The intent is more important than the idea. Your end goal drives your approach, and your approach decides what kind of a business entity you are. When you look at everything from a humanistic point of view, you redefine the very essence of business purpose. You realize anew that business brand building is beyond marketing.
In fact, “Marketing is not about selling products; it’s about telling stories that inspire change and connect us to a brighter future,” believes Joyshree Reinelt, a visionary leader in the world of brand building, marketing, and beyond, renowned for her unique approach that blends business strategy with a deep commitment to societal and environmental regeneration.
With a profound belief in the power of empathy and human connection, she has helped redefine the role of brand building and marketing in today’s rapidly evolving world. Through her work at Innate Motion, Joyshree empowers brands to embrace purpose-driven strategies that transcend traditional business goals, fostering a future where people, the planet, and profit thrive together. The key is to craft an authentic brand purpose that lives beyond the statement on a poster. Brand purpose is a leadership tool and driving force that shapes strategy, culture, performance and meaningful growth.
Journey toward Business Humanizer
Joyshree was born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany. Yet today, she is celebrated as a global citizen who has lived in four countries and worked in 35+ countries across the continents. In her educational years, Joyshree studied psychology, driven by a profound desire to help people live more fulfilled lives and give them behavioral strategies to fulfill their aspirations and reach their goals. She was driven by the belief that everyone deserves to live a fulfilled and happy life, no matter the circumstances. Hence, vulnerable and marginalized people held a special place in her heart.
Initially, she had no interest in pursuing a career in business or marketing, perceiving those fields as focused solely on lacking a real purpose rather than creating a positive impact. However, her perspective shifted when she recognized the transformative power business could have in fostering stronger and happier societies. This realization inspired her to transition from counselling to consulting.
As a Co-founder of Innate Motion, Joyshree helped define the company’s unique identity as “Business Humanizers”—a title that underscored their commitment to using business as a force for good. Rather than applying rigid business logic to human behaviour, they championed the reversal of this approach by applying human logic to business.
In her consulting work, Joyshree often observes organizational challenges rooted in internal conflicts—whether among departments, regions, or categories. These conflicts might be due to various reasons. However, such differences not only harm employee well-being but also undermine business health. She emphasizes human-centric solutions that help organizations craft shared visions and intentions, leading to orchestrated and purposeful action.
Joyshree also works closely with leaders at all levels, from C-suite executives to emerging talents, encouraging them to embrace empathy as a leadership cornerstone. She believes empathy deepens relationships, fosters sincerity, and facilitates honest conversations, even in the face of difficult challenges. By integrating empathy and purpose into leadership and decision-making, Joyshree demonstrates how organizations can align their actions with stakeholder values and contribute to the greater good.
Her journey as a Business Humanizer is rooted in the conviction that businesses, while traditionally profit-driven, hold immense potential to drive positive societal change. Add: Innate Motion has been a proud B-Corporation since 2015. Joyshree’s work is guided by the principle of delivering on the 5 Ps of the SDGs: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership—proving that none needs to come at the expense of the others. Through her efforts, she continues to inspire and drive the transformation of business by putting human collaboration at the center.. No business results can be achieved without humans working effectively working together,
Values and purpose for the company’s strategy
Innate Motion emphasizes a clear purpose: humanizing business for more meaningful growth. This involves addressing business challenges by intertwining business dimensions with human dimensions because that is how potential and growth are unlocked. The Business Humanizers at Innate Motion help craft brands that leave a legacy for humanity, going beyond the mere selling of products and services to serve people genuinely.
Joyshree champions the fostering of inclusion, equity, and interconnectedness as core drivers of this mission. She believes that embracing curiosity and a growth mindset enables the creation of iconic purpose-driven brands that turn extractive business models into regenerative ones. This means that you give back more than you take out.
The core values shaping Joyshree’s strategic approach include:
- Growth Mindset: She believes that businesses grow when humans grow. Viewing challenges as opportunities for personal and organizational growth, fostering resilience and adaptability in strategies.
