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 back 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 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. So let's get started. Today, I'm excited to welcome Shannon Clarke. She's the founder and CEO of The Clarke Collective. After 16 years in corporate marketing, Shannon decided she wanted to build a different kind of marketing practice. One grounded in strategy, storytelling, and actually understanding what people care about.

She's helped grow Animal Friends brand, doubled the nonprofits fundraising campaign goal through emotionally resonant storytelling, and generated a 515% ROI on event marketing by focusing on what customers truly value. Today, she works with small business owners, services businesses, professional practices, and entrepreneurs who are building something very genuinely that they care about.

We're going to explore bringing purpose and empathy into marketing. I'm excited to hear how Shannon brings more humanity, clarity and meaning into the way businesses connect with their audience. Shannon, before we dive in, welcome by the way.

Shannon Clarke (1:57)

Thank you so much.

Tullio Siragusa (1:59)

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 this so important right now?

Shannon Clarke (2:09)

You know, you don't really hear the word empathy with marketing too often. So that was super intriguing to me. So I was kind of like, oh, okay, I'd love a different topic rather than just, you know, sometimes it's just a numbers game.

And you want to talk about actually things that like people are interested in why we're doing what we're doing, why it's important, who it matters to.

On so many different levels, customers, the actual brands behind the work, all of it. So that's why I was really excited whenever you guys reached out, and I'm really happy to be here.

Tullio Siragusa (2:42)

Excellent. Now, let's talk a little bit about the challenges marketers have, which is often this dance between near-term campaign results and long-term brand building. And balancing the budget towards these things, as you know, is not always easy because everybody wants the immediate results, but doesn't want to invest sometimes in the long-term, which is necessary because there's this thing called a lag effect in marketing that not a lot of people talk about. So, how do you ensure your marketing strategy stays aligned with company growth goals, and where do you find the biggest friction in making that happen?

Shannon Clarke (3:20)

That's a great question. And the way that I usually describe this is, brand is kind of your mortgage, whereas, you know, those short-term campaigns that you're running, the short-term efforts are kind of like rent.

So, mortgage would be obviously you're interested in owning something. You're going to probably pay more upfront, you're going to put more work into it, you're going to invest more into this thing that you're going to own, whereas rent, it just kind of turns over month to month, but you still need a roof over your head, obviously. But if you walked out of that apartment, that rent, then you don't really have anything to fall back on. So, it's that delicate balance of maybe not owning a house and renting an apartment, but it's more of just making sure that you're building something first. I think that is critical to start with rather than trying to do these short-term lead grabs, anything like that where, yes, they know your name in the short-term, but then in the long-term, when they don't see that ad right in front of their face, are they going to remember you?

Tullio Siragusa (4:20)

I actually love that analogy. I like it a lot because if you're a renter, you might notice a few things that are not exactly perfect in your house, but you're like, this is not my house. I'm not going to go crazy fixing that.

But if you're the owner, it's like I'm going to own this house for the next 20, 30 years. I don't want to fix that because that's going to get worse. So I think that's a great analogy. Either you're thinking as a renter, like are you going to exist a year from now? Are you just focused in the next quarter or as an owner that thinks I am going to exist a year or two from now, so I should think about that too. I love that analogy. It's awesome. Okay, now let's face it. In the perfect scenario, we've got the ability to plan the short term, plan the long run, but then things happen, right? Like high-stakes situation comes up, like a brand crisis or a market downturn, which is outside of our control. So how do you go about maintaining in that moment, we've talked about being purposeful and empathy, a sense of purpose and empathy, while also making quick strategic decisions?