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.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:17)
Welcome back to Marketing With Purpose, a segment of the Bliss Business Podcast. I'm Tullio, and here we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes beyond the numbers. In each episode, we sit down with marketing experts and leaders 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. So let's get started. Today, I'm joined by Courtney Joaquin, founder and CEO of Too Much Consulting, where she serves as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer to clients in highly complex and regulated industries. Courtney is a fractional CMO with over 15 years of experience in highly complex and regulated industries like healthcare, biotech, climate, and medtech, where trust, clarity, and precision matter deeply. She's known for turning breakthrough ideas into brands people believe in, building marketing engines that don't just generate attention, but drive real, measurable revenue. What truly sets Courtney apart is how she blends performance with empathy, aligning diverse teams around a shared vision, and bringing an energy that inspires action and possibility. Through her work, she helps companies cut through the noise, and builds brands that are both bold and deeply human. We're going to explore bringing purpose and empathy into marketing.
I'm very excited to dive right in and see how clarity, conviction, and human connection can transform the way brands show up in the world. Courtney, it's so good to have you with us today.

**Courtney Joaquin** (2:03)
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:08)
There's a lot of talk about empathy and marketing right now. Before we get into the conversation, I'm just curious why this topic for you, why did you choose bringing purpose and empathy into marketing? Why does that feel meaningful for you and timely now? Just curious to get your thoughts on that.

**Courtney Joaquin** (2:29)
Yeah, that's a good question. When I was presented with the list of topics to choose from, to have this conversation with you, this one really speaks to me. It's something I've always held really closely, and I think I might have been ahead of my time in doing so with how I've managed my team members. So I take it really personally, internally, but have found over time that externally it's non-negotiable too. And even with the transition of how team members work with each other, it's being an empathetic leader has gone from being a nice to have to a must have. So how can we have these conversations to really normalize having emotions, feeling feelings, and what does that mean, both internally for your team members and externally for your customers? And how can we address that from a marketing aspect?

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:22)
I love it. I have to say, some of us crazies for the past decade or more used to talk about how this was critically important, how if people were happy, customers would be happy and no one was really listening until Deloitte and McKinsey and Gallup all started doing research and tracking the impact that empathy has on business. And now boards that are not looking at this as a strategic way to run the business are really doing their businesses at this disadvantage. So you're right, it is strategic. It's not just a nice to have, it's strategic. So let's dive in because maybe the school's in session today. Let's see what we can share with people. All right, so now there's a lot of talk about empathy, as I said, in marketing right now, in marketing right now, but it can feel like a buzzword. A lot of people do use it that way.
What does it actually mean to you in practice? And was there a moment that made you realize most marketing was missing this?

**Courtney Joaquin** (4:25)
Yeah, so empathy is not a buzzword. It is a practice. You have to keep practicing.
It's the daily decision to stop assuming and actually ask questions, which is harder than it seems or should be, right? It's active listening. It's identifying, naming, and understanding what someone else is saying and communicating to you and what you are feeling internally yourself. And it's actually going and doing something about it. It's responding in a way that shows you understand, you listened, and you're actually going to take action, which is the most important part. Like I said, this applies both internally to our teams and externally to our audiences. The ability to be empathetic will help you predict human behavior. When people show fears, anxiety, they're showing you they're going to be avoided or withdraw. If people are showing you feelings of anger, they're showing you they're going to behave with criticism and confrontation. When people tell you that they're happy and they're joyful, they're more likely to approach with a behavior of learning and sharing and engaging and telling someone else about that conversation. Now, I think the most important thing here is that people are telling us these feelings, whether or not we're asking as marketers, whether or not we're listening to them. But what if we actually did in order to predict how they're going to perform? Because they're going to do it whether we're asking or listening or not. And let's say a customer is constantly telling us what their reality is, how they're feeling. They're on Reddit boards, they're on social media, they're sending our customer service emails, and we are not listening, we're not responding, we're not pivoting our strategy, we're not changing our products. How is that customer going to feel? Frustrated. What happens when you feel frustrated, when you feel unseen and unheard, which we were just chatting about, you stop having trust in that company, in that product, in that service. And without that trust, you don't have a relationship, right? And that can be applied on the flip side with internal team members too.