Purpose + Product No Longer Secure Durable Brand Trust Today.
FutureBrand’s Healthcare 2025 data shows why the purpose/product binary fails.
Retire the Binary
The sector built its reputation on two pillars: scientific performance and noble mission. The FutureBrand Healthcare 2025 study documents a decade in which innovation and wellbeing remained bright spots, yet overall sector perception contracted; the “purpose or product” playbook no longer converts into durable equity.
The report’s own examples make the point: Novartis and AstraZeneca earn credibility through clinical impact; Eli Lilly’s mission elevates intent; during Covid this configuration met the moment, then momentum faded. The data argues for a structural change, not a messaging pivot.
Prove Resonance, Not Rhetoric
Two numbers define the risk. Emotional attachment rose to 41% at the height of the vaccine cycle and fell back to 35% by 2024; storytelling climbed to 39% then slid to 33%. Attention surged when brands were operating in public view; trust receded when scrutiny shifted to pricing, access, and data privacy. Innovation and purpose generate spikes; loyalty requires resonance that survives the news cycle. Treat “emotion” and “story” as measurable assets with operating targets, not cosmetics to drape over the product roadmap.
Build Story as a Continuous System
FutureBrand’s three outperforming models show what durable resonance looks like at scale: the Personal Innovator (attachment, innovation, mission), the Credible Visionary (authenticity, mission, consistency), and the Immersive Experience (individuality, story, pleasure).
The exemplars are concrete. Samsung’s Vision AI and accessibility program ladder to a human-centred purpose and deliver attachment beyond features. Microsoft pairs an expansive mission with governance and consistent delivery, building credibility that travels across products and contexts.
Mastercard turns payments into sensorial, inclusive experience, scoring 18 points above Healthcare on pleasure. The operational lesson is direct: pick a model, wire the organisation to it, and measure the same brand attributes the index tracks.
Balance the Corporate Halo with Product Intimacy
The report names the duality plainly: leaders must champion the corporate brand and the portfolio that moves quarterly outcomes. Reputation without product intimacy reads distant; product heroics without a trusted corporate frame lack permission to scale.
Build a two-speed system: corporate narrative that earns authenticity and mission scores over time, and product narratives that drive attachment at point of choice. This is not alternation; it is concurrent discipline with shared evidence standards.
Close the Sustainability Credibility Gap
Resource management remains a persistent weakness for Healthcare, ambition outpacing believable delivery. In categories where societal stakes are explicit, sustainability can’t be a parallel track; it must be embedded in how the brand claims to improve lives.
If the sector cannot substantiate environmental stewardship inside its trust equation, the rest of the promise discounts. The index’s message is unambiguous: purpose collapses when sustainability feels performative.
Outcomes as Competitive Contrast
What the data proves: A sector that increased scores across ten attributes through the Covid window is now losing altitude; attachment and story retrenched, exposing the limits of innovation- or mission-only strategies.
What the models solve: Personal Innovator, Credible Visionary, and Immersive Experience convert purpose and product into lived experience, outperforming Healthcare averages on the exact attributes that predict loyalty.
What leaders must operationalise: One chosen model, codified across teams and touchpoints, measured on the same attributes FutureBrand tracks. Corporate halo and product intimacy built together, not traded. Sustainability moved from statement to evidence so purpose remains credible.
Bottom Line
The Purpose/Product Binary No Longer Secures Trust.
FutureBrand’s 2025 evidence shows loyalty now accrues to brands that convert innovation and mission into continuous, human-centred experience, and can prove it on the attributes that matter: attachment, story, consistency, authenticity. Build the system; pick the model; measure what compounds.
