Connecting Purpose and Authenticity – The Rise of Purpose-led Marketing

As part of an internal ‘CXO Connect’ series hosted by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), I sat down with Nathalie Burdet, CMO, Kantar to discuss the value of purpose-led marketing in these difficult times. We touched on some fascinating topics from the importance of ensuring authenticity and integrity in your messaging to the role technology plays in helping us make that important first step towards establishing a truly purpose-led ethos.

Aligning with your Customer

For Nathalie, purpose-led marketing is about connecting with the audience on causes you both believe in. Organisations with a solid identity will have a purpose that expertly articulates why that organisation exists and what problem it is here to solve.

Almost a century ago, the founding father of Tata laid down the message that solidified its purpose that in a free enterprise, the community is not just a stakeholder in the business but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.

This community focus has been a part of our business ever since and can be seen in the way we are helping prepare our communities for the future. In the UK there is a massive deficit of tech skills and through our initiatives such as Digital Explorers, we have reached over 300,000 students, training them in very important digital skills that will help our economy and society prosper.

When we consider partnerships, a key factor is how this partnership is going to help the wider community. For one of the marathons we sponsor – the Amsterdam Marathon – we had a single-minded focus to help Amsterdam City have a cancer hospital and we raised close to €1.5m euros to help achieve this.

Seeing Beyond a Logo

We have this ability as a B2B brand to see our clients as not just logos, but humans. Humans want to be told stories and be inspired. Nathalie referred to it as putting humans at the core and I think that is a fantastic way of getting to that common ground between you and your customer.

Times of crisis shows a companies’ true colours and if your purpose is not part of your existence it will soon become apparent. Nathalie brought up the example of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, where lots of companies took up the cause, but on closer inspection were found to not be practising what they preached in either the boardroom level or across the organisation.

When it comes to purpose, it is worth remembering that if you do not practice what you preach, your reputation will be on the line.

Forging a Human Connection with Technology

It’s not an understatement to say that the pandemic has acted as a catalyst to the massive and swift pivot from physical to digital. This posed quite a challenge for the events we used to run and the marathons we sponsored around the world.

However, as we revised our strategy around these events, each one taught us something new. People love the atmosphere of marathons – the cheering, crowds and energetic music. As a lot of this was missing, we used our sonic design and created a soundtrack of Amsterdam with bells and whistles of bikes, canals and more and debuted it at the marathon for the runners. This was brilliant for the runners as it not only improved the experience and helped recapture some of that human connection that had been lost but also helped raise more money.

What the pandemic taught us most of all was to constantly evolve and improve the experiences of your customers and society. We had to re-think what human connection means and rethink how to be much more intentional in recreating it.

Work as One

Towards the end of the discussion Nathalie and I shared advice to future marketers on what to prioritise. For Nathalie, living your passion and working outside your comfort zone were key points that I strongly agree with.

I’ve always believed that nothing of note in this world can truly be done alone, so be humble and share your success with others. In marketing, you need to get into the habit of speaking with your customers as this is where the real knowledge will come from to help improve your craft.

This may be controversial, but I do not believe in sales and marketing. We are one team working on delivering the organisations purpose. Your strategy should be laser-focused on marketing that message and delivering on the promise.