Beyond Palatable: A Manifesto For Unapologetic Women

Guest post by Sophie Jane Lee is a voice and visibility consultant, journalist, founder of Electric Peach, and the author of Beyond Palatable: A Manifesto for Unapologetic Women out now, published by Luath Press

Why I Walked Away from Corporate Marketing, Beyond Palatable explained

For ten years, I worked inside the engine room of modern marketing.

Major brands. High-pressure agency environments. Campaigns built to move people at scale, at speed, and often at all costs. By every conventional measure, it was going well.

Then I started paying closer attention to what I was actually doing.

The Persuasion Machine

Marketing has always been about persuasion. That’s not new. What is new is the sophistication and the subtlety with which that persuasion now operates.

It’s no longer just about selling a product. It’s about shaping identity, manufacturing desire, and engineering the feeling that something is missing from your life until you buy the thing that fills it. I know this because I was part of building the persuasion machine. After a while, it started to consume my life.

The people I worked with in corporate weren’t bad actors. Most were sharp, motivated, and genuinely trying to do good work. But the system itself has one primary directive: growth at all costs. When commercial outcomes take precedence over everything else, the gap between influence and ethics closes.

When the Career Works But the Work Doesn’t

From the outside, my career looked enviably good. I climbed the agency ladder fast, had recognisable clients and a skill set that the market rewards well. But there was a persistent internal question I kept pushing aside: Do I actually believe in what I’m doing?

That’s a harder question to sit with than most people will admit, particularly in environments where pace is celebrated, which often leads to no time for reflection.

Over time, I became increasingly disconnected and exhausted, reaching for anything that would ‘take the edge off’. I was miserable, despite having done everything ‘right’ to build the career I thought I desired.

It all came to a head one day in spring 2017, when I had one of those sliding-door moments that changed the trajectory of my entire career.

I met a woman through a networking group, hit it off, and bonded over our shared belief that the marketing industry needs reform, and decided to start our own agency together to use communication tools to grow businesses committed to positive impact.

That summer, I quit my corporate career and started Electric Peach, a brand storytelling agency for impact-driven businesses.

What Leaving Actually Costs You

Stepping away from corporate culture isn’t just a career decision; it’s a psychological one. It’s deeply entwined with identity, and for me, the transition was extremely rocky. Who was I without the flashy title and well-known brand clients? How on earth do I run a business, particularly one that is committed to doing things differently, with no blueprint?

If you choose to make this leap, you’re not only leaving behind structure and a guaranteed salary. You’re leaving a system that has been defining success for you—progression, status, external validation—and stepping into a space where you have to define it yourself.

That’s genuinely uncomfortable. For me, it meant sitting with some blunt questions:

• What does meaningful work actually look like?
• What should communication be for?
• And what kind of impact do I want my work to have?

Building Electric Peach

Electric Peach was my answer to those questions. Not a rejection of business or growth, but a different approach to both.

The core principle is straightforward: communication should create clarity, not confusion. It should build trust, not manufacture dependency. And it should respect the audience, not exploit them.

In practice, that means working with founders to articulate what they genuinely stand for, building messaging that’s honest rather than over-engineered, and creating visibility that’s sustainable, not just a content treadmill dressed up as a strategy.

This isn’t anti-commercial, in fact commercial outcomes are essential. But businesses that adopt this methodology refuse to treat integrity as a variable. Our mission with Electric Peach is to prove that purpose and profit can, and should, coincide. And we’ve worked with incredible businesses worldwide who’ve done just that.

The ‘Too Idealistic’ Objection

There’s a persistent assumption that value-led businesses trade commercial effectiveness for good intentions. That they’re slower, softer and less competitive. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Purpose-driven businesses, which prioritise positive societal impact alongside profit, outperform traditional companies in growth and innovation. Data shows these companies experience higher revenue growth (+58%), 30% higher innovation rates, and 64% higher employee satisfaction. Furthermore, 63% of consumers prefer buying from companies with strong values.

In a market saturated with polished content and algorithmic noise, what’s becoming genuinely scarce is credibility. Today’s buyers, particularly in B2B and tech, are more sceptical than ever. They can read a manufactured brand voice. They’re resistant to pressure tactics. And they’re increasingly drawn to founders and companies that communicate like actual human beings and live by their values.

Value-led isn’t a softer strategy. It’s frequently a sharper one.

A Shift That’s Already Underway

Look at what’s gaining traction across marketing right now. The old playbook, which focuses on scarcity, urgency, and frictionless conversion at any cost, is losing effectiveness. What’s replacing it is a demand for transparency, substance, and genuine connection.

This goes far beyond sentiment and is an essential strategy for businesses navigating growth in the so-called ‘trust recession.’

In an attention economy, trust is the differentiating asset. And trust isn’t something you manufacture through better tactics. It has to be built through consistent, honest communication over time.

Ireland’s tech sector, for all its sophistication, still tends to optimise for growth metrics while underinvesting in the foundations that make growth sustainable. That’s starting to change. But there’s a real opportunity for founders and marketers who see it early to step in and lead the charge.

The Skills Aren’t the Problem

One of the most clarifying realisations of the last few years is that everything I learned in corporate environments is still useful. Understanding audiences. Shaping narratives. Communicating with precision and clarity. These are powerful capabilities.

The same skills that drive high-pressure sales funnels can be used to help people make better decisions, amplify genuinely meaningful work, and build businesses that hold up under scrutiny. And there’s a gap in the market for this perspective.

We’re in the middle of a gradual, uneven, but undeniable shift toward a business model that has to account for impact, ethics, and long-term value alongside traditional growth metrics,

For those of us working in marketing, communications, or tech, that raises a question worth sitting with: Not just what are we building? But what impact are we creating in the process?

Sophie Jane Lee is a voice and visibility consultant, journalist, founder of Electric Peach, and the author of Beyond Palatable: A Manifesto for Unapologetic Women out now, published by Luath Press

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