Passion Knows the Industry. Purpose Knows the Audience.
Originally published on The Strategic Ampersand Substack · 6/18/26
In The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly is fashion. She knows every unspoken rule, every hierarchy, every nuance of the industry - and she cannot fathom why anyone would need them explained. Flowers in spring are far from groundbreaking. The cerulean sweater has a history Andy couldn’t possibly understand. And any questions? “Please bore someone else.”
Miranda is passion. Andy is purpose. And Andy is the one who figures out how to make it work.
The Devil Wears Prada; 20th Century Fox
This same dynamic is spelled out in more marketing job descriptions than you'd think. The belief a marketing or creative role can only be filled by someone with a specific number of years inside a specific industry.
And before I continue: yes, there are certain industries where prior experience is genuinely necessary. Highly regulated fields. Deeply technical categories. Places where the learning curve is actually a cliff. I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about the vast majority of companies and organizations where this requirement isn’t a necessity. It’s a habit. And habits, left unexamined, become barriers.
Here’s what I’ve seen across 70+ brands over the last decade-plus, spanning retail, healthcare, food and beverage, restaurants, public transportation, utilities, nonprofits, real estate, and more: the industry is the context; it’s circumstances. It is not the calling.
People who have spent their careers inside a single industry know it deeply inside and out. That fluency is real and valuable. They speak the language, understand the players, know the unspoken rules. There’s a genuine passion that can come from that kind of immersion. A marketer who spent years inside a specialty food brand brings something authentic to their category. And that should be honored and celebrated.
However.. yet… and… here’s the thing about spending a long time inside anything: we often stop seeing it the way outsiders see it. We lose the beginner’s eye or a sense of hospitality to show someone who’s new around. Imagine showing up to a friend’s house for a weekend visit shortly after they moved, and they greet you at the door, saying “the guest room is upstairs, towels are in the linen closet, and we’re leaving for dinner at 6:30” and shut the door behind you as they walk away. Now it’s up to you to figure out which room is for guests, which closet has the linens, and then find your friend to ask where dinner is so you know how to dress appropriately for it. In that moment, if there was some reason why a brief tour couldn’t be given, it would’ve been helpful to have a few directions: “the guest room is upstairs, second door on the left; there are clean towels in your bathroom’s linen closet; and we’re heading to a neighbor’s BBQ at 6:30p.”
Customers, in both the broadest and narrowest terms, are no different. Jargon that feels so natural to us, as insiders, is often a lot of noise to cut through or figure out for someone meeting our brand for the first time. Internal assumptions that “everyone” knows who we are and how to use our product are often barriers to the very people we’re trying to reach.
A real world example: I built a product-based video series into a client’s strategy to help educate their customers, customers’ employees, and their customers’ customers. As the series evolved over time, the internal response was mixed; there were many who appreciated the series even going as far as “I had never thought of using it that way” about a product; and there were others who would state in meetings the series was boring and they wanted to see something different.
That there is the rub: external audiences and business partners saw these videos as an asset and, month-after-month, the metrics proved this. They consistently had the highest engagement rates only to be outdone by a different video series that brought viewers inside the day-to-day operations (aka BTS). Shares, comments, likes, and saves – all regularly skyrocketing. In ad campaigns, we could see the connection between video views and folks tapping “learn more” to read up on the product (or brand) in an article. In LinkedIn, we could track metrics of who was clicking - positions, industries, and companies. Internally, because employees were so deep and so close to the day-to-day operations, they felt like it was old news. So as these discussions were had, I focused on the video strategy’s purpose.
Passion knows the industry. Purpose knows the audience.
Purpose is the ability to embody a Venn diagram - 1) solving a problem, 2) connecting people to ideas, and 3) translate complexity into clarity – while making it transferable to others. It travels across industries because it isn’t based on the industry itself. It’s about the experienced craft in branding and marketing.
A marketer or creative who is genuinely purposeful about their work will pick up a brand’s voice, learn its nuances, audit to understand what’s working and what isn’t, and bring an outsider’s eye that the most tenured employee may not be able to reach or lack.
Like any new hire, they’ll read the materials, go through training, get to know the team. In more specialized fields, HR and legal become their new best friends. This isn’t due to a knowledge gap. This is due diligence based on experience.
And in return: a perspective an internal team often lacks from being so close to the day-to-day. A fresh set of eyes.
WHAT AN OUTSIDE EYE ACTUALLY DOES
When someone comes in from outside your industry, they ask questions your customers are most likely asking: Wait - why do we call it that? What does it do? Are there any other ways to use this? Has anyone considered this term means nothing to someone who isn’t in this room – or a current customer? Those aren’t the questions of someone who doesn’t know enough. These are the questions that create clarity for everyone outside the brand - and in doing so, make your brand stronger.
Why? The brands getting this right are the ones who can translate their complexity into everyday language; they’re showing practical application rather than assuming their audience already speaks the language. That kind of clarity rarely comes from inside. It comes from someone who had to learn it, ask about it, and figure out how to explain it to someone who wasn’t there yet. And by being purposefully inclusive, it increases trust with audiences.
The best hire for your marketing role might be someone who’s never worked in your industry - and brings every reason why that’s an advantage.
A great marketer or creative who knows their craft - regardless of industry background - will not only hit the necessary KPIs, they’ll find the stretch. They’ll spot the patterns that keep appearing and understand fixing them requires more than a quick patch job. They’ll know where to push because they’ve done it before, just somewhere else. And by asking questions and testing solutions, it makes the strategy’s goals realistically attainable even with stretch, instead of absurdly out of reach.
That’s it. That’s the secret sauce.
If your organization genuinely believes it can only hire from within its industry, that’s worth sitting with and asking why. Because often what looks like a hiring requirement is a signal there’s something internal that hasn’t been translated yet. Something that feels too complex, too niche, too inside-jargon to hand off to an outsider.
And that’s exactly the problem an outside perspective is built to solve.
Miranda didn't hire Andy because she knew fashion. She hired her because Miranda needed someone who didn't.
