Marketing With Purpose Kit: Breaking Down Silos Across Teams

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:14)
Well, come back to Marketing With Purpose, a segment of The Bliss Business Podcast where we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes beyond the numbers. I'm Stephen Sakach and in each episode, one of our team members sits down with a marketing expert to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and resonate with their audience and together we'll dive into what's working, what's not and how purpose and empathy can transform the way brands connect with people. So let's get started today. I'm excited to tell you I'm joined by Sara Whiteleather, Senior Director of Marketing at Batteries Plus, and so we're continuing the conversation with Batteries Plus.
And Sara brings a deep experience across digital strategy, growth marketing, e-commerce, customer engagement with leadership roles, expanding consulting agency and brand side organizations. And so Sara, bear with me here.
I'm going to embarrass you with some of your background here. So Sara has held leadership roles at Nationwide Insurance and a fintech startup, leading initiatives focused on digital transformation, customer acquisition, and business growth. Her agency experience includes executive leadership positions at AMP Agency and Digitas LBI North America, where she led growth of leading retail, CPG, and consumer banking brands. And throughout her career, she has led record-breaking new business wins, built high-performing teams, and delivered measurable growth for both emerging and established brands. And we're going to explore breaking down silos across teams. And I'm excited to dive into how marketing leaders can create stronger alignment between teams that operate separately. And at its best, digital growth is not just about optimizing campaigns. It's about connecting people and systems and insights and shared goals so that the customer experience feels seamless and the business can grow with more clarity and purpose. Sara, welcome to the show.

**Sara Whiteleather** (2:21)
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. And I'm really excited about the topic we're going to discuss today.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:28)
Yes, Sara. So before we dive in, I'd love to hear why breaking down silos across teams is a topic you chose to explore with us today. And what makes that so important right now?

**Sara Whiteleather** (2:39)
Yes, I love this topic. I feel like it's a very under-discussed topic, just in terms of how much collaboration can have a direct impact on the business, bringing people together to solve common, shared problems. I've seen firsthand just how organizations really have left a lot of opportunity on the table when different departments, people are working independently instead of collaboratively. And personally, you know, the biggest successes I've had in my career have always come from working with teams, working with, you know, my stakeholders across departments towards that shared outcome.
And I think that shared sense of purpose is important. You know, we're innately connected, you know, humans through that type of experience. And so getting people to collaborate and have that shared sense of purpose is what motivates all of us.
The other piece, I think, is, you know, when you just think about the consumer expectations that exist today, you know, consumers don't view brands as independent departments, or they don't see a customer experience through independent departments. You know, if a problem happens, they don't care if that problem belongs to marketing, e-commerce, operations, customer service. You know, they expect a seamless experience. And so, no longer can these departments operate independently. Those problems are shared problems across the entire organization.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:15)
That's so true. I mean, like, from a marketing standpoint, if there's a problem with it, if it's not in marketing, we still, it's a problem for marketing, trust us, yeah.

**Sara Whiteleather** (4:23)
Absolutely, exactly. And usually, you at least play a piece of that problem.
But yeah, I mean, I know you heard a lot about this from Chris in the meeting you guys had last Friday. We're a franchise business as well, so we hear all the time from our franchise owners about problems that have nothing to do with marketing, and it's still our responsibility to figure out a way to cross-functionally solve those challenges. So whether you're working with a franchise owner, you're delivering experiences for a customer, I mean, that deep collaboration across departments is just a critical piece of business operation now.

**Stephen Sakach** (5:04)
Yeah, I mean, and that's why, like on our show, we get into all these other areas of business that aren't kind of marketing-related because we want to make sure that that consumption experience, because like you said, someone's going to experience something with that company, and if it's a negative business problem, that's a problem for the marketing side.