You’re Right and You’re Also Wrong (About Marketing)
Exploring what empathy is and how it can be applied to marketing and teamwork, especially now
As of late, my irritation is expressed through guttural noise. Long exhales. Palms covering my eyes when I shouldn’t touch my face.
Numerous acts show how we care about essential workers, patients, and the people we either serve or seek. Our friends, our families, the loved ones of loved ones. But now more than ever, in these unprecedented times, empathy doesn’t feel equitable.
I wanted to explore how this could be, at least for my own peace of mind. And I really should not touch my face as much as I have.
Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is a book review editor and contributor to the Greater Good Magazine published by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Suttie reviewed Helen Reiss’ 2019 book, The Empathy Effect, which explains how we can view empathy and have better social interactions.
Reiss, a psychiatrist and researcher, notes that beyond connection, the cognitive component of empathy allows us to understand that our feelings may not be the same as others. We can separate ourselves from someone’s pain and still remain curious about their experience. Our concern for someone’s well-being is an additional aspect of empathy. Concern varies depending on a variety of factors, including our relative social status, whether we think that suffering is deserved, or if that person is part of “us.”
There doesn’t seem to be a shared understanding of what empathy really is, at least in some circles. The “us” and “them” may become more apparent, but I would imagine that at the core of these components of empathy is acknowledging someone else other than you, and trying to reach some level of understanding before deciding what to do with that new knowledge.
When empathy is used in language, but casually replaced by antithetical action, we can start to deregulate its meaning and empathy starts to feel empty and unkind. And, it is my messy existence, lately, that empathy can feel distant when smart people with little to no practical or professional expertise begin to behave like they are experts in marketing, and dismiss other smart people who (maybe, just maybe) know more than them. My frustration is rooted in the latter.
Observing what’s happening around you doesn’t give you experience any more than watching the news gives you medical expertise. From UV light to injecting disinfectant, to creating the same message and marketing that message to everyone.
These assumptions can exist outside of disaster, but they seem to be exaggerated in crisis: If we make a video, everyone will want to watch it. Everyone should watch it. Everyone is saying something. We should say something too. This should be global. This should go viral.
This isn’t to say that the video isn’t important, that what is meant to be said or shared isn’t meaningful. But (maybe, just maybe) we’re “shoulding” all over the place.
Just because you’re right doesn’t mean people will care.
In a 2016 blog, Seth Godin wrote:
You may be right, but that doesn’t mean that people will care. Or pay attention. Or take action. Just because you’re right, doesn’t mean they’re going to listen. It takes more than being right to earn attention and action.
Some people don’t want what you want. They don’t see things the way you see them.
Relevance doesn’t become moot in a time of crisis. It becomes critical. In marketing, relevance could be seen as empathy in action.
Here’s what Godin and other strategists have also offered to people who want to listen:
You can either help people understand what you want them to know, by building from what they already know, or you can enforce your worldview.
There’s an allure to appeal to everyone, for everyone to love what you do. There’s an allure to universality. But this is not responsible. It’s not realistic.
If marketing is about how our actions help other people reach their goals … If marketing is about how we can create something for the smallest market of people who want what we have … If marketing is about changing something for someone, not everyone …
Then, I say, marketing can lead with empathy.
What if empathy could shape our marketing before it’s extended to the people we want to reach? What if empathy could also be practiced for the people who are charged to reach out to those people? What if empathy could lead to better insights from the people who are doing the work and understand that starting with the smallest viable market is not unreasonable? What if these actions could drive better results?
In an HBR study of enterprise leadership and the pursuit of building cohesion, Orla Leonard, Nathan Wiita, and Christopher Milane found that while psychological safety and cohesion are important concepts to team performance, those concepts weren’t as critical as knowing how to manage conflicting tension.
Tension is a good thing. When addressed.
Knowing how to navigate and transmute these tensions into something useful among senior teams and employees may be all the more critical to organizational success. This becomes necessary, especially when faced with what can feel like a lack of empathy and top-down enforcement of ideas, compounded by a sense of urgency.
Leonard, Wiita, and Milane interviewed Dr. Volker Schulte, then group director of manufacturing and technology at power solutions company Aggreko.
Schulte stated that “for innovation to happen, senior teams need to create a culture where those who are closest to the customer can share, challenge, and feel heard.”
Tension on high-performing teams can spur positive change. Still, its success requires a culture that’s accepting of addressing tension and can do so constructively.
Timothy Caulfield is a Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta. He urges the scientific community to fight misinformation in this Nature article, Pseudoscience and COVID-19 — we’ve had enough already.
David Napoli, data analytics and visualization instructor and consultant comments that “(a notable portion) of the push against misinformation is the ability to communicate effectively and help others understand the information and why it is important to them.”
I can’t help but draw the parallel and underscore that marketing is about helping other people.
No one means any harm by their push to be distinctive; everyone may be trying to help. Paradoxically, this is sometimes part of the problem.
In a time that feels uncertain and the future tenuous, it’s well worth the conversation to understand where the idea for “more, more, more” and “everyone” is coming from. To help people genuinely feel heard and with the reciprocity of curiosity, concern, and measured patience as collective ground rules. Frameworks to channel enthusiasm strategically, with trust in others. We all could afford to take a step back.
All of this will take empathy, which really is needed all of the time, but especially now.
