One of my pet peeves, as a copywriter and as a human being, is people who seem devoid of empathy.
In my job, one of the most important things I try to do is to get into the minds of the audiences I'm writing for. Are they young or old? Male of female? Tech savvy or Luddite? Affluent, middle class or strapped for cash? Business leaders or consumers?
And in my ongoing twitter debates about American healthcare with right-wingers opposed to a single payer system or even a publicly funded option, I'm always fascinated by people's inability or refusal to step into the shoes of an individual that can't afford to insure himself or his family and appreciate the repercussions he or they suffer because of it: debt, bankruptcy, unnecessary illness and death in the wealthiest country on earth.
In the fantastic book Chief Culture Officer, Grant McCracken describes [p. 128] the vital importance of empathy in helping corporations succeed:
"In the twentieth century, the corporation was so large, it created its own weather system. General Motors, IBM, and Coca-Cola could shape the world at their will. And in this world, it was enough to be really analytically smart. Now we have to know the world outside the corporation. We have to know worlds alien to our own. We have to know worlds that proceed according to other assumptions. Without empathy, these worlds are opaque to us."
And this [p. 127]:
"To refuse empathy is a kind of managerial malpractice. It costs us essential knowledge of our colleagues and our customers. It makes the world inscrutable when it doesn't have to be. And occasionally we meet someone in the C-suite who is tone-deaf when it comes to other minds. Almost always they have other analytical skills... [But] without emotional sonar, there are many things he cannot know...."
Here, McCracken hits on a key insight about why social media offers such amazing potential in the new world of advertising. It allows companies to get a glimpse -- on a massive scale -- of what customers think and believe. It can (or ought to) help them feel what their customers feel. That is, provided the managers that run these companies first have the ability and willingness to empathize and, secondly, they truly want to cultivate a long-term relationship with customers instead of simply make a quick buck.
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