Editor's note: Pam Goldfarb Liss is founder of Minneapolis research firm LitBrains-Igniting Ideas!
Empathy should be a part of every marketer’s playbook, but now it is even more important. As a qualitative researcher, I’ve seen empathy as a star of successful marketing campaigns for a long time but now in the time of COVID-19, I’m seeing it as even more important.
In a recent Forbes article about empathy, “Empathy is the Key to Marketing Campaigns,” Abhilash Patel, an entrepreneur and digital marketing executive, says to write what you know and show compassion. He also tells marketers to inspire good, use emotion and allow your audiences to come to their own conclusion by letting the presented information speak for itself.
I’m proud to say that I’ve seen so many great examples of empathy in recent marketing constructed during COVID-19 that brings out kindness and hope – the best in all of us.
Here are my observations of great genre-leading marketers showing important balances of empathy and kindness:
- Grocery stores – As the front lines for many consumers, grocery store chains have promoted their readiness to provide us with the food and things we need to connect through this hard time, all while grocery store workers are putting their own lives on the line to make sure we get what we need. Hy-Vee set its COVID-19 commercial to the tune of Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero” with shots of happy store employees ready to stock shelves, gorgeous steaks and a nod to the health care employees saving the day for us all. This spot uses inspiring scenes of people doing work to make sure we can all stay safe.
- Technology – Tech is the true winner in a stay-at-home mandate. The recent YouTube #StayHome spot shows fun videos posted by consumers during these hard times – from cooking and baking shows to dancing videos – all created by consumers on self-produced channels. Facebook also provided a great TV spot with “I Love People’s Faces,” showing how people have used various Facebook tools like Facebook Live and other features to connect during this hard time. Technology has the most precious of empathic opportunity in that these companies are both demonstrating empathy and enabling it as the connector.
- Financial/insurance – In a time of need, insurance and financial are areas that can offer meaningful and assuring support. State Farm’s “We’ll Rise Up” commercial shows the iconic red SUV parked outside a local agent’s office in Main Street, USA, reinforcing the “Like a good neighbor” motto. Intuit TurboTax Live has a new spot that shows a cartoon of our current reality, and how its new tool can help with the other reality of taxes – access to important tax experts with an empathic nod to our new time.
- Health care/medicine – #StayatHomeforThem from Tylenol pays tribute to the health care workers at the front lines with sweet photos of kids appearing at the window indoors as parents working in health care are outside, ending with a short brand logo screen. Tylenol as a brand could be quite glib right now as it is an effective medicine for many dealing with lesser effects of this pandemic – but instead the brand is connecting the importance of staying at home to help our collective health care network treat the people who need their care. McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson, has used an emotional message resonating today that lets the viewer build any other associations with Tylenol as a medicine that may grow from that.
- Beauty – Dove’s new spot, “Courage is Beautiful,” shows shots of tired and worn health care workers. The spot is not selling beauty or cleanliness but rather thanking these courageous people by donating to Direct Relief to care for front-line health care workers in the U.S. The brand that is known for making beauty more compassionate expands its ideals to help us connect with what’s important. It’s powerful as it builds empathy and donates to help the people in this fight to save our lives.
The new normal
What will happen after this pandemic is still unclear. Where we will all be after this? We don’t know. I do believe that kindness and empathy – especially their offsprings compassion and gratitude – are the new normal messages of our near future. Luckily for us, these new key marketing ingredients around empathy are very dependent on market research. As a qualitative researcher and a human, I am seeing this evolution as a potential silver lining.