Big Data: Does It Breed or Kill Empathy?

“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not  only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.” – Daniel H. Pink 

The idea of spending a day without access to big data is for most marketers an unbearable thought. But the increasing dependence on technology for marketing has become a cause of concern for many who believe  technology limits human connection and understanding but creates superficial interactions through  immediate gratification. 

With the increasing emphasis on rationality and objectivity in reformulating marketing as a scientific  discipline, marketing has drawn a wedge between customers and organizations/researchers. This  wedge is critical, as revealing consumers' true motivations entail subjectivity and thus empathetic  reasoning. Moreover, the beginning of a so‐called “feeling economy” suggests that empathy should  take an even more prominent role in the practice of marketing in the years to come. This is fueled by  technological advances making the human capacity for empathy a competitive strength against artificial  intelligence (AI). 

That’s why in times of big data, it’s important to remember that marketing is more than just a series of  faceless transactions. There’s a real human heartbeat at the end of all those numbers, a person we can  build a meaningful, lasting relationship with. And that’s where empathy comes into play. In building a  deeper understanding of the people who buy brands. That’s why it is key to elevate marketing beyond  the generic and create products, programs and communications with the power to make people feel  heard, moved and inspired. 

It is important to note that the use of empathy in marketing campaigns isn’t just a “feel-good”  technique. It allows marketers to step into the shoes of their target audience. Empathy helps to better  understand what truly matters to them which builds the base for a long-term customer value. Means,  before demonstrating understanding, marketers have to develop it. They need to ask questions and be  open and listen and learn. Which takes humility. Humility is not knowing. And that, eventually and  almost always, leads to empathy which leads to compassion and authenticity. 

To give you some inspiration on how to produce an empathic marketing campaign, here are four brands who are exemplary at compassion and authenticity – IKEA, PepsiCo, Delta Airlines and new Kia. 

IKEA: The company has a very successful market strategy entailing market offerings of flat packs and  self‐assembly furniture. Yet, few people are aware of the origin of this market strategy. One of the IKEA  frontline workers was frustrated in trying to get a table into his car, and therefore, took the legs off to  make the table fit. By the employee engaging in an act of perspective‐taking, this episode resulted in  the empathetic insight that customers might be facing the same challenge. Hence, IKEA subsequently  leveraged this insight to introduce flat packs and self‐assembly furniture. What the IKEA example  illustrates is that market success and increased market performance can be the result of an empathetic approach: employees being able and willing to put themselves in the shoes of customers. IKEA's market  offering did not originate from piles of extensive and objective data – it rather originated from an  individual and subjective experience, documenting the strength of an empathy‐based approach to  marketing.  

PepsiCo: People centricity is at the heart of everything Pepsi does. While they continue to invest in big  data solutions, they’ve also made a conscious effort to invest in building empathy programs that help 

their teams really get to know the people who buy their brands: 

PepsiCo: Every marketer is paired with a “consumer pen pal.” Throughout a year, they build a  relationship with their pen pals through video calls and online discussions. 

Gatorade: The marketing team spends time with athletes to discover difficult‐to‐obtain insights. 

Mountain Dew: The Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel was inspired by team members spending time with  the gaming community to watch them game and hearing them talk. 

Delta Airlines: This company is known to empower its employees to turn frustrating (and even negative)  situations into positive ones. For example, back in 2017, there were several flights cancelled from Atlanta due to bad weather. In order to help soothe tensions, the Delta crew threw a pizza party for  those stranded customers. 

Kia: The company’s new brand mission ‘Movement that inspires’ puts Kia at the forefront of a  sustainable mobility movement that celebrates fresh thinking – a people centric brand that uses its  technology to serve as a source of inspiration and new ideas. The Kia Niro EV campaign is a perfect  example of that: with its intuitive handling, great versatility and spacious interior, the car is the perfect  entry model for people who want to move into the world of electrification. By making this transition as  meaningful as possible, Kia does not focus on how a specific feature works, but rather on how the car’s  features play a meaningful role in people’s lives, how they inspire them, how they move them, how  they make way for wonderful. 

Marketing has the power to move and inspire people at a deep, human level. Empathy helps marketers  break out of their blind spots, open their eyes to the human side of the consumer. That said, empathy  flips the conversation from brand centricity to people centricity. Instead of starting with brands and  looking for ways to insert them into people’s lives, like IKEA, PepsiCo, Delta Airlines and Kia, start by  understanding real people: their likes, dislikes, values, motivations, daily struggles, and everything else  that makes them human. And that is the starting point for any great story, one that will truly connect  with the listener. 

  

There’s no doubt that the future of marketing will be shaped by big data, artificial intelligence and machine  learning as they give valid predictions. However, all big data systems need a guide, a ‘partner’ that can fill in the  gaps left by the system’s inability to see beyond the numbers and equations. Each and every big data system  needs people like ethnographers and user researchers who can gather thick data. This specific type of data  comes from humans in the form of stories, emotions and interactions that cannot be quantified. This is a  compelling reminder to find the human heartbeat in the data, the deeper WHY that can elevate our marketing  and build consumer relationships that last a lifetime: Understanding a consumer’s wants, needs, annoyances,  and grievances, will truly help to set your marketing campaigns apart from other companies. Creating a  connection from brand to consumer through the use of data-driven empathy is the true recipe for marketing success. MOVE TO INSPIRE.