Unlock your fierce empathy and let's start being wrong

True empathy isn’t skin deep. It’s bone-deep.

It moves you. It rocks you. It rattles you.

And to get there, we need something stronger.

We need what I call Fierce Empathy.

It is an approach that seeks out the ‘wrong.’ It makes us uncomfortable and hear what we sometimes don’t want. It’s how we can create work that really matters.

1. Explore the wrong answer to the category

We too often find ourselves as marketeers validating our beliefs through our work. Preaching to the choir, talking to ourselves.

But when you look at the wrong answers, you often uncover hidden truths or opportunities from the competition. When you see a category and its convention, the big questions is where might the ‘right’ way be wrong, and how might we take advantage? For example, it’s wrong to mistreat your customers. Except RyanAir decided you could and built a business around it. It understood that passengers could live with poor treatment if the plane arrived on time and was safe. And inexpensive.

Trying to identify the assumptions and asking ourselves or our clients the tough questions - ‘Why does it have to be like that?’ or ‘How might we disagree with the category’s accepted view?’ - can open up a pathway to lifting and separating yourself from the rest. And in a way, the competition never saw coming.

2. Go ‘backstage’ and find the truth

We thought data and social would unlock ‘the truth’ but, unfortunately, it is so often lacking in context that what seems right is not; or allegedly, in the words of Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Social media is, in many ways, a lie. But too often, we do a quick ‘social scrape’ of a brand or community, and we’ll find a few things that can end up on a chart. We’ve done the right thing. We have that Global Web Index logo in the chart's corner. We can claim that we now ‘know’ these people or, as we love to call them, consumers. But as social psychologist Erving Goffman says here, we live in a constant state of performance - managing our ‘front stage’ and ‘backstage’ lives.

Going backstage requires knitting ‘data’ in new ways. We like to think of it more as ‘signals’ than data. So it forces you to ‘look out for’ versus simply acquiring data in a traditional qualitative or quantitative sense. And it means looking in the wrong places - for example, talking to the extremes in a category. Why do people hate something? Why do people love something? (Marmite turned that approach into one of the greatest campaigns of the last 20 years).

Talk to the people who aren’t the experts but depend on it daily. So speak to cabbies and hairdressers about mortgages rather than financial experts. Talk to singers and actors about dental hygiene rather than dental practitioners. It’s how 180 NY turned Slim Jim from a convenience store staple to a social and cultural phenomenon by cultivating its Long Boi gang. It’s what I see McDonald’s doing so well by amplifying the fandom for the brand in the US. Too often, time, money and sheer laziness seem to stop us going that bit further. It’s time to talk to our clients, CFOs and account leaders to ensure they don’t.

3. Give up control to those who can take things further

Part of Fierce Empathy is also about knowing how and when to give up control. The right thing to do has always been to control the project, the brand, the timeline, the everything. Control was everything, whether you were a creative director, an account director, or a brand manager.

But more and more, we’ll need to give over that authority to creators and audiences. One of the most challenging but creatively rewarding journeys we’ve been on is with Pepsico, where we have given creative control to audiences, communities and creators to help tell the stories for brands such as Rockstar, Mirinda and Gatorade. It’s not easy - it takes trust and shared ambition - but it reaps more authentic, engaging, and impactful creativity.

Brands like NOUNS are built by communities and administered by Blockchain but can grow by continually allowing the community to propel it into culture. In social networks, platforms like WATTPAD are the home of fan fiction; some writers create full prequels and spin-offs of pop culture favorites without any oversight of the original author. And before you think this is just digital platforms that are opening up, here’s a brilliant piece on Barnes & Noble - the famous bookstore - throwing its brand ‘rules’ out of the window to just focus on a great reading experience, which in turn attracted more people to come into the store. Fierce empathy means more revenue.

How to put it into practice

Fierce Empathy is something I think we can all strive for. Our work is too often about ourselves (read the brand, the creative director, the designer, the CMO…). And unfortunately, it’s the natural thing to do; we’re geared to think about ourselves and to be selfish. It’s pure survival. But I believe we can exercise better, fiercer, and empathy with a little practice; I’ve been taking some time to do just that. I’d recommend this masterclass on it.

So be ready to make a shift.

From selfishness to selflessness. Pharrell Williams calls it an awakening “...but sometimes selfishness is just like a sublime thing; it’s a slumber. You don’t even realize you’re in it.

There’s an awakening to empathy. You are waking up to our selfishness. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s like a constant sport to stay awake.”

And he is so right; it is a sport. It’s a daily practice; every day, in every human interaction, we need to think and care about what the other person is feeling. Whether we like them or not or share the same values or beliefs.

So, make the shift. Awaken, as Pharrell Williams would say.

Practice it daily, and force yourself to think about how other people are experiencing life.

Widen your aperture of understanding by listening to the stories of others.

Apply an empathetic mindset to everything you do. How you lead, how you create work dynamics in teams, how you talk to your partners, how you do research, how you create and evaluate creative work.

What would the world be if fierce empathy warriors led it? What could our industry be?

It will open up more powerful answers than simply replicating best practices and doing the right thing. It can stop the disease of truthiness and bland work that doesn’t move us or hit bone deep - as great ideas should. I know it’s hard. But we have to try. Empathy is the most inspiring tool for creativity. And when we’re fierce about it, when we’re truly committed to thinking about how other people experience life, we can fuel creativity’s greatest power - the power to create the world as it could be.

Because if we don’t, the work we do and the brands we service will do all the right things and become increasingly irrelevant.