Purpose Driven Advertising: What Is It and Why You Should Know?

Purpose driven advertising gets dismissed because people assume it means a charity partnership and a percentage of proceeds. It does not. In this episode of The Bliss Business Podcast, Stephen Sakach, Tullio Siragusa, and Ash Maher take purpose from the boardroom to the billboard and show what it looks like in campaigns that never mention a cause at all.

In this episode we explore:

• The research on what purpose is actually worth, from Deloitte and the Zeno strength of purpose study
• Campaigns that carry purpose without a cause: Think Different, 1984, Dove Real Beauty, Google Reunion
• The insurance ad that teaches empathy by dropping a car from a crane
• Why trend-chasing purpose ads read as fake, and how to tell before you run one
• The difference between buyer behavior and buyer desire, and why only one of them is useful
• Cost-effective ways a small business can do this with a phone and no budget

Ash opens with the numbers. Deloitte finds purpose-driven companies grow roughly three times faster than competitors, with 30 percent higher innovation and 40 percent higher workforce retention. The Zeno strength of purpose study, covering 8,000 consumers across eight markets and more than 75 brands, found people are four to six times more likely to buy from, trust, champion, and defend a company with a strong purpose.

Then the ads. Tullio's read on Think Different is that Apple was "purposefully focused on building a community, not customers," which is why it kept working while every founder in Silicon Valley was saying the same words with none of the weight. Stephen walks through Dove Real Beauty and the forensic artist spot, where women describe themselves to a sketch artist and then hear a stranger describe them. Tullio's favorite is an insurance commercial where a trainer watches a trainee's car get dropped from a crane and says "your empathy training is now complete."

The pitfalls get equal time. Stephen's observation from watching dozens of these is that some brands clearly hopped on a trend and hopped off, and audiences feel the difference. Tullio's filter is simpler: test whether a message lands positive, neutral, or negative, and if there is any chance of negative, do not run it. His deeper point is about research itself, that demographics and psychographics describe behavior while the thing worth understanding is desire.

Stephen closes on what Zero Company built out of this thinking, the AI CMO, designed to help smaller teams find and express a purpose without a marketing department behind them, which is the same problem this whole series keeps circling.

Key Takeaways

• (2:17) Ash Maher's data: Deloitte reports purpose-oriented companies grow about three times faster than competitors, with 30 percent higher innovation and 40 percent higher workforce retention

• (2:17) The Zeno strength of purpose study, 8,000 consumers across eight markets rating more than 75 brands, found people four to six times more likely to “buy from, trust, champion and defend” companies with a strong purpose

• (8:28) Tullio Siragusa on why Think Different still works: Apple was “purposefully focused on building a community, not customers,” and everyone else in Silicon Valley was paying lip service to the same idea

• (16:05) The empathy ad Tullio Siragusa keeps coming back to: a car dropped from a crane, a trainee's face, and a trainer saying “your empathy training is now complete.” Humor carrying a promise the company has to keep

• (22:13) Tullio Siragusa's hard version of the argument: skip purpose and “you're actually not being effective at reaching your customers. Worse, you don't understand who your customers are fully”

• (24:20) Stephen Sakach reframes the marketing job: telling an authentic story makes marketing the keeper of the company's authenticity, which sometimes means fixing the organization before telling the story

• (30:42) The trend trap. Reviewing dozens of purpose ads, Stephen Sakach found several that felt like a brand hopped on a trend and hopped straight off, with nothing tying it to the brand underneath

• (34:01) Tullio Siragusa on the research most marketers stop short of: personas capture behavior, but “the desire will drive my behavior,” and desire is rarely about the product itself

• (36:09) Tullio Siragusa's reframe: “don't think about gaining customers, think about gaining community members,” because you want community members to stay forever

• (42:45) On humility, quoting Steve Jobs: “we don't hire smart people so that we can tell them what to do. We hire them so they can tell us what to do”

• (45:50) Ash Maher's proof that budget is not the barrier: a Los Angeles event promoter with nothing but a phone camera and a clear purpose sold out his first two events and built a team around it

FAQ

What is purpose driven advertising?
On The Bliss Business Podcast, Stephen Sakach defines it as carrying your company's actual reason for existing into your marketing, with no charity, donation, or corporate social responsibility program required. Apple's Think Different and Dove Real Beauty are the reference examples, and neither one asks for a donation.

Does purpose driven marketing actually work?
The episode cites Deloitte, which finds purpose-oriented companies growing roughly three times faster with 30 percent higher innovation and 40 percent higher retention, and the Zeno strength of purpose study of 8,000 consumers, which found people four to six times more likely to buy from and defend brands with a strong purpose.

How do you avoid a purpose campaign feeling fake?
Tullio Siragusa's test is to check whether a message lands positive, neutral, or negative before running it, and to drop anything that could land negative. Stephen Sakach adds the other half, which is that the purpose has to be one the company already lives by, or the campaign will read as a trend the brand borrowed.

Part of the Producers BLISS series. Previous: How to Define Your Company's Purpose and Why. Next: Purpose Driven Marketing for Small Businesses. Read the companion post, Purpose-Driven Advertising: Transforming Brands into Beacons for Change.