- Inclusion and Equity: Amplifying diverse voices with Innate Motion’s team of 45 Business Humanizers speaking over 25 languages and representing more than 20 countries. This diversity allows the creation of brands that resonate across cultures and communities.
- Interconnectedness: Recognizing humanity’s global landscape and working beyond borders to collectively address universal challenges.
- Curiosity and Learning: Approaching each project with openness and a commitment to uncovering insights that drive meaningful innovation.
By integrating these values, Joyshree and Innate Motion empower businesses to align profit with purpose, enabling them to create lasting positive impacts that matter for future generations.
Incorporating empathy into marketing strategies
Empathy is at the heart of everything Joyshree does. She views it not as a passive emotion but as a fierce and transformative force capable of driving meaningful connections. To her, empathy is an active skill that can be learned, practised, and applied to marketing strategies and leadership.
In Marketing Strategies, Joyshree approaches consumers not as mere demographics or target audiences but as individuals with emotions, values, and aspirations. She emphasizes using empathy to step into their world and embracing vulnerability to connect authentically. This involves crafting stories that resonate deeply, designing experiences that feel personal, and addressing real needs with genuine care. By prioritizing humanity over consumerism, Joyshree creates brands that people trust, love, and passionately advocate for. This is especially important in times of purpose and greenwashing.
In Leadership: Joyshree believes that empathetic leadership begins by recognizing shared humanity. She fosters environments where vulnerability is welcomed, enabling open conversations, understanding, and collaboration. Through intentional listening, valuing diverse perspectives, and leading with compassion, she helps build trust and inspire growth. By seeing team members as individuals rather than mere roles or functions, she cultivates a culture where everyone feels valued, empowered, and seen.
At its core, Joyshree sees empathy as the foundation of deeper, more meaningful connections—whether with consumers, clients or colleagues. For her, it all starts with a simple truth: we are all human first.
Impactful brand strategy via the power of fierce empathy
Innate Motion played a pivotal role in helping many of Forbes’ ‘The World’s Most Valuable Brands,’ including Unilever, to transform their approach to branding through the “Crafting Brands for Life” (CB4L) strategy. While this is an older example, it remains relevant and easy to discuss, as it does not breach any confidentiality agreements. CB4L was a key component of Paul Polman’s “Unilever Sustainable Living Plan,” with the goal of making marketing more human again. This partnership marked a significant transformation, embedding empathy and purpose at the core of Unilever’s global portfolio to create brands that not only connected meaningfully with people but also addressed societal challenges.
Here’s how Innate Motion contributed to this transformation:
Embedding Empathy as a Strategic Foundation
Innate Motion introduced a human-centric view to Unilever’s brand-positioning process, enabling teams to see consumers not just as market segments or consumption units but as individuals with values, emotions, and aspirations. The core principle was putting people first.
This approach helped Unilever uncover opportunities to align its products with the deeper needs and desires of the people it serves—fostering authentic connections and creating more meaningful consumer relationships.
Shaping Purpose-Driven Brands
Collaborating closely with Unilever, Innate Motion helped define clear brand positionings with purposeful identity narratives for over 100 Unilever brands globally, including Knorr, Magnum, and Sunsilk. Each brand was aligned with a societal or environmental mission, ensuring it offered not only functional benefits but also contributed positively to communities and the world at large.
Encouraging a Shift from Transactional to Relational Marketing
By guiding Unilever’s teams through a human-centric design process, Innate Motion trained 7,500 Unilever marketers to lead empathic conversations with the people they serve, their consumers. This approach shifted their focus from merely connecting with consumers to immersing themselves in people’s lives, understanding their desires and identity strivings. .
In these conversations, Unilever’s marketers explored human themes—such as womanhood, femininity, self-esteem, and role models for Dove. These deep human and cultural insights helped craft stories that resonated emotionally with consumers, building lasting connections.
Creating Brands that Drive Growth and Positive Impact
Through the “Crafting Brands for Life” framework, Unilever’s brands became ambassadors for change. The strategy contributed to both financial growth and the company’s Sustainable Living Plan, demonstrating that purpose and profit can coexist.
