Reclaiming the Soul of Marketing: The Workshop

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
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)
Well, welcome back everyone to our workshop, From Clicks to Connection, Reclaiming the Soul of Marketing Through Purpose. And today we're going to dive deeply into the soul of marketing, how to move beyond hollow messages, and create real emotional connections with your customers. Joining me, Stephen Sakach, is Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski. Hi, guys.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:41)
Hey.

**Mike Liwski** (0:42)
Good to see you, Stephen. You can't wait.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:45)
Yeah. And if you wait to the end of this broadcast, there's going to be a special offer, so stay tuned for that. But let's start out with the stat here. Did you know that 64% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from a brand that shares their values? So we've all seen it. Marketing that feels empty. Mike, why do you think such marketing feels so hollow? We see a lot.

**Mike Liwski** (1:12)
Yeah. We're going to talk a lot about this, right? I think it comes down to lack of connection due to really missing out on empathy and purpose. Just so many brands today are focusing on sell, sell, sell rather than on connecting. They see customers more as transactions instead of really a genuine relationship that they can build. But we know that's not where loyalty really comes from, so we want to try to fix that.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:40)
Exactly, because loyalty is built when people actually feel seen, heard, and understood. If you're blaring at them, that's not happening, right? But it takes more than just good intention, and it takes strategy to be able to accomplish that.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:59)
Let's start with what we call the empathy gap. It's that invisible barrier between what brands think they're saying, and what customers actually feel. I just saw this last night, this local car commercial that I'm just saw. They're talking about things like trust and loyalty. I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling this at all from you guys. But the brands have this feeling like, hey, we're saying these things, our customers must feel it, and that's not always the case.

**Mike Liwski** (2:28)
It really isn't. The scary thing is now most brands don't even know that they have this empathy gap until unfortunately, they're losing customers and it's just too late.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:40)
Enough with the teasing. This is why we created this workshop. We want to help brands identify that gap and close it. It starts with, drum roll, purpose. In fact, the Harvard purpose, that's it, right? The Harvard Business Review, in fact, says that companies that use empathy in their messaging see a 20% increase in customer satisfaction. So if we're talking about ads that really understood purpose and empathy, you know, Dove really, excuse me, Dove real beauty is one of the great examples of this.
Dove shifted from genetic beauty ads, which was often highlighting features and benefits, your standard stuff, right? Talking about moisturizing properties, very typical ads, the kinds you see thousands of times over and over, to telling authentic stories about body positivity and changing the narrative in the beauty industry. So over the past two decades, they've done a lot of different versions of ads, and some have been excellent ones that are out there to check out. And we found one that we think could be worth watching.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:57)
So, yeah, let's play this. A lot of these ads, really, this is, you know, we're talking about higher purpose. And so this is an example of featuring that higher purpose and how it comes out in your ads and how it can build that connection.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:09)
All right. So let's check this out.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:24)
Oh, that's difficult.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:28)
Oh, for me, definitely nothing.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:34)
I love them.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:37)
I'm glad to have her bum.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:39)
I was gonna say the same thing. Her dimples are also beautiful.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:44)
She makes me blush.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:45)
I think Tullio has a radiance when she smiles, and I think it's gorgeous.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:59)
So, I mean, that's a great ad, and it's just one of these many examples of ads that Dove has come across after they've realized that there is this problem, is that only 2% of women worldwide saw themselves as beautiful, largely because advertisers are bombarding everyone with images of what ideal beauty is. You know, with social media, it's constant. So Dove took their millions of dollars and put it into billions and billions of ad impressions that put good into the world. And that changed their brand. And they're still doing that today from when they started this campaign 21 years ago. They haven't deviated from making these purpose focused ads. And they really do resonate. And people identified with these campaigns in a deep way. And so Dove, you know, they've stayed authentic to that, and they haven't strayed from that at all. So marketers, I think, here have a great opportunity. And if we start asking ourselves how we can build love and empathy into what we're doing, because this is really what resonates.