What’s true in life is true in marketing: A framework for empathic marketing.

David Murphy Founder & Serial Thought Provoker wikibranding

To be human is to be empathetic.

Empathy: Being aware of, understanding and sensitive to the feelings, thoughts and experiences of another.

What’s true in life is true in marketing.

The way in which we form personal relationships mirrors how we form brand relationships.

Empathy

Endorsement

Energy

Experiences

Think about the people with whom you enjoy your most lasting relationships.  They are likely to be people who “get you” because you share empathetic values and views, a shared sense of style or humor.

They’re likely to be people with whom you’ve enjoyed memorable experiences which deepened your first impression.

People you trust because their reputation is highly regarded…by people whose opinion you hold in high regard.

They’re likely to be people who consistently surprise us because they always seem to be doing something new and interesting.

Empathic marketing breaks with the past.

Communications today are consumed differently.

The way in which we build brands must evolve as well.

Brand planning has been hijacked by brand pyramids, Venn diagrams and other constructs that get too far removed from the customer.

Empathic Marketing is designed to refocus marketing back on fundamental human truths.

Developed before hyper-competition. Ignores the

wonderfully irrational nature of human beings, aka consumers.

Developed in a mass media age. Ignores the nonlinear nature of media

consumption.

Empathic marketing is modeled on the way in which people form personal relationships – empathy, experiences, endorsement and energy.

The 4Ps AIDA

The “4Es”

Experiences form deeply held beliefs Product performance

Unique interactions Media context

Brand associations and content

Momentum conveys leadership New product cycle Events New services Alliances Media channels

Empathic Marketing

Empathy drives personal relevance Shared point of view Shared values Similar dreams and ambitions Engage via passion points

Empathy! Experiences  

Energy!

Perceptions Behaviors

Peer review deepens commitment Social media

WOM PR

Endorsement  

Empathy! Experiences  

Energy! Endorsement  

Brand saliency (image metrics): Relevance Differentiation High esteem / quality Familiarity

Customer engagement (marketing and product):

Customer satisfaction Total & unique web visits

Bounce Rate Avg. pages/ time spent per visit

Conversion rates eMail open rates Mobile CTA rates

Brand advocacy (Loyalty, PR, social media):

Net Promoter Score Consumer product ratings Blogger recommendations

Social media sentiment analysis Facebook fans and engagement

YouTube Shares Twitter re-tweets

Brand momentum (image and market metrics): Innovation Success Leadership Popularity Google search Traffic (online and in-store) Sales (volume & share)

Sample Metrics

Perceptions Behaviors

Empathic marketing liberates us from antiquated vocabulary.

It rejects tired distinctions like “traditional vs. non traditional marketing.”

There is only traditional thinking.

(And this is punishable by irrelevance.)

It views labels such as “new media” as old ideas.

If you want to make anyone under 40 laugh, refer to the web as “new media.”

Ditto for mobile.

It refuses to allow “online and offline” to live in silos.

In an era of QR codes and second screen viewing, is anything really offline?

It doesn’t use “brand advertising” to mean TV and print.

The internet is the most powerful brand building tool ever. Storytelling. Experiences. Sight, sound, motion. Peer endorsement.

It fully recognizes the strategic value of TV, print and outdoor.

Good luck reaching B2B execs with a viral video, or my mom through Twitter. Let me know how efficient your street teams are in reaching millions of guys relative to a spot on an NFL game.   

The new model embraces media as a source of creativity.

How and where a brand shows up can be as important as what it says.

It relishes metrics, both hard and soft.

Ignore store traffic and nobody will care about the awareness gain. 

Click-through rates at the expense of emotional relevance and differentiation will not matter as the brand degrades to commodity status. 

True marketing professionals balance these seemingly conflicting goals.

One thing will never change: We must build strong brands.

Products become brands by creating empathetic relationships with customers.

Brands become enduring, profitable assets when they deliver relevant differentiation.

Relevance = volume

Differentiation = margin

Empathy

Brand empathy occurs when customers project themselves onto the brand. Define a brand's source of empathy and you'll find its essential truth.  

We tend to have our deepest and most lasting relationships with people who share our values; our beliefs; our sense of humor; our sense of style.

Empathy isn’t squishy. It’s a hard metric in nearly all brand equity research – e.g., personal relevance, affinity, trust, a brand for me, understands my company’s needs.

Great brands tell great stories. Stories help us connect. They convey meaning. In a fast moving world, meaning trumps information.

Elements of a great story

Archetype! The Journey! Conflict!

The universal characters that form our collective unconscious. The hero, temptress, ruler, et al create deeper connections with consumers.

The most compelling protagonists are on a quest toward something inspiring. Great brands project a sense of purpose – a true north that guides their values and behavior.

Great stories hinge on a clearly defined antagonist. Great brands are clear on what they oppose in order to be crystal clear about what they believe.