The result of this collaboration was transformative. Unilever emerged as a global leader in purposeful branding, setting an example of how businesses can combine empathy, innovation, and social impact to thrive in today’s conscious marketplace.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Marketing
In a world increasingly influenced by AI, polycrises, and polarization, Joyshree believes the most significant trend shaping the future of marketing is the enduring power of the human factor. While technology evolves and challenges grow more complex, the ability to deeply connect with people—understanding their values, emotions, and aspirations—remains irreplaceable.
Human-Centered Marketing in an AI-Driven World
AI is revolutionizing efficiency and personalization, but the true differentiator will be the human touch: empathy, creativity, and ethical decision-making. Brands that authentically engage on a human level will stand out amidst the sea of automated interactions.
Purpose-Driven Brands as Beacons in a Polarized World
In a time of increasing polarization, consumers expect brands to take meaningful stands on social and environmental issues. Purpose-driven marketing that genuinely aligns with a brand’s values will foster trust and loyalty.
Resilience and Adaptability Amid Polycrises
With global challenges like climate change, economic uncertainty, and societal unrest, marketers must remain agile. Listening, learning, and responding with empathy will be critical for brands to stay relevant and resilient.
How Joyshree Stays Ahead:
Embracing Empathy as a Core Competency
Joyshree prioritizes understanding people—not just as consumers but as individuals with diverse stories and needs. Empathy informs every strategy, ensuring marketing resonates on a deeper, more personal level. If you want to find out more about the leadership styles of people and brands, Joyshree recommends Femke van Loon’s book Fierce Empathy.
Continuous Curiosity and Learning
She stays ahead by actively engaging with new technologies, cultural shifts, and global trends while constantly asking, “What does this mean for the human experience?”
Fostering Collaboration Across Borders and Perspectives
In a fragmented world, Joyshree believes in bridging divides. By bringing diverse teams together to co-create solutions, she ensures richer insights and strategies that truly connect.
In the future of marketing, Joyshree believes that while technology will enhance capabilities, the human factor—our ability to empathize, connect, and inspire—will ultimately define the brands that thrive.
Aligning marketing approach with the evolving consumer mindset
At Innate Motion, Joyshree and her team align their marketing approach with the evolving consumer mindset toward sustainability and regeneration by acknowledging the urgency and generational nuances shaping today’s perspectives.
Understanding the Generational Mindset:
- Gen Z and Millennials: These generations are at the forefront, putting their money where their beliefs are—when financially able. They demand transparency, authenticity, and concrete action from brands. For them, the climate crisis isn’t a distant issue; it’s an immediate reality that impacts their daily lives and future aspirations.
- Gen X and Boomers: For older generations, the focus is on legacy. They feel a sense of urgency to make their final great act one of ensuring a world where humans and nature coexist in harmony. There’s an increasing recognition of the need to act decisively and align choices with values that respect Mother Earth and its ecology.
Innate Motion’s Approach to Organizational Change, Culture, and Leadership:
Building Trust in a Distrustful World
With governments and institutions losing credibility, brands must step up as trusted actors. Joyshree helps businesses craft honest, identity-driven narratives that reflect their commitment to sustainability, building trust through consistent action.
Connecting with Values, Not Just Products
The focus is on storytelling that reflects values of regeneration, interdependence, and respect for our surroundings. Joyshree emphasizes showing how brands contribute to a better tomorrow rather than just selling products.
Tailoring Strategies to Generational Needs
- For Gen Z and Millennials, Joyshree emphasizes bold, visible actions and opportunities for participation, such as co-creation or activism.
- For Gen X and Boomers, the approach highlights the opportunity to leave a meaningful legacy, appealing to their desire to “get it right” for future generations.
Bringing Sustainability to the Forefront
Joyshree champions brands that take regeneration seriously—those that go beyond sustainability to actively repair and restore the environment. Sustainability is no longer a trend; it’s an imperative.
Empowering Action Through Accessibility
Addressing the affordability barrier is key. Joyshree works with brands to communicate their impact in ways that are inclusive and attainable for all consumers.
