Marketing With Purpose Kit: How Purpose Aligns Teams, Not Just Messages

**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.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the Bliss Business Podcast Series, Marketing With Purpose, our series where we explore how to build resonance, connection, and real-world growth through meaningful marketing. I'm Stephen Sakach, joined by my co-host Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski. Hey, guys.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:35)
Hey.

**Mike Liwski** (0:36)
Hey there, Stephen.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:37)
It's another home day.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:39)
Yes, it is. Today's topic is how purpose aligns teams, not just messages because while a strong purpose might show up in your advertising, one of its real powers is what happens inside your company. We talk about this a lot on the podcast, but let's get into it, guys.

**Mike Liwski** (0:59)
Yeah, it's easy to think that purpose is messaging strategy or some tool that's just for marketing, but at its core purpose is really an alignment tool for your whole team. It's about how you get your product team, your customer service team, really your leadership team even all moving in the same direction.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:24)
Exactly, and so let's take a look at it. Without a shared purpose, even a well intentioned, well meaning team might end up working in silos, and then your marketing might be saying one thing while your operation is delivering something else and that ends up creating dissonance. So that's the worst thing that can happen to a brand where you have a look and feel in the front of the office and then, but then the reality is completely disconnected. That actually ends up creating bad perception and bad reputation. So people can feel that. So that alignment is critical, that it's both internal and external.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:09)
Yeah, and when your teams are aligned by purpose, you don't just have brand consistency, you have brand integrity.
And this is really one of the big reasons why we've built this podcast is, yeah, we're marketers, but we also know you really have to live by these higher purpose things. If you want to tell a story from a higher purpose, from a more empathetic and compassionate place, you've got to live by it. So you want to make sure that your customer experience matches that brand promise, because everyone inside the company is all believing in this same why. And so, like Tullio said, people can feel that, whether you're doing it or you're not doing it. They'll feel it either way.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:51)
And it kind of reminds me of like parenting, right? You can tell your children one thing, but if you don't act according to what you're telling them, they're going to do exactly the thing that you do, not what you tell them to do.
And the key thing is that internal alignment is what fuels that external authenticity. And so in order to be authentic in what you're saying, you have to live it. Just like if you're a parent and you want your children to act a certain way, well, if you're not living that yourself, they're not going to do it. So it's got to be authentically tied to reality. And because people can tell that, they can tell a brand that's just sort of saying the right things versus living them. You know, it's that old, don't just talk the talk, walk the walk. You need to walk the walk in order for the talk to actually sound authentic.

**Mike Liwski** (3:40)
And if you think of all the great brands that have existed, they all do this, right? So they're employees, they're customers, they all can see it and then they can feel it. So let's say, for example, that maybe your purpose is around empowering entrepreneurs. If you're a finance team, let's just say, you know, is nickel and diming startups with surprise fees, your marketing can't fix that, you know, no matter what you end up trying to do. So your purpose isn't again, just this headline that's not being lived inside the organization. It's really this cultural backbone that aligns the, you know, throughout the whole company.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:25)
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, brands that live their purpose through every function, they build trust faster, they retain talent longer, attract customers who stick around because they see what you see. And, you know, it's, what you see is what you get, right? It's true. It's true to them. They feel it. They, it's just not, you know, walking the, you're just not talking the talk. It's walking that talk, like we said.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:51)
Yeah. I want to add something real quick to sort of what you said, Mike, because I think it's like so spot on. Just another example. I've worked with companies in the past that their message is creating value for the client, right? Maybe they're a technology company and their value is, their messaging is about value creation for the client. So, so it's not about being the cheapest player on the block, but the one with the most expertise and maybe can create the great value. But then they will nickel and dime like a really good talented engineer or someone to go hire them. They'll look at the hire as a cost instead of an investment, but they're selling an investment. So it's like, it's like you're running your business on managing cost, but you're selling the client or making an investment for growth. There's a disconnect there on how you treat people that you're hiring versus how you're positioning yourself in the marketplace. That becomes disingenuous. So it's so key. And I've also even had a situation where it's like, you don't be surprised when your clients start nickel and diamonding you for that value you're trying to create because you do the same thing with your employees when you're hiring them. What you do is going to be replicated externally. So if you want to shift that, you have to start shifting how you are aligned internally.