‘Brands can save the world’ - Propaganda founder Julian Kynaston discusses how branding can drive social change

“Purpose now has to be central to branding,” he said.

“The world is in a bad position, and we can't wait for governments any more, so it's the job of brands, in my opinion, to save the world, and I think we can.”

Mr Kynaston noted his belief that although social purpose is now a key part of what both employees and customers expect and want from brands, monetizing these issues is still the best way to get businesses on board.

He said: “I think the minute you understand that you can monetize purpose, or say out loud that we should monetize it, you’ll get boards and directors saying ‘great, how do I do it?’

“Any market reformation is driven by pounds and pence and profits, and I think that's what people are failing to understand. But it can be celebratory, seeing these issues as a commercial opportunity.”

Mr Kynaston is also chair of Gen M, a brand partner which aims to increase visibility of the menopause, and re-think how women of a menopausal age are viewed.

He gives the firm as a key example of how branding can help to shape public opinion and discourse on a subject.

He said: “Gen M is the latest super brand that we’re building.

“We’ve created the number one brand in the area, and we’ve done it by saying that brands need to monetize the menopause to help improve the lives of these 15.8 million women who have 48 symptoms that people don't know about.

“The only way people are ever going to truly create that awareness is through brands, and they're going to do it through creating products and services that serve these issues.

“Success will look like supermarket aisles that say menopause on them.”

The firm has worked for some of the North’s biggest brands including GHD and Clipper Logistics, as well as national brands like Ann Summers.

Founded amidst the decline of the textiles industry in Huddersfield, Mr Kynaston notes how Propaganda’s Northern base has led the firm to think outside the box in terms of how to create a successful brand.

“Our job is to outthink the competition,” he said.

“And because we’re a Northern agency, something that we’ve said over the years is that not only do we have to outthink the competition, we have to do that amongst the backdrop of not once being able to outspend them.

“Even with GHD and Clipper, we were never given a limitless pot, we’ve always been given the opposite – what I call a tight northern budget – but we wouldn't have it any other way, because that's what marketing is to me.

“If you have the money you can just buy a result, the idea can be weak but you can spend a million on deploying it, but here the price forces you to go harder on the ideas.

“A marketeer for me is somebody that's got the savvy and the guile and the experience and can take a breadth of data and insight and give you a really clever idea, and I think that's why the North has got better marketers than the South, because that's what we’ve had to do.”