Archetypes are the universal personalities spanning ancient mythologies through today.

Our psychological hardwiring.

Components of the collective unconscious that inform perceptions and behavior.

Archetypes are central to storytelling

Lover Hero

Sage Magician

Outlaw

Innocent and Jester

Evil

The hero’s journey

Drawn from analysis of mythology across cultures and time:

“A hero ventures forth from the common world…

confronts obstacles and adversaries…

wins a decisive victory…

and returns with the power to help his fellow man.”

The hero’s journey:�Hollywood

An innocent young prince attempts to run away from his troubles only to discover the redeeming power of friendship and truth.

The hero’s journey:�Politics

A man rises above racial barriers to inspire a nation to defy the divisiveness of red states and blue states and reclaim the promise of the United States.

The hero’s journey:�Brands

An authority-defying rebel uniting a community in a crusade against fear.

An advocate of women’s self-esteem battling against the falsehood of media-defined beauty.

A free thinker liberating creativity from a world of beige conformity.

Experiences

Like people, brands are judged by what they do, not just by what they say.

Experiences transform perceptions into deeply held beliefs.

Every interaction defines the brand, e.g., the packaging, how the phone is answered; customer service; the online experience; events; the trade show booth; mobile gaming.

This is not a soft measure.  

The 2011 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index shows that customers increasingly define value through the total brand experience, and that experiences have a strong impact on customer decision-making.

Endorsement

If brands are built on empathetic relationships, then that relationship is now a ménage á trois.  

In a socially wired world, brands are not solely defined by the relationship between the customer and the product. It’s about the relationship shared among all the customers of the product.

Advocacy isn’t just an conquesting strategy – it’s also a loyalty strategy.

When a customer advocates a brand, they deepen their commitment to the brand by putting their name and reputation on the line.

Energy

Energy is a powerful force.  It casts an aura of infectious momentum that is often measured in brand research as success, innovation, leadership or popularity.

Maintaining energy requires that we think through what happens in the months after a launch.

It’s the absence of energy that causes otherwise loyal customers to get bored; to flirt with other brands; to spice up their life by trying something new and interesting.

The Empathic Branding Framework

Experiences form deeply held beliefs Product performance

Unique interactions Media context

Brand associations and content

Momentum conveys leadership New product cycle Events New services Alliances Media channels

Empathic Marketing

Empathy drives personal relevance Shared point of view Shared values Similar dreams and ambitions Engage via passion points

Empathy! Experiences  

Energy!

Perceptions Behaviors

Peer review deepens commitment Social media

WOM PR

Endorsement  

Empathic Marketing Framework

Empathy! Energy! Experiences! Endorsement!

KPIs! KPIs! KPIs! KPIs!

Cultural Context!

Perception! Behavior!

Perceptual analysis

Relevance Differentiation

Worth (quality / value) Familiarity

Brand values Customer values

Innovation New / surprising

Gaining in popularity Exciting

Sales (volume & share)

Sources: Tracking study A&U study Sales reports

EMPATHY! ENERGY!

Behavioral analysis

Shopping behaviors Store traffic Web traffic

eMail open rates CTR / VTR

Advtg awareness / recall

Sentiment analysis PR analytics

SM likes / followers

Sources: Web analytics OLA analytics eMail analytics Tracking study

EXPERIENCES! ENDORSEMENT!

Cultural context analysis

Societal  trends

Cohort values

Media &

technology

Fashion &

design Economic

issues

Cultural Connection Mapping

Collective

Counter

Influential Contextual

EMBRACE

SEED

ACKNOWLEDGE

LEARN

Empathy Mapping

Strong brand equity

Weak brand equity

Strong customer value

Weak customer value

FOCUS

FIX

REFRAME

MONITOR

Experience Mapping

More effective

Less effective

Direct impact on goals*

Indirect impact on goals*

INCREASE INVESTMENT

INNOVATE AND TEST

MAINTAIN INVESTMENT

DECREASE INVESTMENT

*Goals = Image / Engagement / Sales

Key insights form the E4 Plan

FOCUS

FIX

REFRAME

MONITOR

INCREASE INVESTMENT

INNOVATE & TEST

MAINTAIN INVESTMENT

DECREASE INVESTMENT

EMBRACE

SEED

ACKNOWLEDGE

LEARN

Empathy   Energy   Experiences   Endorsement  

KPIs   KPIs   KPIs   KPIs  

Cultural  Context  

Percep9on   Behavior  

Defining Cultural Context!

What the brand owns:! What the brand needs:!

Brand Equity!

Brand Empathy!What the brand believes:! What the customer values:!

Image:! Engagement:!

Key Marketing Metrics!Sales:!

Brand proposition:!

Brand Experiences!Archetypal Voice:! Interactions: !!Iconography:! Channels:!

Empathic Marketing Brief

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