable journey across diverse markets and cultures. With over a decade of experience in various strategic roles, including brand planning and digital strategy, Barry brings a unique perspective to the evolving role of purpose and meaning in advertising.
Brands have long grappled with the concept of purpose – some more gracefully than others. Now, Barry is breaking down what a healthy relationship with purpose might really look like.
Speaking to LBB’s Tom Loudon, Barry sheds light on the significance of purpose transformation within organisations, the integration of purpose initiatives into marketing efforts, and the future trends of purpose-driven advertising.
LBB> Your role as the head of Purpose transformation at Wunderman Thompson Australia seems to involve a unique blend of strategy and purpose-driven initiatives. Could you elaborate on what purpose transformation entails, and its significance in today’s advertising landscape?
Barry> Well, there are a few questions wrapped up in here. For me, the most important one is around the significance of purpose transformation. But I’ll park your reference to the advertising landscape for now.
Instead, let’s point purpose back inside, before any strategy or purpose-driven initiatives, as you put it, to the company itself. So, to an organisational landscape, not placed in today, but within the days that lie ahead.
Purpose represents the company’s source made visible. By its very nature, it is, therefore, its central strategic asset. It represents the motive of the company, yes, but really of the people that make up that company. First and foremost, purpose transformation is a human endeavour – so you have to talk to people, you have to help guide them from head, to heart, to gut, if you’re lucky. And not just at the board level or C-suite but diagonally across the entire workforce. All of those conversations are geared towards positive contributions. I don’t know about you, but the last time I looked around, the world could do with some of that, especially from business.
But back to significance. It lies in helping the company realise the value it wants to contribute as a collective whole. Now, will the value of that hold any significance in today’s advertising landscape? Well, yes would be an understatement. But our focus can never begin there.
LBB> With over a decade of experience across various strategic roles, including brand planning and digital strategy, how has your journey shaped your perspective on the evolving role of purpose and meaning in advertising?
Barry> I’m not sure the role of purpose has evolved in advertising. Over the years, I’ve come across countless brands espousing a purposeful existence. At best this shows up as loosely held brand justifications centred around ESG credentials, or some grafted-on CSR initiatives.
There’s an interesting book that comes to mind here - Can’t Sell Won’t Sell by Steve Harrison, that talks about why adland stopped selling and started trying to save the world. I always say there’s no such thing as ‘brand purpose’. But, and it’s a big but, if a brand has the privilege of coming from an organisation that is truly purpose-led, the question of whether or not to leverage that purpose in the market becomes a strategic one.
I talked earlier about a company’s source made visible. Well, that’s the thing. If a company does make the strategic decision to make it visible, amazing things happen because guess what? They get to tell the truth to their employees, families, customers, and investors. And that can take many, many forms, potentially including advertising.
LBB> You have extensive international experience, from Australia, to the UK, and the US. How has exposure to different markets and cultures influenced your approach to purpose-driven campaigns and strategies?
Barry> I’ll show my age here and quote one of the greatest rappers of all time, sorry, not Eminem but William Michael Griffin Jr., otherwise known as The Kid Wizard and The God MC, who said, “It ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.” Sure, markets and cultures differ wherever you go. But that’s the mistake often made when it comes to purpose. It isn’t another P-word, a re-cooked, upgraded P-ositioning. Like I said earlier, unearthing the company’s purpose is a human endeavour. It means surfacing what people have come together to achieve that they can’t achieve by themselves.
Wherever I’ve found myself, Africa, Kuwait, the US, Australia, I’ve found people to be pretty much the same. Just like my approach to surfacing purpose.
LBB> You’ve held roles such as senior strategist and planning director. How has your background in strategy prepared you for your current role in driving purpose transformation, and what unique insights do you bring to the table?
Barry> I’m not sure about unique insights. But, no matter what role I’ve assumed over the years, I’ve always had the privilege of being free to speak to people from every walk of life. Imagine that, getting to immerse yourself in people’s lives, getting to listen and learn from them. I never take that for granted. Again, it’s hardly a unique insight here, but as I’ve aged, I’ve learned that there’s a damn good reason we have two ears and only one mouth.
LBB> Could you share an example of a particularly impactful purpose-driven campaign you’ve been involved in and how it demonstrated the potential for aligning a brand’s values with its marketing message?
Barry> Even better, what about the company that discovered its employees wouldn’t feed its products to their own children, so it radically reformulated its ingredients, stripping out all the bad stuff? At the same time, it decided to pay its suppliers more than the industry average because it saw them not as suppliers but as real partners. These and other real actions moved it from number five to number two in a retail market dominated by multinationals. And it has stayed there.
Or the company that decided to disrupt itself years before the mandated change came its way by reimagining its role in Australia’s energy system. Protecting itself and its employees from the energy transition by leading it - creating products and services to help people in energy hardship, building infrastructure in preparation for technology change, and trialling new ways for customers to store, buy and trade in Energy.
Were there communications at play in these examples? You bet. But there was no need to align brand values with a marketing message. Just the realisation of a movement, motivated from within, and then shared with others.
LBB> Education has been a significant part of your journey, from your Bachelor of Communications to your WPP Fellowship. How has your academic background and continuous learning influenced your approach to leading purpose-driven initiatives?
Barry> I’ve been really lucky. The Fellowship gave me access to some of the most interesting minds in the business. Some good, some not so. So, I figured out pretty quickly what to pick up and what to leave well alone.
The people you encounter there are usually next-level thinkers, in my world, people who saw better ways for businesses to be. Soon enough, that thinking is no longer fringe but widely accepted as the way forward. So I continue to look at the edges.
LBB> Wunderman Thompson is a renowned agency known for its innovative and creative work. How do you foster a culture of purpose and innovation within your team?
Barry> At Wunderman Thompson, we know how, when and where purpose can be best activated, and we’ve built our teams around the particular areas of expertise needed to do just that. Sometimes that may call for a transactional application or not, but, for the most part, it demands transformational thinking – strategic and creative. And we all show up for that.
LBB> Looking ahead, what trends do you foresee in the realm of purpose-driven advertising, and how do you envision the role of head of purpose transformation evolving to address these trends in the coming years?
Barry> Well, for businesses, there are two paths ahead. The first is well-worn. It represents a continued manipulation of brand purpose, using an extrinsic version of “purpose” in the market to position and persuade. A shorter, transactional path, it will continue to be fraught with danger as people figure out the disconnect between what brands say and the operational truths of the businesses behind them. My prediction is that this path will see a thinning out over the years ahead. And, unfortunately for some, it will not be self-inflicted but mandated, more of a natural selection thing, instigated by customers, employees and investors alike.
And I’ve spent the entirety of this interview describing the second path. A road less travelled today but destined to become busier as companies move on their motive. To use the words of the British Academy in describing the future corporation – profiting from solving the problems of people and the planet, and not profiting from contributing to those problems.
I’ll leave it to the reader to think about which path they’d rather be on, either as a business, an employee, or as a customer. My role as head of purpose transformation is simply to guide those who choose it.
