Marketing With Purpose Kit: Bringing Purpose and Empathy into Marketing

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
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.

**Michelle Brasfield** (0:16)
Welcome to the Marketing With Purpose series 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 Michelle, and in each episode, we sit down with marketing experts to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and resonate with their audience. Together, we'll dive into what's working, what's not, and how purpose and empathy can transform the way brands connect with people. Let's get started. Today, I'm joined by Stephen Sakach, founder and CEO of Zero Company Performance Marketing and AICMO. With a background spanning digital media, journalism, and emotional intelligence, Stephen has built a reputation for designing marketing systems that scale with heart. Through Zero Company's mantra Bliss, Build Love Into Scalable Systems, he has helped brands connect more deeply with their audiences, and with AICMO, he's pioneering empathetic AI solutions that marry data with human values. In this episode, we'll explore bringing purpose and empathy into marketing, and I'm excited to dive in how meaning and metrics can go hand in hand. Welcome, Stephen.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:31)
It's great to be here. It's fun to be on the other side of the questions.

**Michelle Brasfield** (1:36)
Oh, I bet. Before we dive in, I'd love to hear why was bringing purpose and empathy into marketing, the topic you chose to explore with us today, and what makes it so important right now.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:51)
Yeah, I think it's something that we want to make sure people understand at the same time of that it's profitable, right? That this is something that is not just this soft sort of skill or something that you can build a nice to have. This is actually marketers want their data. So we know that there's a 306% higher lifetime value when brands can form an emotional connection with their customers. So exploring purpose and empathy, it's not just soft, it's profitable. But I think what we also realize is that people are increasingly buying based on shared values, right? So it's vital, I think, for marketers to understand that kind of alignment with their customers. So looking at the bigger picture, I think humanity is evolving more toward empathy and authenticity. This is kind of the way consciousness evolves, is we take on more perspectives, we become more empathetic. And so you're starting to see that mirrored more in the business consciousness out there. So you see things like the conscious capitalism movement, right, where business consciousness is kind of considering all the stakeholders of a business, not just the shareholder. So that's an empathetic kind of approach. So we're seeing this grow through business. And this is how healthy capitalism grows, right?
It's really the future of business. And along with that, I think it's going to be the future of marketing. So purpose gives us that direction for our marketing. And then empathy really kind of gives us that calibration, right? It allows us to tune in to who we serve. And that purpose really allows us to define why we exist. And so I think those are really important with all the noise out there right now. More and more brands on social media. It feels like marketing has kind of lost its soul. But I think there's just so much noise that you really have to cut through that with some meaning. And then now we've got AI in the mix, right? And so if we don't scale love and empathy alongside that kind of AI decision making, we're just going to automate more and more disconnection.

**Michelle Brasfield** (4:12)
Yeah, wonderful, perfect answer. Thank you. CMOs are often pulled between near-term campaign results and long-term brand building. How do you ensure your marketing strategy stays aligned with the company's growth goals? And where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen?

**Stephen Sakach** (4:32)
Yeah, I think this goes back to that purpose, having that North Star, right? So that allows you over time to stay true to that purpose with your marketing. So I love seeing campaigns that age well, like Dove Real Beauty. For like 20 years, they've stayed true to that purpose, helping women see themselves as beautiful. And really, that came off this study where they saw like, it's only like 3% of women describe themselves as that. And they're like, how can we be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, which you see a lot of marketing in that beauty industry kind of doing. So they're able to run an ad 20 years ago. That still holds up today because of that purpose. So that's not saying they're not looking at clicks and not looking at any of the data, but thinking about that long-term growth, that's kind of how you do it while being able to hit your KPIs and stuff.