By aligning marketing strategies with these evolving mindsets, Joyshree and her team at Innate Motion help businesses connect with consumers not merely as buyers but as partners in creating a bright future. Together, they inspire action that respects both humanity and the living biosphere, building brands that thrive by making a meaningful difference, and growing business prosperity
Impact brands
The concept of regenerative brands has profoundly influenced the way Joyshree works with businesses to create impactful marketing campaigns. Regenerative brands do more than sustain—they aim to repair, restore, and reimagine a future where people, the planet, and profit thrive together. At the core of this transformation is the idea of Utopia Brands (as explored in the book written by her fellow partners Benoit Beaufils and Subodh Deshpande, to which Joyshree has contributed). These brands boldly redefine the rules of marketing to make an impossibly positive future a tangible reality.
Redefining Marketing Through Regeneration
Purpose Beyond Profit
Impact brands inspire Joyshree to shift the focus from selling to serving. They work closely with businesses to uncover their higher purpose—one that aligns with a vision for societal and environmental regeneration. This purpose becomes the cornerstone of marketing strategies, allowing campaigns to connect deeply with people’s values and aspirations.
According to Joyshree, this purpose has become problematic and is losing credibility due to purpose and greenwashing. Hence, it is even more important to make a purpose tangible and measurable with clearly defined KPIs and radical transparency on progress, even the setbacks. It is also important to see where a company is on the journey. Any little start is a start.
Breaking Conventional Rules
It is how Genuine Purpose Brands challenges traditional marketing paradigms, daring to rewrite the playbook. They move from mass to community, from mask to transparency, and from multiplication to abundance. These brands prioritize storytelling that uplifts and empowers, moving away from fear-based tactics or short-term wins. In essence, says Joyshree, “Storytelling that translates into story-doing.”
One Indian brand still has a special place in her heart because it is about women and children, although she worked on it more than ten years ago. Clinic Plus. It was through immersing with people and humanizing the marketeers at Hindustan Lever that defined the cultural enemy of patriarchy and positioned the brand in the core human insight that every mother longs to raise a strong daughter, especially in a society where the girl child is often under attack. Joyshree has not worked with Clinic Plus in recent years because the brand purpose was clear. If a brand’s purpose is clear, it is there to stay and guide the future. It fills her with joy and satisfaction to see that Clinic Plus still today follows the North Star of the purpose that was created so many years ago. It started with symbolically linking strong daughters to strong hair against the odds of society. All the recent storytelling of the brand in their campaigns and ads still rings true to its purpose of empowering the girl child in India. Storytelling has evolved since. In the latest campaign, Clinic Plus normalizes the wish for a girl child, addressing gender inequality in a country where ceremonies are held for male babies to be born and not for females. This is when Joyshree feels she did a good job. A clear positioning with a genuine purpose is something that will live on and continue to drive change and fight inequalities.
Activating the Impossibly Positive Future
Marketing campaigns for purpose brands are not merely about communication—they serve as calls to action. Joyshree crafts strategies that invite consumers, partners, and communities to co-create this positive future, transforming marketing into a tool for collective empowerment and change.
By working with (brand) leaders who want to make a real difference in the world, Joyshree is part of a movement to redefine what business can achieve. She believes that we are at our best when we unlock the human magic of a shared identity to tackle the biggest challenges in business together. No matter on which side of the fence one sits, it is deeply rewarding to overcome the battle of egos to co-create an impossibly positive future together.
“I’d also like to nod to the book The Human Growth Code (Christophe Fauconnier and Dr. Andreea Vanacker), an essential read for leaders who want to create truly human-centric organizations which will unlock human potential and see their profits rise,” informs Joyshree Reinelt.
For her, brand building and marketing are no longer simply about selling; it’s about storytelling, empathy, and connection. “When businesses operate with a human-first mindset, they not only achieve success but also leave a lasting, positive impact on the world,” she concludes.
Read also: Most Inspiring Business Humanizer and Change Leader
