How Fathom Learned to Attract New Customers

I recently interviewed Tara Russell, the President of the purpose-driven cruise brand Fathom, for a Fast Company series on Purposeful CEOs. She shared with me how Fathom was able to disrupt the cruise industry and attract customer who never expected to take a cruise.

Here are three core strategies she used to start Fathom that you can apply to your organization to attract new customers and disrupt your industry.

1. Ask the Right Questions

Most travel business focuses on learning incremental ways to sell their existing value propositions (more relaxing, more fun, etc.). To disrupt her industry, Russell asked a different question which created insights that were far more powerful. What she found was that it was the trips that were the most challenging, not the most luxurious and relaxing, that people remembered. The trips where people served others and grew were the ones people remembered, not the relaxing trip to Hawaii. As a result, Fathom designed their experience around volunteering and personal growth not just leisure and attracted a whole new population to cruising.

Are you asking potential customers the right questions?

2. Hire Purpose-Driven People

Apple disrupted retail in large part by hiring different people for their stores than the Gap and other stores at the mall. Russell looked to do the same thing. Not only did she recruit outside the cruise industry, she hired a ton of people who had never even been on a cruise ship. They instead were purpose-driven people who were experts in community service and self-development - things that you can’t fake. Apple created a Genius Bar and she created a Purpose Bar.

Are you hiring the people who are authentically part of the disruption you are making?

3. Enable Storytelling

Russell didn’t have a big sales and marketing budget but she had massive sales goals from her parent company, Carnival. She realized that for their model to work, every passenger who left the boat had to become part of her sales and marketing team. Fathom designed the on board experience to help people develop their personal story and articulate the impact of their experience on the trip on their lives. When they got back to their homes and offices, they became evangelist for Fathom and were well equipped to tell powerful stories. And since so many of these passengers were not typical cruise goers, they were able to convince other cruise-phobic people to give it a try who wouldn't have responded to typical cruise marketing efforts.

How are you designing products and services to integrate customer advocacy into their core?

With the success of Fathom, Carnival now plans to integrate Fathom experience into their entire fleet and enable 11 million customers a year to serve and grow. It has gone from a design question to a disruption on a massive scale.

Purpose-Driven Recruiting

Russell is one of an increasing number of CEOs that have courageously embraced purpose as their core talent strategy and are seeing it pay dividends. A recent global study by Imperative and LinkedIn Talent Solutions uncovered the incredible power of purpose to attract and empower employees. It turns out that purpose is what truly attracts the best people.

To learn more about purpose-driven CEOs and how they are transforming work and leadership, explore Imperative’s series with Fast Company.

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Aaron Hurst is an Ashoka Fellow, award-winning entrepreneur and globally recognized leader in fields of purpose at work and social innovation. He is the CEO of Imperative and founder of the Taproot Foundation which he led for a dozen years. Aaron is the author of the Purpose Economy and has written for or been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg TV and Fast Company.