Radical Empathy
(This is the face of “radical empathy”, aka Joe McCambley)
I have recently begun working with Joe McCambley, POP’s new Senior Vice President of Content. Joe, an advertising veteran, swears he made the first banner ad for AT&T back in 1994. He was a pioneer in the digital revolution and now he’s doing the same for content marketing.
In just a few short weeks Joe has got me taking a closer look at the stark differences between advertising and content marketing. For one thing, he continues to diplomatically point out that many of the things I call “content” are actually just advertising. His logic is shockingly simple: Advertising is designed to sell, and content is designed to help. Joe goes on to note that “Content that tries to sell usually doesn't. And content that tries to help usually sells.”
Joe’s recipe for creating honest, authentic content is based around one core ingredient that he calls “radical empathy”. Radical empathy involves an unvarnished understanding of your audience. You gotta respect what keeps them up at night, recognize what they love most in the world, understand what motivates them to act, know what makes them laugh, also what makes the hairs on their arms stand up straight.
Radical empathy requires that you walk a mile in your audiences’ shoes so that you can appreciate what help they need and how your brand can really, truly be of service. And here’s a radical thought for most brands: radical empathy is about respecting your audience so much that you are willing to put their needs ahead of your marketing goals.
One of Joe’s best tricks for driving the creation of content instead of ads is to ask “How can we help people?” rather than, “What can we sell people?”.
IF marketers can retrain themselves to thinking about helping instead of selling, we just might be to rewire people’s brains to seek out brand experiences, rather than run from them.