Marketing With Purpose Kit: Customer Connection in a Data-Driven World

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 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 experts to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and also 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 Christine Perkett. She is the CEO and co-founder of The Nova Method. Christine is an enterprise narrative strategist and trusted C-suite advisor with more than two decades of experience helping organizations navigate rapid growth, market transitions, and periods of intense scrutiny. A four-time founder, agency CEO, corporate board director, and technology entrepreneur, she brings a unique ability to translate complex, technical, and data-driven ideas into clear human stories that build trust with customers, investors, and other key audiences. Her work has spanned technology, healthcare, finance, and nonprofits, and she's been recognized by organizations including Forrester, Forbes, and the American Business Awards.

Now, we're going to explore customer connection in a data-driven world, almost sounds like opposite ends of the same spectrum.

I'm excited to dive into it because we want to look at how brands can use data and technology without losing the human connection that makes people trust them. That's the key thing to everything. Welcome, Christine. Before we dive in, I'd love to hear why was customer connection and data-driven world the topic you chose to explore with us today, and why is that important like right now?

Christine Perkett (2:18)

Well, I'm going to say, first of all, thank you for having me and thank you for the nice introduction. But I'm going to say the word that's on everyone's lips these days, which is I think AI makes it even more important.

We've been so data-driven the last decade or 15 years. Marketers are really about how do I prove my worth? What is the data telling us? I think with the advent of AI, that human connection is back to being at the top of the list and back to being important. We're seeing that not only in the way that marketers and communications leaders analyze their programs, but also in the programs that they run. We're seeing a lot of face-to-face events. People want to connect with people.

There's already a little bit of exhaustion with the AI slop and marketing and brands, and even people turning out content, which is maybe a little bit less thoughtful. It's faster, it's more efficient, but it tends to be less thoughtful. That customer connection is something that is at the top of the priority list for us, for our clients. It's funny because you had said earlier the word resonant or resonance, and that is one of our key ethos at The Nova Method, which is resonant communications.

Tullio Siragusa (3:36)

Very nice. Now, look, let's face it. Leaders or business leaders are often pulled between near-term results and building a long-term brand that also generates near-term results in the near future, right? So, but how do you ensure this strategy stays aligned with the company's growth goals, and where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen in your experience?

Christine Perkett (4:04)

Well, I think that from a marketing PR perspective, it's a good reminder for the organization to look at marketing, not just as a campaign or data or an introduction for sales, but really that it's aligned with whatever the business problem is. And as you say, the growth trajectory, what is the business problem the company has now that's blocking them from growing to where they want to be? And that's where marketing should start from, not from what channels are we using or what's our content going to look like. So that's the first thing. I think you build more resonant communications when you understand what problem you're trying to solve, especially internally, and then therefore externally, your messages and your content and your campaigns are more effective to helping you reach that growth. And I forgot the second part of it. Yeah.

Tullio Siragusa (4:56)

Where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen? Like, where do you bump into the friction to make that alignment happen?

Christine Perkett (5:03)

Traditionally, I would say the biggest friction points that we see are between marketing and sales.

I know that sounds probably very old school, but it still happens. Marketing has, again, a certain set of campaigns, data, information that they want to communicate externally, and if sales isn't aligned with that information, when they meet with the prospect, there's a disconnect. I actually wrote, I think maybe last week or the week before, about how that disconnect or that connection, rather, is even more important across all of the departments within an organization because of AI and because of the AI visibility that's happening.