Marketing With Purpose Kit: Bringing Purpose and Empathy into Marketing

**SPEAKER_1** (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.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:18)
Welcome to the 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 Tullio, 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 Gareth Bain. He's a fractional CMO and founder of Got Legs Digital Marketing. Gareth is an award-winning growth strategist with over 17 years of experience helping founder-led businesses scale. But what truly sets him apart is his belief that marketing should do more than drive revenue. It should create real human impact. Having led initiatives for global brands like American Express, LEGO, Blackstone, and MoneyGram, Gareth brings a rare blend of strategic discipline and empathy to his work.
Through his purpose-led consultancy, he has helped contribute to the donation of more than 500 prosthetic legs to amputee survivors across Africa, reflecting his philosophy that growth should move people and change lives. We're going to explore bringing purpose and empathy into marketing. And I'm excited to dive into this and talk about purpose, storytelling, and strategy that can come together to build brands that truly matter. Welcome to the podcast. Looking forward to our conversation, Gareth.

**Gareth Bain** (1:59)
Thanks very much, Tullio, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:01)
Absolutely. Now, Gareth, before we dive in, I'd love to hear why. Why was bringing purpose and empathy into marketing the topic you chose to explore with us today? And what makes this so important right now?

**Gareth Bain** (2:15)
So, I think it's quite interesting when you bring purpose into a business. What I wanted to do on this show was kind of just show people that bringing purpose in allows you to disrupt the industry, allows you to potentially create a movement, and also allows you to stand out in a very noisy crowd. And I've kind of done that in a way where, again, as we mentioned in the intro, I started a business called Got Legs Digital, which was purpose at heart, I'd really say. Half of it was commercially led. We help businesses to get legs and grow. That's got legs, that's got legs. But then also, there's the philanthropic side of things. Got legs, helping someone get legs, was something that I really wanted to do. And I really wanted to start this ethical agency that was purpose before profit. So when we set it up, we kind of had that in mind. So it's very much in the ethos of the business. So that's why I like talking about things like this. And I like showing businesses how you can build purpose into your own businesses. And it helps you attract the right clients, attract and keep the right staff. And then also allows you to have a different conversation than clicks and links and revenue and things like that. It's all the impact that lives are hard, that you're having on people's lives. So it's really important that you have that aspect. And what I found out is that it's actually become a pull strategy rather than a push strategy from my side. I know I have businesses that want to align with me because of their values. They want to work with me because of the work that we are doing in the communities. And it's a great way of, again, vetting employees. If they're not aligned, we're not going to be a good fit. Also, a great way when you are talking with a client, are we a good fit? Do they talk about the purpose that you are doing? Or is it like, what is the ROI on that? What is the KPIs? How much money are you going to make? So it's a good way to kind of gauge who's going to be a good target audience and a fit for your business.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:34)
I love it. It's funny how when you focus on being purposeful, you find your tribe and your community and they've been waiting for you. You don't even have to go sell anything. You just connect it together. It's amazing. And studies have shown that it's very effective strategy too for growth. So congratulations.

**Gareth Bain** (4:57)
Absolutely. I mean, one of the things with starting the movement, and this is something I just want to discuss. If a business just gave 1% of their EBITDA, let's say a million in revenue, they get 1%, that's 10,000. I did some research this morning. There's 60,000 digital marketing agencies in the USL. If that 10,000 was donated by the 60,000, there'd be 600 million. If we could just get marketing agencies to be more ethical, more purpose driven, that's a movement.